Marie | Page 3

as deaf as her namesake, came to see what Susan Piper was after, loitering round the door when the men-folks were coming in to their supper: and so with one thing and another, Marie had quite a little crowd around her, and was feeling happy and pleased, and sure that when she stopped playing and carried round her handkerchief knotted at the four corners so as to form a bag, the pennies would drop into it as fast, yes, and maybe a good deal faster, than if Le Boss's ugly daughter was carrying it, with her nose turned up and one eye looking round the corner to see where her hair was gone to. Ah, Le Boss, what was he doing this evening for his music, with no Marie and no Lady!
And it was just at this triumphant moment that Jacques De Arthenay came round the corner and into the village street.
CHAPTER II.
"D'ARTHENAY, TENEZ FOI!"
There had been De Arthenays in the village ever since it became a village: never many of them, one or two at most in a generation; not a prolific stock, but a hardy and persistent one. No one knew when the name had dropped its soft French sound, and taken the harsh Anglo-Saxon accent. It had been so with all the old French names, the L'Homme-Dieus and Des Isles and Beaulieus; the air, or the granite, or one knows not what, caused an ossification of the consonants, a drying up of the vowels, till these names, once soft and melodious, became more angular, more rasping in utterance, than ever Smith or Jones could be.
They were Huguenots, the d'Arthenays. A friend from childhood of St. Castin, Jacques d'Arthenay had followed his old companion to America at the time when the revocation of the Edict of Nantes rendered France no safe dwelling-place for those who had no hinges to their knees. A stern, silent man, this d'Arthenay, like most of his race: holding in scorn the things of earthly life, brooding over grievances, given to dwelling much on heaven and hell, as became his time and class. Leaving castle and lands and all earthly ties behind them, he and his wife came out of Sodom, as they expressed it, and turned not their faces, looking steadfastly forward to the wilderness where they were to worship God in His own temple, the virgin forest. It had been a terrible shock to find the Baron de St. Castin fallen away from religion and civilisation, living in savage pomp with his savage wives, the daughters of the great chief Modocawando. There could be no such companionship as this for the Sieur d'Arthenay and his noble wife; the friendship of half a lifetime was sternly repudiated, and d'Arthenay cast in his lot with the little band of Huguenot settlers who were striving to win their livelihood from the rugged soil of eastern Maine.
It was bitter bread that they ate, those French settlers. We read the story again and again, each time with a fresh pang of pity and regret; but it is not of them that this tale is told. Jacques d'Arthenay died in his wilderness, and his wife followed him quickly, leaving a son to carry on the name. The gravestone of these first d'Arthenays was still to be seen in the old burying-ground: they had been the first to be buried there. The old stone was sunk half-way in the earth, and was gray with moss and lichens; but the inscription was still legible, if one looked close, and had patience to decipher the crabbed text.
"Jacques St. George, Sieur d'Arthenay et de Vivonne. Mort en foi et en esperance, 28me Decembre, 1694."
Then a pair of mailed hands, clasped as in sign of friendship or loyalty, and beneath them again, the words,
"D'Arthenay, tenez foi!"
The story was that the son of this first Sieur d'Arthenay had been exposed to some dire temptation, whether of love or of ambition was not clearly known, and had been in danger of turning from the faith of his people and embracing that of Rome. He came one day to meditate beside his father's grave, hoping perhaps to draw some strength, some inspiration, from the memories of that stern and righteous Huguenot; and as he sat beside the stone, lo! a mailed hand appeared, holding a sword, and graved with the point of the sword on the stone, the old motto of his father's house,--
"D'Arthenay, tenez foi!"
And he had been strengthened, and lived and died in the faith of his father. Many people in the village scouted this story, and called it child's foolishness, but there were some who liked to believe it, and who pointed out that these words were not carved deeply and regularly, like the rest of the inscription, but roughly scratched, as if