Outside one of the park gates there was a little house. In the prosperous days of the La Sarthe it had been the land steward's-but when there was no longer any land to steward it had gone with the rest, and for several years had been uninhabited. One day in early spring Halcyone saw smoke coming out of the chimney. This was too interesting a fact not to be investigated; she resented it, too-because a hole in the park paling had often let her into the garden and there was a particularly fine apple tree there whose fruit she had yearly enjoyed.