s divided into two
chambers by a breast-high partition of wood. The one room served for
kitchen; the other, now half full of straw, was barn and granary,
fowl-house and dove-cote, all in one. "Be quick!" he called to her.
Standing in the house-room, he could see her head as she proceeded to
unload the straw.

After a few minutes she came in, her shoes clattering on the floor. The
perspiration stood in great beads on her forehead, and showed how little
she had deserved his reproach. She took her seat silently, avoiding his
eyes with some care; but he thought nothing of this. It was no new
thing. It pleased him, if anything.

He liked to be feared. "Well, my Jeanne," he said, in his gibing tone,
"are you longing for my news?"

The hand she extended towards the pitcher of cider, that, with black
bread and onions, made up their meal, shook a little; but she answered
simply, "If you please, Michel."

"Well, the Girondins have got the worst of it, my girl, and are flying
all over the country. That is the news. Your Pierre is among them, I
don't doubt, if he has not been killed already. I wish he would come
this way."

"Why?" she asked; and as she spoke looked up at last, a flash of light
in her grey eyes.

"Why?" he repeated, grinning across the table at her, "because he would
be worth five crowns to me. There is five crowns, I am told, on the head
of every Girondin who has been in arms, my girl. Five crowns! It is not
every day we can earn five crowns!"

The French Revolution, it will be understood, was at its height. The
more moderate and constitutional Republicans--the Girondins, as they
were called--worsted in Paris by the Jacobins and the mob, had lately
tried to raise the provinces against the capital, and to this end had
drawn together at Caen, near the border of Brittany. They had been
defeated, however, and the Jacobins, in this month of August, were
preparing to take a fearful vengeance at once on them and on the
Royalists. The Reign of Terror had begun. Even to such a boor as this,
sitting over his black bread, in his remote hovel, the Revolution had
come home, and, in common with many a thousand others, he wondered what
he could make of it.

The girl did not answer, even by the look of contempt to which he had
become accustomed, and for which he hated her, and for which he beat
her; and he repeated, "Five crowns! Ah, it is money, that is! _Mon
Dieu!_" Then, with a sudden exclamation, he sprang up. "What