The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (2.1894)

Poor Cousin Louis

By Ella D'Arcy

There Stands in the Islands a house known as "Les Calais."
It has stood there already some three hundred years, and
do judge from its stout walls and weather-tight appearance,
promises to stand some three hundred more. Built of brown
home-quarried stone, with solid stone chimney-stacks and roof
of red tiles, its door is set in the centre beneath a semi-circular
arch of dressed granite, on the keystone of which is deeply cut
the date of construction :

J V N I

1603

Above the date straggle the letters, L G M M, initials of the
forgotten names of the builder of the house and of the woman
he married. In the summer weather of 1603 that inscription
was cut, and the man and woman doubtless read it with pride and
pleasure as they stood looking up at their fine new homestead.
They believed it would carry their names down to posterity
when they themselves should be gone ; yet there stand the
initials to-day, while the personalities they represent are as lost to
memory as are the builders' graves.

At the momen.t when this little sketch opens, Les Calais had

belonged