Five minutes later she reached a mud hovel, whose roof, covered with clods of earth, leaned against the rock, and whose single window had sent forth that luminous ray. With anxious heart she decided to knock. The song ceased and a peasant opened the door—a woman of the same age as la Bretonne, but already faded and aged by work. Her bodice, torn in places, showed a rough and swarthy skin; her red hair escaped dishevelled from under a little cloth cap; her gray eyes regarded with amazement this stranger whose figure revealed something of loneliness.
“Well, good evening,” said she, raising higher the lamp which she held in her hand. “What do you want?”
“I can go no further,” murmured la Bretonne in a voice broken by a sob. “The town is far, and if you will lodge me for this night, you’ll render me a service. I have some money, and will pay you for your trouble.”
“Come in!” replied the other, after a moment of hesitation; then she continued in a tone more of curiosity than of suspicion, “Why didn’t you sleep at Auberive?”
“They were not willing to lodge me”—and, lowering her blue eyes, la Bretonne, seized with a scruple, added—“because, you see, I come from the Central Prison, and that does not give folks confidence.”
“Ah! Come in all the same. I, who never knew anything but poverty—I fear nothing! I have a conscience against turning a Christian from the door on a night like this. I’ll go make you a bed by strewing some heather.”
She proceeded to take from under a shed several bundles of dry sweet-heather and spread them in a corner before the chimney.
“You live here alone?” timidly asked la Bretonne.
“Yes, with my youngster, who is nearly seven years old. I earn our living by working in the woods.”
“Your man is dead?”