ately shape, their regular succession, inspired him with
some sentiment of romance which he did not stay to define. He dimly
discerned shrubs as if planted in a pleasure-ground. Wading and fumbling
he found a paling and a gate. The pony turned off the high road with
renewed courage in its motion; the Englishman, letting loose the rein,
found himself drawn slowly up a long avenue of the ghostly poplar trees.
The road was straight, the land was flat, the poplars were upright. The
simplicity affected him with the notion that he was coming to an
enchanted palace. The pony approached the door of a large house, dim to
the sight; its huge pointed tin roof, its stone sides, mantled as they
were with snowflakes and fringed with icicles at eaves and lintels,
hardly gave a dark outline in the glimmering storm. The rays of light
which twinkled through chinks of shutters might be analogous to the
stars produced by a stunned brain; it seemed to the Englishman that if
he went up and tried to knock on the door the ghostly house, the ghostly
poplar avenue, would vanish. The thought was born of the long monotony
of a danger which had called for no activity of brain or muscle on his
part. The pony knew better; it stopped before the door.

The traveller stood in a small porch raised a step or two from the
ground. The door was opened by a middle-aged Frenchwoman clad in a
peasant's gown of bluish-grey. Behind her, holding a lamp a little above
her head, stood a young girl, large, womanly in form, with dimpled
softness of face, and dressed in a rich but quaint garment of amber
colour. With raised and statuesque wrist she held the lamp aloft to keep
the light from dazzling her eyes. She was looking through the doorway
with the quiet interest of responsibility, nothing of which was
expressed in the servant's furrowed countenance.

'Is the master of the house at home?'

'There is no master.'

The girl spoke with a mellow voice and with a manner of soft dignity;
yet, having regarded the stranger, there leaped into her face, as it
seemed to him, behind the outward calm of the dark eyes and dimpling
curves, a certain excited interest and delight. The current of thought
thus revealed contrasted with the calm which she instinctively turned to
him, as the words which an actor speaks aside contrast with those which
are not soliloquy.

With more hesitation, more obvious modesty, he said--

'May I speak to the mistress of the house?'

'I am the