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PART I . — SIEUR CLUBIN BOOK I THE HISTORY OF A BAD REPUTATION I A WORD WRITTEN ON A WHITE PAGE Christmas Day in the year 182 - was somewhat remarkable in the island of Guernsey . Snow fell on that day . In the Channel Islands a frosty winter is uncommon , and a fall of snow is an event . On that Christmas morning , the road which skirts the seashore from St . Peter’s Port to the Vale was clothed in white . From midnight till the break of day the snow had been falling . Towards nine o’clock , a little after the rising of the wintry sun , as it was too early yet for the Church of England folks to go to St . Sampson’s , or for the Wesleyans to repair to Eldad Chapel , the road was almost deserted . Throughout that portion of the highway which separates the first from the second tower , only three foot - passengers could be seen . These were a child , a man , and a woman . Walking at a distance from each other , these wayfarers had no visible connection . The child , a boy of about eight years old , had stopped , and was looking curiously at the wintry scene . The man walked behind the woman , at a distance of about a hundred paces . Like her he was coming from the direction of the church of St . Sampson . The appearance of the man , who was still young , was something between that of a workman and a sailor . He wore his working - day clothes — a kind of Guernsey shirt of coarse brown stuff , and trousers partly concealed by tarpaulin leggings — a costume which seemed to indicate that , notwithstanding the holy day , he was going to no place of worship . His heavy shoes of rough leather , with their soles covered with large nails , left upon the snow , as he walked , a print more like that of a prison lock than the foot of a man . The woman , on the contrary , was evidently dressed for church . She wore a large mantle of black silk , wadded , under which she had coquettishly adjusted a dress of Irish poplin , trimmed alternately with white and pink ; but for her red stockings , she might have been taken for a Parisian . She walked on with a light and free step , so little suggestive of the burden of life that it might easily be seen that she was young . Her movements possessed that subtle grace which indicates the most delicate of all transitions — that soft intermingling , as it were , of two twilights — the passage from the condition of a child to that of womanhood . The man seemed to take no heed of her . Suddenly , near a group of oaks at the corner of a field , and at the spot called the Basses Maisons , she turned , and the movement seemed to attract the attention of the man . She stopped , seemed to reflect a moment , then stooped , and the man fancied that he could discern that she was tracing with her finger some letters in the snow . Then she rose again , went on her way at a quicker pace , turned once more , this time smiling , and disappeared to the left of the roadway , by the footpath under the hedges which leads to the Ivy Castle . When she had turned for the second time , the man had recognised her as Déruchette , a charming girl of that neighbourhood .
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