main--and he returns no more. Many a Jersey boatman, many a fisherman
who has lived his whole life in sight of the Paternosters on the north,
the Ecrehos on the east, the Dog's Nest on the south, or the Corbiere
on the west, has in some helpless moment been caught by the unsleeping
currents which harry his peaceful borders, or the rocks that have eluded
the hunters of the sea, and has yielded up his life within sight of his
own doorway, an involuntary sacrifice to the navigator's knowledge and
to the calm perfection of an admiralty chart.

Yet within the circle of danger bounding this green isle the love of
home and country is stubbornly, almost pathetically, strong. Isolation,
pride of lineage, independence of government, antiquity of law and
custom, and jealousy of imperial influence or action have combined to
make a race self-reliant even to perverseness, proud and maybe vain,
sincere almost to commonplaceness, unimaginative and reserved, with
the melancholy born of monotony--for the life of the little country has
coiled in upon itself, and the people have drooped to see but just their
own selves reflected in all the dwellers of the land, whichever way they
turn. A hundred years ago, however, there was a greater and more general
lightness of heart and vivacity of spirit than now. Then the song of the
harvester and the fisherman, the boat-builder and the stocking-knitter,
was heard on a summer afternoon, or from the veille of a winter night
when the dim crasset hung from the roof and the seaweed burned in the
chimney. Then the gathering of the vraic was a fete, and the lads
and lasses footed it on the green or on the hard sand, to the chance
flageolets of sportive seamen home from the war. This simple gaiety was
heartiest at Christmastide, when the yearly reunion of families took
place; and because nearly everybody in Jersey was "couzain" to his
neighbour these gatherings were as patriarchal as they were festive.

..........................

The new year of seventeen hundred and eighty-one had been ushered in
by the last impulse of such festivities. The English cruisers lately in
port had vanished up the Channel; and at Elizabeth Castle, Mont Orgueil,
the Blue Barracks and the Hospital, three British regiments had taken
up the dull round of duty again; so that by the fourth day a general
lethargy, akin to content, had settled on the whole island.

On the morning of the fifth day a little snow was lying upon