wills mal-administered, of the passions of hate, ambition, and despair
kept at a white heat because half the village owned, up in the fields,
what the other half coveted. Many, also, and fierce were the heated
faces we looked in upon at the justice's door, in the very throes of
the great moment of facing justice, and their adversary.

Our own way, by preference, took us up into the fields. Here, in the
broad open, the farms lay scattered like fortifications over a plain.
Doubtless, in the earlier warlike days they had served as such.

Once out of the narrow Villerville streets, and the pastoral was in
full swing.

The sea along this coast was not in the least insistant; it allowed the
shore to play its full gamut of power. There were no tortured shapes of
trees or plants, or barren wastes, to attest the fierce ways of the sea
with the land. Reminders of the sea and of the life that is lived in
ships were conspicuous features everywhere, in the pastoral scenes that
began as soon as the town ended. Women carrying sails and nets toiled
through the green aisles of the roads and lanes. Fishing-tackle hung in
company with tattered jerseys outside of huts hidden in grasses and
honeysuckle. The shepherdesses, as they followed the sheep inland
into the heart of the pasture land, were busy netting the coarse cages
that trap the finny tribe. Long-limbed, vigorous-faced, these
shepherdesses were Biblical figures. In their coarse homespun, with
only a skirt and a shirt, with their bare legs, half-open bosoms, and
the fine poise of their blond heads, theirs was a beauty that commanded
the homage accorded to a rude virginity.

In some of the fields, in one of our many walks, the grass was being