he
railings and held out her warm damp nose, as if she were glad of human
society. Then a woman, if so indescribable a being could be called a
woman, sprang up from the bushes, and pulled at the cord about the cow's
neck. From beneath the crimson handkerchief about the woman's head, fair
matted hair escaped, something as tow hangs about a spindle. She wore
no kerchief at the throat. A coarse black-and-gray striped woolen
petticoat, too short by several inches, left her legs bare. She might
have belonged to some tribe of Redskins in Fenimore Cooper's novels; for
her neck, arms, and ankles looked as if they had been painted brick-red.
There was no spark of intelligence in her featureless face; her pale,
bluish eyes looked out dull and expressionless from beneath the eyebrows
with one or two straggling white hairs on them. Her teeth were prominent
and uneven, but white as a dog's.

"Hallo, good woman," called M. de Sucy.

She came slowly up to the railing, and stared at the two sportsmen with
a contorted smile painful to see.

"Where are we? What is the name of the house yonder? Whom does it belong
to? Who are you? Do you come from hereabouts?"

To these questions, and to a host of others poured out in succession
upon her by the two friends, she made no answer save gurgling sounds
in the throat, more like animal sounds than anything uttered by a human
voice.

"Don't you see that she is deaf and dumb?" said M. d'Albon.

"_Minorites_!" the peasant woman said at last.

"Ah! she is right. The house looks as though it might once have been a
Minorite convent," he went on.

Again they plied the peasant woman with questions, but, like a wayward
child, she colored up, fidgeted with her sabot, twisted the rope by
which she held the cow that had fallen to grazing again, stared at the
sportsmen, and scrutinized every article of clothing upon them; she
gibbered, grunted, and clucked, but no articulate word did she utter.

"Your name?" asked Philip, fixing her with his eyes as if he were trying
to bewitch the woman.

"Genevieve," she answered, with an empty laugh.

"The cow is the most intelligent creature we have seen so far,"
exclaimed the magistrate. "I shall fire a shot, that ought to bring
somebody out."

D'Albon had just taken up his rifle when the Colonel put out a hand
to stop him, and pointed out the mysterious woman who had aroused such
lively curiosity in them. She seemed to be absorbed in deep thought, as
she