The shadow of the sword

In issuing a new edition of "The Shadow of the Sword," my publishers have asked me to introduce it with a few lines of preface. This I do the more willingly, as it gives me an opportunity of thanking the Critics of the Newspaper Press of England for the generous way in which they have received this and my subsequent attempts in fiction.

"The Shadow of the Sword" is a polemic against War, against the institution which, above all others, is the disgrace and scourge of modern civilization. But what am I saying? I write this preface in the near neighbourhood of Shoeburyness, where our English artillerymen have been recently experimenting, at the expense of the public pocket and of the town windows, with the new 80-ton gun. I forget exactly how many pounds sterling every discharge of this cheerful invention costs the people of England, or how much they are mulcted for the experimental cannonade which takes place daily at Shoeburyness and other havens of unrest, made hideous for us by a quasi-military government. And I have before me as I write the beautiful wall-almanack for 1883, owned by the pious proprietors of a newspaper called the Christian Herald, and containing, together with portraits of leading divines, a picture of the hero of Egypt, Sir Garnet Wolseley. Other signs in every land convince me of the perfect condition of our boasted Christian civilization. It is cheering also to reflect that even Liberals have been impelled to adopt the programme of imperialism, and stimulate the enthusiasm of Egyptian bondholders by a glorious victory over helpless fellow-creatures in the East. The Bible, the sword, and the ambulance waggon are triumphant, and the religion of Christ prevails. Only one step further, surely, would be needed, to reach the Millennium; and that step would be taken if our rulers would only listen to the voice of Christian opinion, expressed in so many comfortable circles, and cicatrize the old wounds of refractory Ireland--with powder and shot!

But this subject, after all, is too sad a one to be sarcastic upon. I am face to face with the horrible truth that War is still a reality, and will be a reality so long as it is tolerated, under any circumstances or under any name, by the preachers of Christianity--among which preachers I include, as by far the most powerful, the members of the fourth estate. In the nineteenth century, War should be simply impossible. That it is possible is a proof of the failure of the Christian religion, so far, to enfranchise the world.

I have cast "The Shadow of the Sword" as a crumb upon the waters. It may do some good; it cannot by any possibility do any harm. The idea has been described as transcendental, like (to compare small things with great) the sublime ideas of the Founder of Christianity. It has been accepted, and praised without stint, by many, as an attack on Despotism in the person of the first Napoleon. I trust, however, that it is something more--an attack on War in the abstract, as the deadliest and most loathsome representation of the retrograde movement of modern political thought. Once more, "the time grows near the birth of Christ." The Holy Name will be murmured from a thousand pulpits, echoed by a million hearts; but Christ still sleeps, despite His promise to arise, and sad-eyed Science is telling us that He will never arise at all. Blocking the mouth of the Sepulchre lies now, instead of the old stone, a monstrous implement--the GATLING GUN!

ROBERT BUCHANAN.

SOUTHEND, Dec. 21 1882

"Rohan, Rohan! Can you not hear me call? It is time to go. Come, come! It frightens me to look down at you. Will you not come up now, Rohan?"

The voice that cries is lost in the ocean-sound that fills the blue void beneath; it fades away far under, amid a confused murmur of wings, a busy chattering of innumerable little newborn mouths; and while the speaker, drawing dizzily back, feels the ground rise up beneath her feet and the cliffs prepare to turn over like a great wheel, a human cry comes upward, clear yet faint, like a voice from the sea that washes on the weedy reefs of blood-red granite a thousand feet below.

The sun is sinking far away across the waters, sinking with a last golden gleam amid the mysterious Hesperides of the silent air, and his blinding light comes slant across the glassy calm till it strikes on the scarred and storm-rent faces of these Breton crags, illuminating and vivifying every nook and cranny of the cliffs beneath, burning on the summits and brightening their natural red to the vivid crimson of dripping blood, changing the coarse grass and yellow starwort into threads of emerald and glimmering stars, burning in a golden mist around the yellow flowers of the overhanging broom, and striking with fiercest ray on one naked rock of solid stone which juts out like a huge horn over the brink of the abyss, and around which a strong rope is noosed and firmly knotted.

Close to this horn of rock, in the full glory of the sunset light, stands a young girl, calling aloud to one who swings unseen below.

The sunlight flashes full into her face and blinds her, while the soft breath of the sea kisses the lids of her dazzled eyes.

