father, meeting a disconsolate peasant going to an interview with _la Maîtresse_, would surreptitiously slide the needful sum into his hand! What would _maman_ have said had she known that the money so brightly and briskly paid to her had just come out of her husband's pocket! [Illustration: "My father, meeting a disconsolate peasant, ... would surreptitiously slide the needful sum into his hand"] I was always a great deal with papa at Loch-ar-Brugg. At first I used to walk with him,--when he did not take me on his horse,--trotting along beside him, my hand in his. Later on, when Tante Rose had given me a dear little pony, I rode with him, and he had secretly made for me, knowing that _maman_ would not approve, a very astonishing riding-costume. It had long, tightly fitting trousers, a short little jacket, like an Eton jacket, with a red-velvet collar,--red was my father's racing color,--and on my long golden curls a high silk hat. _Maman_ burst out laughing when she saw me thus attired and was too much amused to be displeased. She herself rode a great deal at this time, but it was to hunting- and shooting-parties, from which she would return with her "bag" hanging from a sort of little pole fixed to her saddle; and I remember that one day she brought a strange beast that none of us ever saw in Brittany again, a species of armadillo (_tatou_) that her horse had trodden upon and killed. It was at Loch-ar-Brugg, on one of those early walks with papa, that my first vivid recollection of a landscape seen as a beautiful picture comes to me. We had entered a deep lane where gnarled old trees interlaced their fingers overhead and looked, with their twisted trunks, like crouching men or beasts; and as we advanced, it became so dark and mysterious that I was very much frightened and hung to papa's hand, begging to be taken out. He pointed then before us, and far, far away I saw a tiny spot of light. "Don't be frightened, Sophie," he said; "we are going toward the sunlight." So I kept my eyes fixed on the widening spot, holding papa's hand very tightly in the haunted darkness; and when we suddenly emerged, we were on the brink of a great gorge, and beyond were mountains, and below us lay a tranquil, silver lake. I have never forgotten the strange, visionary impression, as of a beauty evoked from the darkness. Papa told me the story of the lake; it was called "le lac des Korrigans." The Korrigans are Breton fairies--fairies, I think, more melancholy than those of other lands, and with something sinister and _macabre_ in their supernatural activities. They danced upon the turf, it is true, in fairy-rings, but also, at night, they would unwind the linen from the dead in the churchyards and wash it in this lake. I felt the same fear and wonder on hearing this story that all my descendants have shown when they, in their turn, have come to hear it, and my little granddaughter, in passing near the lake with me, has often said,