The house in which Edward Langdale found himself on waking the next morning was evidently one of those belonging to what they call in France the _cultivateurs propriétaires_, and in the Marais the _cabaniers_, or farmers possessing the freehold of the land they till. He had been placed in a little room not larger than the abbey cell; but his bed had been most comfortable, and he might have slept late had not the youth whom they had found in the boat the night before, and who was a son of the good dame of the house, come in to ask how he had rested and to invite him to go to the farther side of the farm to shoot some ducks for breakfast. Edward did not neglect the opportunity, thinking that he might obtain some important information by the way; but the youth, though perfectly and even profusely communicative, could tell him little of any thing beyond the precincts of the _Marais_, because he knew little. They had heard, he said, from his cousin George, the night before, that at some hour in that night a young gentleman and lady who had run away to get married would come to their house for shelter and protection, which he bespoke for them particularly; and the good soldier had added many an injunction to secrecy and discretion. He had also asked that a boat might be sent with their neighbor Bonnet to the abbey wharf, with directions to take off the young gentleman and lady without saying a word. This was the amount of young Brin's foreign intelligence,--for such to him it was; and as soon as it was given he proceeded to describe and eulogize his mother's farm, which he had not quitted more than two or three times in his life, and which he seemed to think both the richest and most beautiful spot of earth. Rich indeed it was; but to explain its sort of riches I must have recourse to that old author whom I have already quoted. I must premise, however, that the spot on which Edward Langdale now found himself was just at the edge of what are called the dried marshes, where they join on to the _marais mouillans_, which, at the time I write of, were much more extensive than at present. The farm, then, of La Caponnière comprised a portion of both; and, as the _marais desséchés_ have been already described from the account of an eye-witness, I may be permitted a word or two from the same source in regard to the _marais mouillans_. "All these marshes," says my author, "are not equally inundated; and, in consequence, all parts are not equally sterile. The highest parts [of the _marais mouillans_] are under water from the middle of October to the middle of June, and sometimes later. The lower parts never dry; and, to make something of them, they have been cut by innumerable canals, all communicating, and only separated from each other by earth-banks of from twelve to fifteen feet in width, piled up from the excavated earth of the canals. These earth-banks are of prodigious fertility, many of them planted with