They lived in a typical old Guernsey country farm-house, with old walls of grey granite, a thatched roof, small diamond-paned windows, and arched doorways, with its half-door or “hecq.” Inside they are all built much on the same pattern. The front door opens into an entrance hall, on one side of which is the “living” room of the house,--parlour and kitchen in one,--with a huge chimney, sometimes adorned with quaint old carvings, as at “Les Fontaines,” in the Castel parish, a low hearth stone, a smouldering vraic fire, and “trepied.” Still inside its enclosure are stone seats, a large bread oven built in the thickness of the wall, and a hook whereon to hang the “crâset” lamp. A rack hangs from the low oak ceiling, diversified by its huge centre beam or “poûtre.” On this is kept the bacon, and the grease for the “soupe à la graisse,” or “de cabôche.” A “jonquière,” which is an oblong wooden frame about three feet from the ground, is placed in a corner near the fire and if possible near a window, and is used as a sofa by the family. Formerly it was stuffed with rushes, whence its name. Peastraw or dried fern, covered with green baize, now take their place, and it is frequently called the “green bed.” A long table and forms, with an eight-day clock by Naftel, Lenfestey, or Blondel, and an old carved chest, which contained the bride’s dower of linen in bygone times, is the ordinary furniture of the rooms, whose principal ornament consists of some of the beautiful china brought by sailor sons from the far East or Holland. The floors boast for carpet nothing but earth covered with clean sand, daily renewed. On the other side of the passage is the best bedroom, with its four poster, and some still have on their mantel-pieces the old tinder boxes, with their flint and steel, and separate compartments for the burnt rag or tinder. Beyond are the winding stone steps, built in a curve beyond the straight wall of the house, and above are more bedrooms, or, in smaller houses, simply a “ch’nas” or loft. His wife also was never idle. She was one of the shrewd, industrious, and frugal race, who were content with a diet of bacon and cabbage, barley-bread and cider, and who are, alas, disappearing fast. Night after night, when her husband had returned home, and, tired out with the fatigues of the day, had gone to rest and was sound asleep, she would sit up till a late hour on the “jonquière” and ply her spinning wheel by the dim light of the “crâset.”