And there in the hall of an old manor house—for we are bold in our peregrination, and assume all the invasive liberty, the freemasonry of curiosity—there, in the hall, we look on a large couch covered with dry grass, fern, and heather; and what doth it import? It is the _Lit de Veille_. On this bed, during the dreary evenings of winter, assemble the maidens and youths of the isles, and there they sit and huddle or recline often beneath festoons of autumnal or dried flowers, and beguile the hours with song and chat, and thrifty needle too, forming a group worthy of the pen of Boccaccio or the pencil of Watteau. HERM AND JEDTHOU Are lying along in a lake of molten gold, for so smiles the Channel in a calm evening of July. We are rowed across with sketch-book and wallet and hammer. Jedthou—_Grande Hogue_—as it was a famous beacon-hill or watch-tower, is not more than a mile long, offering fair rock subjects for the pencil, with its satellite blocks, _Fauconnière_, _Goubinier_, and _Crevisou_, for every block has a name. Herm is two miles in length, and is deeply quarried. Rabbits are burrowing among its rocks, and very small crustacea lie profusely around its shore. But there to the north is spread its carpet of sand and its shell beach, on which we may chance to gather very choice specimens: for instance, chiton, lepas, pholas, solen, tellen, chama, cypræa, voluta, haliotis, murex, and sponge and coral. It is a treasury of wrecked shells; probably among the granite there is a lack of lime for the construction of shell, so as to yield a profusion of living shell-fish. On such a night, and the currents calm, we may row across the Channel by moonlight to Port St. Pierre, as safely as we may float in a gondola across a lagune in Venice. The moon has lighted on our slumber, and at the earliest sunbeam we start from our couch, and we are looking on a long amethystine ridge just coming out of the morning haze, and thither are we bound. [Illustration: SERK] SARK: SERK—SERQUE—GERS—L’ISLE DU CERS—SARNICA. THIS exquisite little islet is lying before us, eight miles off; yet we may often gaze on it with longing eyes, even from the pier in Guernsey, with boats of all kinds, even the _Lady_ (cutter) _of Sark_ floating around us, without a hope of landing on its guarded rock. [Illustration: LE CREUX HAVEN, SERK]