e dark hour now meant nothing, continued to knit, and the
silence at last became so deep that the clicking of her knitting-needles
was plainly heard.

"You have dropped the paper, sister, but you are not asleep," said the
old woman, slyly.

At this moment Mariotte came in to light the lamp, which she placed on
a square table in front of the fire; then she fetched her distaff, her
ball of thread, and a small stool, on which she seated herself in the
recess of a window and began as usual to spin. Gasselin was still busy
about the offices; he looked to the horses of the baron and Calyste,
saw that the stable was in order for the night, and gave the two fine
hunting-dogs their daily meal. The joyful barking of the animals was the
last noise that awakened the echoes slumbering among the darksome walls
of the ancient house. The two dogs and the two horses were the only
remaining vestiges of the splendors of its chivalry. An imaginative man
seated on the steps of the portico and letting himself fall into the
poesy of the still living images of that dwelling, might have quivered
as he heard the baying of the hounds and the trampling of the neighing
horses.

Gasselin was one of those short, thick, squat little Bretons, with black
hair and sun-browned faces, silent, slow, and obstinate as mules, but
always following steadily the path marked out for them. He was forty-two
years old, and had been twenty-five years in the household. Mademoiselle
had hired him when he was fifteen, on hearing of the marriage and
probable return of the baron. This retainer considered himself as part
of the family; he had played with Calyste, he loved the horses and dogs
of the house, and talked to them and petted them as though they were his
own. He wore a blue linen jacket with little pockets flapping about his
hips, waistcoat and trousers of the same material at all seasons, blue
stockings, and stout hob-nailed shoes. When it was cold or rainy he put
on a goat's-skin, after the fashion of his country.

Mariotte, who was also over forty, was as a woman what Gasselin was as
a man. No team could be better matched,--same complexion, same figure,
same little eyes that were lively and black. It is difficult to
understand why Gasselin and Mariotte had never married; possibly
it might have seemed immoral, they were so like brother and sister.
Mariotte's wages were ninety francs a year; Gasselin's, three hundred.
But thousands of francs offered to them el