distressed, and I was just about to come to her rescue by continuing
what she had been saying, when she rose, not in anger, but in
trouble, and went upstairs.



CHAPTER III--MISS LEROY



During the great French war there were many French prisoners in my
native town. They led a strange isolated life, for they knew nothing
of our language, nor, in those days, did three people in the town
understand theirs. The common soldiers amused themselves by making
little trifles and selling them. I have now before me a box of
coloured straw with the date 1799 on the bottom, which was bought by
my grandfather. One of these prisoners was an officer named Leroy.
Why he did not go back to France I never heard, but I know that
before I was born he was living near our house on a small income;
that he tried to teach French, and that he had as his companion a
handsome daughter who grew up speaking English. What she was like
when she was young I cannot say, but I have had her described to me
over and over again. She had rather darkish brown hair, and she was
tall and straight as an arrow. This she was, by the way, even into
old age. She surprised, shocked, and attracted all the sober persons
in our circle. Her ways were not their ways. She would walk out by
herself on a starry night without a single companion, and cause
thereby infinite talk, which would have converged to a single focus
if it had not happened that she was also in the habit of walking out
at four o'clock on a summer's morning, and that in the church porch