"Now, lady, give thy hand to me. Not far the way--not far with thee. Right glad am I to do thee pleasure, And I have the leisure. But might I crave before we part, Oh, lady dear, oh, fair sweet heart-- Might I dare to beg the bliss Of one small kiss?" Saith she, "I can not say thee nay; Thy service can I ne'er repay. Take one, or even two, or three, If so it pleaseth thee. More gallant sir was never seen; Much honored have my kisses been." (This was the last I heard of her) "And now farewell, kind sir." "The devil," said Jules, "I perceive, dear sir, that you did not waste any time. I will wager, now, that you have been a terrible gallant in your younger days, and can count your victims by the score. It is so, eh, uncle mine? Do tell us some of your conquests." "Ugly, my dear boy," replied Uncle Raoul, with a gratified air, "ugly I certainly am, but very agreeable to the ladies." Jules was going on in the same vein, but seeing the way his sister was frowning at him, he bit his lips to keep from laughing, and repeated the last four lines: "'More gallant sir was never seen; Much honored have my kisses been' (This was the last I heard of her) 'And now farewell, kind sir.'" The young men continued the singing till they reached a clearing, where they saw a fire in the woods a little way from the road. "That is the witch of the manor," said Uncle Raoul. "I have always forgotten to ask why she was called the witch of the manor," said Archie. "Because she has established herself in this wood, which formerly belonged to the D'Haberville estate," said Uncle Raoul. "My brother exchanged it for a part of his present domain, in order to get nearer his mill at Trois Saumons." "Let us go and see poor old Marie," said Blanche. "When I was a child she used to bring me the first spring flowers and the first strawberries of the season." Uncle Raoul made some objections on account of the lateness of the hour, but he could refuse Blanche nothing, and presently the horses were hitched on the edge of the wood and our party were on their way to the witch's abode. The dwelling of old Marie by no means resembled that of the Cumæan sybil, or of any other sorceress, ancient or modern. It was a sort of patchwork hut, built of logs and unquarried stones, and carpeted within with many colored mosses. The roof was cone-shaped and covered with birch-bark and spruce branches. Old Marie was seated on a log at the door of her hut, cooking something in a frying-pan over a fire which was surrounded with stones to keep it from spreading. She paid no attention to her visitors, but maintained a conversation with some invisible being behind her. She kept waving first one hand and then the other behind her back, as if attempting to drive away this being, and the burden of her utterance was: "Avaunt, avaunt! it is you that bring the English here to eat up the French!"