The Peasant and the Prince | Page 2

a starving man ventured to sell salt for a loaf of bread, he was subject to severe punishment. Now, Marie's brothers were just ten and nine years old; and the hardships of the family had been increased since these poor boys became the cause of their father having to buy their portion of salt. Just able before to get on, the family were, by this additional tax, brought down to a state of want; and Marie begged her father not to say a word about giving her a single penny, to help her marriage with Charles; for she saw well that he would never be able to do it. Her poor father could not contradict her.
As he could do nothing for her, he did not like to oppose the plan which the young people were found at length to have talked over. Charles knew that, in cases of great poverty, huts had been built in a wood, or caves scooped out in the side of the chalk-hills, where people lived who could not hire, or buy, or build a house. He told Marie that he would build a hut in the wood, and that he would then marry, and live or starve together, since there was no use in waiting longer, seeing, as they did, that their prospect never could improve. The lord of the chateau would not object, he was sure; as the lords always got out of their peasantry much more service than would pay for the stakes and twigs of a hut in the wood. Marie was easily persuaded, though her mother wept at the idea of the cold of winter, and the damps of spring, and the ague of autumn, that she knew caused terrible suffering to the poor, who lived in the woods and caves. The good woman tried to console herself with taking great care of a pair of fowls, which were to be her wedding present to her daughter.
So here was Charles, this day at work in the wood, with Marie's brothers to help him. One well-wisher had lent him an axe, and another a mallet; and he cut and drove stakes, while Robin and Marc collected twigs from the brushwood, moss from the roots of trees, and rushes from the margin of the ponds. They had chosen such a spot as they thought Marie would like; for she would not be persuaded to come and choose for herself. She only dropped that the hut ought to stand above the fogs of the ponds; and she left the rest to Charles. Charles had found a little green recess among the trees, on a slightly rising ground; Robin and Marc declared for it at once, when he showed them how he could cut away the brushwood, so as to leave a pathway to the pond, and a pretty view of it when it gleamed in the sun, as it did this afternoon. The boys clapped their hands: and Charles, feeling a glow at his heart, as if Marie and he were going to be happy at last, began to sing, as he drove his corner-stakes.
"You will have a pleasant life of it here in the woods," said Robin, bringing as large a load of rushes as his two arms would hold. "I should like to live here, as you are going to do. You have only to look into that pond for three minutes to see more fine fish than you will want for a month after."
"The fish will do us no good," said Charles. "If a fishbone is found within a furlong of where I live (here where nobody else lives), off I am marched straight to jail. And the Count's bailiff has surprisingly sharp eyes."
"I would bury the fishbones in the night-time," observed Marc, coming up with a faggot of twigs; "but I would have the fish, if I wanted them, for all the bailiff."
"If you go to yonder jail," said Charles, "and ask the folk how they came there, some of them will tell you it was trying to get fish, when they were hungry, for all the bailiff. Or, if not fish, something else from the woods and warrens--a rabbit, perhaps, or a couple of doves."
"I hope the bailiff won't put me into jail for my rabbits," said Marc, "for I have not eaten them. I have a pretty litter of rabbits for Marie; and you will help me to make a hutch for them, behind the house. I should say hereabouts."
"Do you know no better than that?" said Charles. "Your father could have told you in a minute, if you had asked him, that it is against the law for anybody to keep rabbits and pigeons except the nobles."
"Pigeons!" exclaimed Robin. "Why, that is too bad! I have the