Marie | Page 3

came running, stuffing their gains into their pockets as they

ran. Then Mrs. Piper, who was always foolish about music, her
neighbors said, came to her door, and Mrs. Post opposite, who was 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