The site was a peculiar one. Although not far from houses, the wood was
very wild, as if a thousand miles distant from any inhabited place.

You would have said it was a virgin forest, untouched by the axe of the
pioneer. Enormous stumps without bark, trunks of gigantic trees, covered
the declivity of the hill, and barricaded, here and there, in a
picturesque manner, the current of the brook which ran into the valley.
A little farther up the dense wood of tufted trees contributed to diffuse
that religious light half over the rocks, the brushwood and the fertile
soil, and on the limpid water, which is at once the charm and the horror
of old neglected woods. In this solitude, and on a space of cleared
ground, rose a sort of rude hut, constructed by a poor devil who was a
sabot-maker by trade, and who had been allowed to establish himself there
by the Comte de Tecle, and to use the beech-trees to gain his humble
living. This Bohemian interested Madame de Tecle, probably because, like
M. de Camors, he had a bad reputation. He lived in his cabin with a
woman who was still pretty under her rags, and with two little boys with
golden curls.

He was a stranger in the neighborhood, and the woman was said not to be
his wife. He was very taciturn, and his features seemed fine and
determined under his thick, black beard.

Madame de Tecle amused herself seeing him make his sabots. She loved the
children, who, though dirty, were beautiful as angels; and she pitied the
woman. She had a secret project to marry her to the man, in case she had
not yet been married, which seemed probable.

Camors walked his horse slowly over the rocky and winding path on the
slope of the hillock. This was the moment when the ghost of Madame