They all had had "a way of their own," as their neighbours said, and had been provident on the whole.

Thus it was that when Jean Jacques' father died, and he came into his own, he found himself at thirty a man of substance, unmarried, who "could have had the pick of the province." This was what the Old Cure said in despair, when Jean Jacques did the incomprehensible thing, and married l'Espagnole, or "the Spanische," as the lady was always called in the English of the habitant.
When she came it was spring-time, and all the world was budding, exuding joy and hope, with the sun dancing over all.

It was the time between the sowing and the hay-time, and there was a feeling of alertness in everything that had life, while even the rocks and solid earth seemed to stir.

The air was filled with the long happy drone of the mill-stones as they ground the grain; and from farther away came the soft, stinging cry of a saw-mill.

Its keen buzzing complaint was harmonious with the grumble of the mill-stones, as though a supreme maker of music had tuned it.