ge, past the homes of the fishermen--a straggling line of low
stone houses with quaint gabled roofs, and still quainter chimneys, and
old doorways giving glimpses of dark interiors and dirt floors. Past the
modest houses of the mayor, the baker, the butcher and Monsieur le
Cure; then through the small public square, in which nothing ever
happens, and up to a box of a station.

"Pont du Sable!" cries the conductor, with as much importance as if he
had announced Paris.

I have arrived.

* * * * *

There was no doubt about my new-found home being abandoned! The low
stone wall that tempered the wind from courtyard and garden was green
with lichens. The wide stone gateway, with its oaken doors barred within
by massive cross-hooks that could have withstood a siege; the courtyard,
flanked by the house and its rambling appendages that contained within
their cavernous interiors the cider-press and cellars; the stable with
its long stone manger, and next it the carved wooden bunk for the groom
of two centuries ago; the stone pig-sty; the tile-roofed sheds--all had
about them the charm of dignified decay.

But the "chateau" itself!

Generations of spiders had veiled every nook and corner within, and the
nooks and corners were many. These cobwebs hung in ghostly festoons from
the low-beamed ceiling of the living room, opening out upon the wild
garden. They continued up the narrow stone stairway leading to the
old-fashioned stone-paved bedrooms; they had been spun in a labyrinth
all over the generous, spooky, old stone-paved attic, whose single eye
of a window looked out over the quaint gables and undulating tiled roofs
of adjoining attics, whose dark interiors were still pungent with the
tons of apples they had once sheltered. Beyond my rambling roofs were
rich orchards and noble trees and two cool winding lanes running up to
the green country beyond.

Ten days of strenuous settling passed, at the end of which my abandoned
house was resuscitated, as it were. Without Suzette, my little
maid-of-all-work, it would have been impossible. I may say we attacked
this seemingly superhuman task together--and Suzette is so human. She
has that frantic courage of youth, and a smile that is irresistible.

"To-morrow monsieur shall see," she said. "My kitchen is clean--that is
something, eh? And the beds are up, and the armoires, and nearly all of
monsieur's old studio furniture in place. _Eh, ben!_ To-morr