rough the street. Small wonder that the lad on the hill
grinned, for the man who ran to rescue his hat from the stream was
none other than the Bailly of the island, next in importance to the
Lieutenant-Governor.

The lad could almost see the face of the child, its humorous anger, its
wilful triumph, and also the enraged look of the Bailly as he raked
the stream with his long stick, tied with a sort of tassel of office.
Presently he saw the child turn at the call of a woman in the Place du
Vier Prison, who appeared to apologise to the Bailly, busy now drying
his recovered hat by whipping it through the air. The lad on the hill
recognised the woman as the child's mother.

This little episode over, he turned once more towards the sea, watching
the sun of late afternoon fall upon the towers of Elizabeth Castle and
the great rock out of which St. Helier the hermit once chiselled his
lofty home. He breathed deep and strong, and the carriage of his body
was light, for he had a healthy enjoyment of all physical sensations and
all the obvious drolleries of life. A broad sort of humour was written
upon every feature; in the full, quizzical eye, in the width of
cheek-bone, in the broad mouth, and in the depth of the laugh, which,
however, often ended in a sort of chuckle not entirely pleasant. It
suggested a selfish enjoyment of the odd or the melodramatic side of
other people's difficulties.

At last the youth encased his telescope, and turned to descend the hill
to the town. As he did so, a bell began to ring. From where he was he
could look down into the Vier Marchi, or market-place, where stood
the Cohue Royale and house of legislature. In the belfry of this
court-house, the bell was ringing to call the Jurats together for a
meeting of the States. A monstrous tin pan would have yielded as much
assonance. Walking down towards the Vier Marchi the lad gleefully
recalled the humour of a wag who, some days before, had imitated the
sound of the bell with the words:

"Chicane--chicane! Chicane--chicane!"

The native had, as he thought, suffered somewhat at the hands of the
twelve Jurats of the Royal Court, whom his vote had helped to elect, and
this was his revenge--so successful that, for generations, when the bell
called the States or the Royal Court together, it said in the ears of
the Jersey people--thus insistent is apt metaphor:

"Chicane--chicane! Chicane--chicane!"

As the lad came down to the town, trades-people whom