playing and carried round her handkerchief knotted at the four corners
so as to form a bag, the pennies would drop into it as fast, yes, and
maybe a good deal faster, than if Le Boss's ugly daughter was carrying
it, with her nose turned up and one eye looking round the corner to see
where her hair was gone to. Ah, Le Boss, what was he doing this
evening for his music, with no Marie and no Lady!

And it was just at this triumphant moment that Jacques De Arthenay came
round the corner and into the village street.




CHAPTER II.

"D'ARTHENAY, TENEZ FOI!"

There had been De Arthenays in the village ever since it became a
village: never many of them, one or two at most in a generation; not a
prolific stock, but a hardy and persistent one. No one knew when the
name had dropped its soft French sound, and taken the harsh Anglo-Saxon
accent. It had been so with all the old French names, the
L'Homme-Dieus and Des Isles and Beaulieus; the air, or the granite, or
one knows not what, caused an ossification of the consonants, a drying
up of the vowels, till these names, once soft and melodious, became
more angular, more rasping in utterance, than ever Smith or Jones could
be.

They were Huguenots, the d'Arthenays. A friend from childhood of St.
Castin, Jacques d'Arthenay had followed his old companion to America at