beauty of Blaisette's blue
eyes and yellow hair. The girl of the cottage was an excellent foil
to the girl of Colomberie Farm. Did Blaisette realize, all
unconsciously, the use of this to her as she went forward
triumphantly in her victorious path as the belle of two parishes?

But to return to the group round the fire.

All at once, by common consent, as it appeared, the girls rose and
crowded round the entrance. Ellenor lifted the latch, and, flinging
the door wide open, she stood on the threshold and looked out into
the inky blackness of the night. The wind howled and moaned as it
entered the kitchen; and a flash of lightning tore open, for one
second, the darkness of the sky. After the crash of thunder that
followed, Blaisette cried in an awestruck voice,

"Surely now, Ellenor, you will not go!"

"Not go!" echoed the girl of the cottage, "not go! but this is the
very weather to go in! Now, perhaps, you will all believe I fear
nothing! and if there was need for it I would go bareheaded to Saint
Peter Port in this deluge!" and she pointed to the sheets of rain
which swept over the moorland.

Then a small, insignificant voice, coming from a woman who sat in
the hearth corner, spoke irritably.

"You know, Ellenor, if your father was here, he would not let you
play such tricks!"

Ellenor faced her mother with rebellion in every feature of her
face.

"The girls have dared me to go to the Haunted House on this very
night, and I'll go, mother, if I have to face the devil himself."

Mrs. Cartier sighed.

"Well, you must do as you please, it seems you always do!"

Without further words, Ellenor coiled tighter the thick hair that
looked too heavy for her small head, stuck through it a dull gold
pin, and stepped out into the small garden.

"It has stopped raining," she said sarcastically, "so who will go a
little way, to see I don't cheat, but go, in reality, to the Haunted
House?"

After a minute's hesitation, two or three of the girls followed her,
but Blaisette, with a pretty pout, returned to the _jonquiere_ by
the hearth. Ellenor walked rapidly up the steep path to the summit
of the cliff, then plunged into the darkness of the moorland.
Winding in and out amongst gorze bushes, she reached at last a large
patch of grass. She turned round to the girls who were huddling
close to her.

"There! in two minutes I'll be to the Haunted House. Listen to the
sea! We're close to the edge of the cliffs. Come, quick,