.

JEAN JACQUES AWAKES FROM SLEEP.
The pensiveness of a summer evening on the Beau Cheval was like a veil hung over all the world.

While yet the sun was shining, there was the tremor of life in the sadness; but when the last glint of amethyst and gold died away behind Mont Violet, and the melancholy swish of the river against the osiered banks rose out of the windless dusk, all the region around Manor Cartier, with its cypresses, its firs, its beeches, and its elms, became gently triste.

Even the weather-vane on the Manor--the gold Cock of Beaugard, as it was called--did not move; and the stamping of a horse in the stable was like the thunderous knock of a traveller from Beyond.

The white mill and the grey manor stood out with ghostly vividness in the light of the rising moon.