-it is
a thing that all know. As for Le Boss, you know--listen!" she came
nearer to Abby, and lowered her voice. "One night Old Billy forgot to
do, I know not what, but somesing. So when Le Boss found it out, he
look at him, so,"--drawing her brows down and frowning horribly, with
the effect of looking like an enraged kitten,--"and say noasing at all.
You see?"

"Well," replied Abby. "I suppose mebbe he thought it was an accident,
and might have happened to any one."

"Not--at--all!" cried Marie, with dramatic emphasis, throwing out her
hand with a solemn gesture. "What happen that same night? Old Billy
fall down the bank and break his leg!" She paused, and nodded like a
little mandarin, to point the moral of her tale.

"Maree!" remonstrated Abby Rock, "don't tell me you believe such
foolishness as that! He'd have fallen down all the same if nobody had
looked anigh him. Why, good land! I never heard of such notions."

"So it is!" Marie insisted. "Le Boss look at him, and he break his
leg. I see the break! Anozer day," she continued, "Coco, he is a boy
that makes tumble, and he was hungry, and he took a don't from the
table to eat it--"

"Took a what?" asked Abby.

"A don't, what you call. Round, wiz a hole to put your finger!"
explained Marie. "Only in America they make zem. Not of such things
in Bretagne, never. Coco took the don't, and Le Boss catch him, and
look at him again, so! Well, yes! in two hour he is sick, that boy,
and after zat for a week. A-a-a-h! yes, Le Boss! only at me he not
dare to look, for I have the charm, and he know that, and he is afraid.
Aha, yes, he is afraid of Marie too, when he wish to make devil work.

"And here," she cried, turning suddenly upon Abby, "you say you have no
such thing, Abiroc,"--this was the name she had given her
hostess,--"and here, too, is the evil eye, first what I see in this
place, except the dear little children. A man yesterday came while I
played, and looked--but, frightful! Ah!" she started from her seat by
the window, and retreated hastily to the corner. "He comes, the same
man! Put me away, Abiroc! put me away! He is bad, he is wicked! I
die if he look at me!" and she ran hastily out of the room, just as
Jacques De Arthenay entered it.

CHAPTER V.

COURTSHIP.

Marie could hardly be persuaded to come back into the sitting-room; and
when she did at length come, it was only to sit silent in the corner,
with one hand held