supplementary timber-framed structure, all the woodwork exposed to the
weather being fledged with slates, so that the walls are checkered
with bluish lines. This shed (for it is little more) is the kitchen of
the establishment. You can pass from it into the house without going
outside; but, nevertheless, it boasts an entrance door of its own, and
a short flight of steps that brings you to a deep well, and a very
rustical-looking pump, half hidden by water-plants and savin bushes
and tall grasses. The kitchen is a modern addition, proving beyond
doubt that La Grenadiere was originally nothing but a simple
_vendangeoir_--a vintage-house belonging to townsfolk in Tours, from
which Saint-Cyr is separated by the vast river-bed of the Loire. The
owners only came over for the day for a picnic, or at the
vintage-time, sending provisions across in the morning, and scarcely
ever spent the night there except during the grape harvest; but the
English settled down on Touraine like a cloud of locusts, and La
Grenadiere must, of course, be completed if it was to find tenants.
Luckily, however, this recent appendage is hidden from sight by the
first two trees of a lime-tree avenue planted in a gully below the
vineyards.

There are only two acres of vineyard at most, the ground rising at the
back of the house so steeply that it is no very easy matter to
scramble up among the vines. The slope, covered with green trailing
shoots, ends within about five feet of the house wall in a ditch-like
passage always damp and cold and full of strong growing green things,
fed by the drainage of the highly cultivated ground above, for rainy
weather washes down the manure into the garden on the terrace.

A vinedresser's cottage also leans against the western gable, and is
in some sort a continuation of the kitchen. Stone walls or espaliers