r me."

Both of them scaled the ladder and hid themselves in the hay, in a place
from whence they could have a good view of the party below, who had
not heard a sound overhead. Little groups of women were clustered about
three or four candles. Some of them sewed, others were spinning, a
good few of them were doing nothing, and sat with their heads strained
forward, and their eyes fixed on an old peasant who was telling a story.
The men were standing about for the most part, or lying at full length
on the trusses of hay. Every group was absolutely silent. Their faces
were barely visible by the flickering gleams of the candles by which the
women were working, although each candle was surrounded by a glass globe
filled with water, in order to concentrate the light. The thick darkness
and shadow that filled the roof and all the upper part of the barn
seemed still further to diminish the light that fell here and there upon
the workers' heads with such picturesque effects of light and shade.
Here, it shone full upon the bright wondering eyes and brown forehead of
a little peasant maiden; and there the straggling beams brought out the
outlines of the rugged brows of some of the older men, throwing up
their figures in sharp relief against the dark background, and giving
a fantastic appearance to their worn and weather-stained garb. The
attentive attitude of all these people and the expression on all their
faces showed that they had given themselves up entirely to the pleasure
of listening, and that the narrator's sway was absolute. It was a
curious scene. The immense influence that poetry exerts over every mind
was plainly to be seen. For is not the peasant who demands that the tale
of wonder should be simple, and that the impossible should be well-nigh
credible, a lover of poetry of the purest kind?

"She did not like the look of the house at all," the peasant was saying
as the two newcomers took their places where they could overhear him;
"but the poor little hunchback was so tired out with carrying her bundle
of hemp to market, that she went in; besides, the night had come, and
she could go no further. She only asked to be allowed to sleep there,
and ate nothing but a crust of bread that she took from her wallet. And
inasmuch as the woman who kept house for the brigands knew nothing about
what they had planned to do that night, she let the old woman into
the house, and sent her upstairs without a light. Our hunchback throws