The house was a low, picturesque building, with thick walls of stone and
a thatched roof, which had two little dormer-windows in it; but at the
most sheltered end, farthest from the ravine that led down to the sea,
there had been built a small, square room of brick-work. As we entered
the fold-yard, Tardif pointed this room out to me as mine.

"I built it," he said, softly, "for my poor little wife; I brought the
bricks over from Guernsey in my own boat, and laid nearly every one of
them with my own hands; she died in it, mam'zelle. Please God, you will
be both happy and safe there!"

We stepped directly from the stone causeway of the yard into the
farm-house kitchen--the only sitting-room in the house except my own. It
was exquisitely clean, with that spotless and scrupulous cleanliness
which appears impossible in houses where there are carpets and curtains,
and papered walls. An old woman, very little and bent, and dressed in an
odd and ugly costume, met us at the door, dropping a courtesy to me, and
looking at me with dim, watery eyes. I was about to speak to her, when
Tardif bent down his head, and put his mouth to her ear, shouting to her
with a loud voice, but in their peculiar jargon, of which I could not
make out a single word.

"My poor mother is deaf," he said to me, "very deaf; neither can she
speak English. Most of the young people in Sark can talk in English a
little, but she is old and too deaf to learn. She has only once been
off the island."

I looked at her, wondering for a moment what she could have to think of,
but, with an intelligible gesture of welcome, she beckoned me into my