"Ah! so the farmer’s wife is dead too?"
"Yes, monsieur; she died nigh onto three years ago, and left her farm and cows and goats, everything she had, in fact, to little Isaure, who was fifteen years old then."
"And did this girl continue to live near the White House?"
"Bless my soul! yes, monsieur! And not a bit more scared than if she was in the middle of the village; and yet we noticed that the noises and lights came much oftener in the abandoned house after André’s widow’s death. Before that, we often went six months without hearing a sound; but now there ain’t hardly ever two months goes by without someone being in that house at night, for sure. And it wa’n’t long ago that Jacques, who went by the house before sunset and saw that all the shutters was shut, went by again the next day just as it was light, and saw two shutters open on the first floor! They didn’t come open of themselves, you know. The next night they was shut again. And that little girl, who ain’t eighteen years old yet, if I’m right, lives all alone close by a fearful place like that! a place we men don’t dare to pass after dark!—Oh! that’s mighty queer, I tell you!—So the old men of the neighborhood, and I’m one of ’em, we put this and that together, and we come to this conclusion: that little girl ain’t no common girl!"
"What’s that? do you think that she’s a boy?" asked Alfred with a laugh.
"Nay, nay, monsieur; that ain’t it at all. But you see I took notice that it was just about the time she come to André’s that these strange things that have been happening begun. The sale of the White House to a man as we never see again; the house always locked up, but with lights in it sometimes—and then a sort of black ghost that’s been seen prowling round the farm!"
"Ah! there’s a ghost, is there?" asked Edouard.
"A ghost!" echoed Robineau, who during the old man’s narrative had gradually moved his bench so far that he was now in the centre of the circle formed by the audience.
"Yes, messieurs, yes, there’s a ghost—or an imp—that shows himself in the valley now and then."
"Have you seen it, excellent old man?"