anything like commonness, and somehow was
in sympathy with the simple surroundings, making for dignity and sweet
quiet. It was clear that only a woman could have arranged so perfectly
this room and all therein. It was also clear that no man lived here.

Looking in at the doorway of this hut on a certain autumn day of the
year 1797, the first thing to strike your attention was a dog lying
asleep on the hearth. Then a suit of child's clothes on a chair
before the fire of vraic would have caught the eye. The only thing to
distinguish this particular child's dress from that of a thousand others
in the island was the fineness of the material. Every thread of it had
been delicately and firmly knitted, till it was like perfect soft blue
cloth, relieved by a little red silk ribbon at the collar.

The hut contained as well a child's chair, just so high that when placed
by the windows commanding the Paternosters its occupant might see the
waves, like panthers, beating white paws against the ragged granite
pinnacles; the currents writhing below at the foot of the cliffs, or at
half-tide rushing up to cover the sands of the Greve aux Langons, and
like animals in pain, howling through the caverns in the cliffs; the
great nor'wester of November come battering the rocks, shrieking to the
witches who boiled their caldrons by the ruins of Grosnez Castle that
the hunt of the seas was up.

Just high enough was the little chair that of a certain day in the
year its owner might look out and see mystic fires burning round the
Paternosters, and lighting up the sea with awful radiance. Scarce a
rock to be seen from the hut but had some legend like this: the burning
Russian ship at the Paternosters, the fleet of boats with tall prows and
long oars drifting upon the Dirouilles and going down to the cry of the
Crusaders' Dahindahin! the Roche des Femmes at the Ecrehos, where still
you may hear the cries of women in terror of the engulfing sea.

On this particular day, if you had entered the hut, no one would
have welcomed you; but had you tired of waiting, and followed the
indentations of the coast for a mile or more by a deep bay under tall
cliffs, you would have seen a woman and a child coming quickly up the
sands. Slung upon the woman's shoulders was a small fisherman's basket.
The child ran before, eager to climb the hill and take the homeward
path.

A man above was watching them. He had ridden along the cliff, had seen
the woman in her