If she smiled constantly
it was to please others. By nature she was serious.
Of course all the young men of the district paid court to her, more
on account of her ecus than her pretty ways. At last she made a choice
which scandalized the community.
On the opposite bank of the Morelle lived a tall youth named Dominique
Penquer. He did not belong to Rocreuse. Ten years before he had arrived
from Belgium as the heir of his uncle, who had left him a small property
upon the very border of the forest of Gagny, just opposite the mill, a
few gunshots distant. He had come to sell this property, he said, and
return home. But the district charmed him, it appeared, for he did
not quit it. He was seen cultivating his little field, gathering a few
vegetables upon which he subsisted. He fished and hunted; many times
the forest guards nearly caught him and were on the point of drawing up
proces-verbaux against him. This free existence, the resources of
which the peasants could not clearly discover, at length gave him a bad
reputation. He was vaguely styled a poacher. At any rate, he was lazy,
for he was often found asleep on the grass when he should have been at
work. The hut he inhabited beneath the last trees on the edge of the
forest did not seem at all like the dwelling of an honest young fellow.
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