don't require much care."

"What do you dress them with?"

"The skins and stones that are left after pressing, are as good as anything."

"How much do the other trees average? There are no others near as large as this."

"About two gallons, take one year with another. The olives, however, come off after the grain harvest and the vintage are over, when there is not much else to do."

"Taking out the big tree, that wouldn't be more than fifteen dollars to an acre every other year, according to the number of trees you've got here, making no allowance for blight and bad years. Then you've no straw, nothing left but the oil, and that won't keep a great while; if you don't sell it, cattle can't eat it. I'd rather raise corn on a burn, where I can get a crop worth five times as much, that I can eat, sell, or that my cattle will fat on, will keep, and then have a crop of fodder left after all is done. Do they ever fail of a crop in the bearing years?"

"Yes, they sometimes blight and cast their fruit."

"I should call it rather small business to wait twelve years for a tree to bear at all, then twenty-five or thirty more for it to bear full; after all, to bear only every other year; sometimes blight, and then get only six dollars from the very largest trees. I shouldn't think they'd be worth the picking up."

"Not worth the picking up!" cried Gabriel in astonishment; "olives not worth picking up? They bring much money to the poor man."

"How much are a man's wages here?"

"Twenty sous (cents) a day, a woman's, ten, to work in the field."

"Why, in America a man working on the land in harvest gets six or nine francs, and found."

"Mon Dieu!" screamed Gabriel; "my wife, my children, hear that. Felix Bertault, my neighbor," he shouted to a peasant, who was a short distance away pruning vines, but, having heard the loud talking and witnessed the excited gestures caused by Walter's words, stood gaping with open mouth, and pruning-hook in hand.

"Step this way," said Gabriel, "and listen to what this young citizen is saying—that in America a laboring man gets nine francs, and his victuals besides."

The new comer expressing equal surprise, they talked and gesticulated with such fury, that Ned whispered to Walter,—

"Do you believe, Wal, that a Frenchman could talk if you tied his hands?"

"I guess not; Captain Rhines says they couldn't."

"What kind of trees are those with such crooked limbs?" asked Ned.

"Mulberries."

"The bark and body look some like a maple; what are they good for?"

"We use the leaves to feed silkworms."

"Silkworms," said Walter,—"the worms that make silk?"

"Yes; they can't live on anything but mulberry leaves."

"I want to see them make silk cloth and ribbons."

Gabriel replied by explaining to Walter that the silk-worm only spun the threads of silk (which were almost as fine as a spider's thread) to form a nest or cocoon (as they were called) for itself, and that a number of these minute threads must be put together to make what is called a thread of silk, which was then woven in looms, like any other yarn. As it came from the worm the silk was of two colors,—white and yellow; the other colors being given by dyeing.