It was hardly sun-up on the following morning when the three children - Trézinie, Cami and the little negress, La Fringante - were filling big, flat Indian baskets from the abundance of brilliant flowers that studded the hill.
In their eagerness they had ascended the slope and penetrated deep into the forest without thought of M'sieur Michel or of his abode. Suddenly, in the dense wood, they came upon his hut - low, forbidding, seeming to scowl rebuke upon them for their intrusion.
La Fringante dropped her basket, and, with a cry, fled. Cami looked as if he wanted to do the same. But Trézinie, after the first tremor, saw that the ogre himself was away. The wooden shutter of the one window was closed. The door, so low that even a small man must have stooped to enter it, was secured with a chain. Absolute silence reigned, except for the whir of wings in the air, the fitful notes of a bird in the treetop.
"Can't you see it's nobody there!" cried Trézinie impatiently.
La Fringante, distracted between curiosity and terror, had crept cautiously back again. Then they all peeped through the wide chinks between the logs of which the cabin was built.
M'sieur Michel had evidently begun the construction of his house by felling a huge tree, whose remaining stump stood in the centre of the hut, and served him as a table. This primitive table was worn smooth by twenty-five years of use. Upon it were such humble utensils as the man required. Everything within the hovel, the sleeping bunk, the one seat, were as rude as a savage would have fashioned them.
