cemetery; a bed was vacant in the dormitory
of the Folly, and André remained its undisputed
heir.

I had no reason to believe that this family
bereavement would be so keenly felt by the
survivors as to oblige me to relinquish my
appointment with the young marsh guide the
Monday following, and I was right. Soon
after descending from the upland, I perceived
André himself coming to meet me along the
grassy, ditch-bounded marsh road. He
seemed to be smothering a secret complacency
beneath a decent seriousness of behaviour;
but he told me, with a smirk and a twinkle of
the eye, that Catherine had informed him of
my request that she should conduct me
through the intricacies of the marsh.

Catherine! Who, then, was Catherine?
Who, but the fair-haired boy whom I had
seen turf-moulding. It seemed rather an odd
adventure, but what more could I desire? So
to the Folly we went, without further
explanation. On the way, my companion made
no allusion to his father's death, nor to his
own consequent independence; but I was soon
afterwards informed that he had caused masses
to be said for the repose of his deceased
parent's soul, though neither his wife nor
himself ever went to confession, and but very
rarely to mass.

At our approach, Catherine stepped
forward, tripping over the footbridge with a
blush and a smile. But what a change in her
appearance! Instead of a shame-faced creature,
so wretchedly disguised as even to conceal
its sex, I had before me a bright-looking
maiden, some seventeen years of age, walking
upright in conscious neatness. As I
attentively scrutinised her piquant costume, my
looks, I have no doubt, undisguisedly
expressed my agreeable surprise.

In a few minutes we were out of sight. My
conductress led me boldly on through the
intricate paths and ditches of the marsh. We
entered André's flat-bottomed boat, which she
had purposely cleansed with her own hands.
She punted me hither and thither, from pond
to creek, from thicket of reeds to bed of
lilies, refusing, like a true lady of the lake, all
help. I was thus taught all the "likely"
spots both for rod, hook, net, and gun; and
though under Catherine's guidance I never
did catch the monster eel, who had been
sometimes felt but never seen; I nevertheless
often brought home such full fish-baskets and
such heavy game-bags as gained me considerable
renown amongst my acquaintances.

During these repeated excursions over the
water and through the meadows, it may be
supposed that an intimacy sprung up between
us. Each time I felt more and more attracted
by the young and uninstructed being, who
was not, however, deficient in a peasant-girl's
quickwittedness. She confided her story to
me, as far as she knew it. André always
styled her his niece, and told her that both
her parents had died while she was an infant.
She scarcely knew why, but she did not believe
the former statement. The Boissons never
treated her harshly, but often very strangely,
and not like a relation. Sometimes even she
could not help thinking that André was planning
some mischief against her, but his wife
always seemed to interfere in her favour. In
her dreams, she said, she was so often visited
by unknown faces and sounds, which had no
connection with her present life, that it
frequently seemed to her impossible that those
strange voices and countenances should not
have some real and existing original.
Sometimes she asked me to speak English to her,
that she might hear the sound of my native
tongue; but, after listening attentively for
awhile, she shook her head, observing, with
a sort of disappointment, that she did not
understand a syllable of what I said. Then
she added that there were two foreign words
which often whispered themselves into her
ears, especially when she first awoke at day-
break; and those words were "darling" and
"baby." How could she have learned them?

It may seem strange that a girl of seventeen
should thus fulfil the combined office of game-
keeper, boatman, fisherman, and guide; but
countrywomen in France engage in so many
unusual employments that one soon learns to
be astonished at nothing in that line. I have
known women to act as mowers, harvestmen,
grooms, stone-breakers on the roads, porters,
railway gate-keepers, and postmen. Had I
taken a country house, and engaged Catherine,
at monthly wages, to spread manure and dig
in the garden, the arrangement would only
have been considered by the neighbours as an
every-day affair and a matter of course. I
might have gone on thus for six months
together, fishing and boating in Catherine's
company, without their making any stronger
remark than it probably was a lucky chance
for the girl. But André did not allow things
to go on smoothly so long as that.

One evening, when I took my leave, loaded
with as much of the produce of a good day's
sport as I cared to carry, André followed me;
and, in his cool, half-insolent way, gave me to
understand that I must make up my mind
one way or the other; and that Catherine's
protracted attendance on me interrupted the
regular work at the Folly. Why did I not
take her entirely to myself? He knew that
I could well afford it. The doctor had told
him several times that I was a young English
landed proprietor. What was the use of
Catherine's stopping here, when I could keep
her with me, wherever I went, as long as I
liked? In short, the burden of his
stammering and yet decided address was, that
Catherine might be my property as a chattel
and a slave; and that the further she were
removed from the Folly, the better he would
be satisfied.

The increasing twilight partly veiled the
scarlet hue which suffused my cheeks and
forehead, as he went on. I did not reply a