Rousille rejoiced in it. She loved her native soil, faithful, true, generous soil, ever yielding its increase whether in rain or sunshine; where one would sleep one's last sleep to the sighing of the wind, under the shelter of the Cross. She loved nothing better than that horizon where every tiniest road was familiar to her, from the fence that ran along the first meadow of La Fromentière close at hand, to the paths on the embankment which must be traversed pole in hand to jump the dykes. "Four o'clock," she said to herself, "and he has not come back yet! What will father say?" She was beginning to grow uneasy, when, as she was gazing into the distance towards the pointed clock tower of Sallertaine, a voice startled her with: "Rousille!" On the rising path, the marshland behind him, standing looking at her in the light of the early morning, was Jean Nesmy. "I did not see you come," she said. He laughed, and with a proud air raised above his head a bundle of feathers, four plovers and a teal tied together. The next moment, resting the gun he carried against the inside of the wall, and flinging over the birds, he dropped down beside Rousille. "Rousille," he said, taking her hand under the arching apple-trees, "I have had luck! Four plovers and such fine ones! I had a couple of hours' sleep in the barn at La Pinçonnière, and if the farmer had not dragged me out this morning, I should have been late, I was so sound asleep. And you?" "I," replied Marie-Rose, as he sat opposite to her, "I am afraid. Father spoke to me so angrily last night--he had been talking to Mathurin in the courtyard--they must know." "Well, and if they do? I am doing nothing to anger them. I mean to win you by my work, to ask your father for your hand, and take you home as my wife." She looked at him, happy, despite her fears, at the determination she read in the lad's face. And reserving her thought which answered yes, she said without direct reply: "What is it like in your home?" "In my home," replied Jean Nesmy, contracting his eyes as if to fix the picture thus evoked, and looking over Rousille's head--"in my home is my mother, who is old and poor. The house she lives in is called the Château, as I have told you before, in the parish of Châtelliers; but it is not by any means a castle, Rousille, only two rooms, in which live six little Nesmys besides myself, who am the eldest ... it was, as you know, on account of our poverty and the number of children that I could only serve one year in the army." "Oh, yes, I remember," she answered, laughing, "that year seemed to me longer than any other." "I am the eldest; then come two girls, who are growing up. They are not dressed altogether like you, for instance...."