t moment, a porpoise had appeared
above the water, or a robin had caught his eye in the hedges, it is
probable that he would have passed on his way. But it happened that his
eyes were fixed upon the ground; his gaze fell mechanically upon the
spot where the girl had stopped. Two little footprints were there
plainly visible; and beside them he read this word, evidently written by
her in the snow--

"GILLIATT."

It was his own name.

He lingered for awhile motionless, looking at the letters, the little
footprints, and the snow; and then walked on, evidently in a thoughtful
mood.

II

THE BU DE LA RUE

Gilliatt lived in the parish of St. Sampson. He was not liked by his
neighbours; and there were reasons for that fact.

To begin with, he lived in a queer kind of "haunted" dwelling. In the
islands of Jersey and Guernsey, sometimes in the country, but often in
streets with many inhabitants, you will come upon a house the entrance
to which is completely barricaded. Holly bushes obstruct the doorway,
hideous boards, with nails, conceal the windows below; while the
casements of the upper stories are neither closed nor open: for all the
window-frames are barred, but the glass is broken. If there is a little
yard, grass grows between its stones; and the parapet of its wall is
crumbling away. If there is a garden, it is choked with nettles,
brambles, and hemlock, and strange insects abound in it. The chimneys
are cracked, the roof is falling in; so much as can be seen from without
of the rooms presents a dismantled appearance. The woodwork is rotten;
the stone mildewed. The paper of the walls has dropped away and hangs
loose, until it presents a history of the bygone fashions of
paper-hangings--the scrawling patterns of the time of the Empire, the
crescent-shaped draperies of the Directory, the balustrades and pillars
of the days of Louis XVI. The thick draperies of cobwebs, filled with
flies, indicate the quiet reign long enjoyed by innumerable spiders.
Sometimes a broken jug may be noticed on a shelf. Such houses are
considered to be haunted. Satan is popularly believed to visit them by
night. Houses are like the human beings who inhabit them. They become to
their former selves what the corpse is to the living body. A
superstitious belief among the people is sufficient to reduce them to
this state of death. Then their aspect is terrible. These ghostly houses
are common in the Channel Islands.

The rural a