atched roofs were visible here and there through the branches of the
leafless trees which protected the apple-gardens against the wind.

At the side of the road, on a heap of clothes, a very small boy seated
with his legs apart was playing with a potato, which he now and then let
fall on his dress, whilst five women were bending down planting slips
of colza in the adjoining plain. With a slow, continuous movement, all
along the mounds of earth which the plough had just turned up, they
drove in sharp wooden stakes and in the hole thus formed placed the
plant, already a little withered, which sank on one side; then they
patted down the earth and went on with their work.

A man who was passing, with a whip in his hand, and wearing wooden
shoes, stopped near the child, took it up and kissed it. Then one of the
women rose up and came across to him. She was a big, red haired girl,
with large hips, waist and shoulders, a tall Norman woman, with yellow
hair in which there was a blood-red tint.

She said in a resolute voice:

"Why, here you are, Cesaire--well?"

The man, a thin young fellow with a melancholy air, murmured:

"Well, nothing at all--always the same thing."

"He won't have it?"

"He won't have it."

"What are you going to do?"

"What do you say I ought to do?"

"Go see the cure."

"I will."

"Go at once!"

"I will."

And they stared at each other. He held the child in his arms all the
time. He kissed it once more and then put it down again on the woman's
clothes.

In the distance, between two farm-houses, could be seen a plough drawn
by a horse and driven by a man. They moved on very gently, the horse,
the plough and the laborer, in the dim evening twilight.

The woman went on:

"What did your father say?"

"He said he would not have it."

"Why wouldn't he have it?"

The young man pointed toward the child whom he had just put back on the
ground, then with a glance he drew her attention to the man drawing the
plough yonder there.

And he said emphatically:

"Because 'tis his--this child of yours."

The girl shrugged her shoulders and in an angry tone said:

"Faith, every one knows it well--that it is Victor's. And what about it
after all? I made a slip. Am I the only woman that did? My mother also
made a slip before me, and then yours did the same before she married
your dad! Who is it that hasn't made a slip in the country? I made a
slip with Victor because he took advantage of me