Judged by her sun-tanned skin, she might be the daughter of some gipsy tribe. But such dark features as hers are common among the Celtic women of the Breton coast; and her large eyes are not gipsy-black, but ethereal grey--that mystic colour which can be soft as heaven with joy and love, but dark as death with jealousy and wrath; and, indeed, to one who gazes long into such eyes as these, there are revealed strange depths of passion, and self-control, and pride. The girl is tall and shapely, somewhat slight of figure, small-handed, small-footed; so that, were her cheek a little less rosy, her hands a little whiter, and her step a little less elastic, she might be a lady born.

It is just eighteen years to-day since that red blustering morning when her father, running into port with the biggest haul of fish on record that season in the little fishing village, found that the Holy Virgin, after giving him four strong sons had at last deposited in his marriage bed a maid-child, long prayed for, come at last; and the maid's face is still beautiful with the unthinking innocence of childhood. Mark the pretty, almost petulant mouth, with the delicious underlip--

"Some bee hath stung it newly!"

Woman she is, yet still a child; and surely the sun, that touches this moment nearly every maiden cheek in every village for a hundred miles along this stormy coast, shines upon no sweeter thing.

Like Queen Bertha of old she bears in her hand a distaff, but not even a queen's dress, however fair, could suit her better than the severe yet picturesque garb of the Breton peasant girl--the modest white coif, the blue gown brightly bordered with red, the pretty apron enwrought with flowers in coloured thread, the neat bodice adorned with a rosary and medal of Our Lady; and finally, the curious sabots, or wooden shoes.

"Rohan, Rohan!"

A clear bird-like voice, but it is lost in the murmur of the blue void below.

The girl puts down her distaff beside a pair of sabots and a broad felt hat which lie already on one of the blocks of stone; then, placing herself flat upon her face close to the very edge of the cliff, and clasping with one hand the rope which is suspended from the horn of rock close to her, she peers downward.

Half-way down the precipice a figure, conscious of her touch upon the rope, by which he is partially suspended, turns up to her a shining face, and smiles.

She sees for a minute the form that hovers beneath her in mid-air, surrounded by a flying cloud of ocean birds--she marks the white beach far below her, and the red stains of the weedy pools above the tide, and the cream-white edge of the glassy moveless sea--she feels the sun shining, the rocks gleaming, for a little space;--then her head goes round, and she closes her eyes with a little cry. A clear ringing laugh floats up to her and reassures her. She plucks up heart and gazes once again.

What a depth! She turns dizzy anew as she looks into it, but presently the brain-wave passes away, and her head grows calm. She sees all now distinct and clear, but her eyes rest on one picture only!--not on the crimson reefs and granite rocks amidst which the placid ocean creeps, through fretwork of tangled dulse and huge crimson water-ferns; not on the solitary Needle of Gurlan, an enormous monolith of chalk and stone, standing several furlongs out in the sea, with the waves washing eternally round its base and a cloud of sea-fowl hovering ever about its crest; not on the lonely specks of rock, where the great black-backed gulls, dwarfed by distance to the size of white moths, sit gazing at the sunset, weary of a long day's fishing; not on the long line of green cormorants that are flapping drowsily home to roost across waters tinted purple and mother-of-pearl; not on the seals that swim in the dim green coves far beneath; not on the solitary red-sailed fishing boat that drifts along with the ebb a mile out to sea. All these she sees for a moment as in a magician's glass; all these vanish, and leave one vision remaining--the agile and intrepid figure just under her, treading the perpendicular crags like any goat, swinging almost out into mid-air as from time to time he bears his weight upon the rope, and moving lightly hither and thither, with feet and hands alike busy, the latter hunting for sea-birds' eggs.

Thick as foam-flakes around his head float the little terns; past him, swift as cannon-balls, the puffins whizz from their burrows (for the comic little sea-parrot bores the earth like a rabbit, before she lays her eggs in it like a bird), and sailing swiftly for a hundred yards, wheel, and come back, past the intruder's ears again, to their burrows once more; round and round, in a slow circle above his head, a great cormorant--of the black, not the green species--sails silently and perpetually, uttering no sound; and facing him, snowing the surface of the cliffs, sit the innumerable birds, with their millions of little eyes on his. The puffins on the green earthy spots, peering out with vari-coloured bills; the guillemots in earth and rock alike, wherever they can find a spot to rest an egg; the little dove-like tern; male and female, sitting like love-birds beak to beak, on the tiny little coignes of vantage on the solid rocks below the climber's feet. Of the numberless birds which surround him on every side, few take the trouble to stir, though those few make a perfect snow around him; but the air is full of a twittering and a trembling, and a chattering and rustling, which would drive a less experienced cragsman crazy on the spot. As he slips nimbly among them, they grumble a little in their bird fashion; that is all. Occasionally an infuriated would-be mother, robbed of her egg, makes belief to fly at his face, but quails at the first movement of his fowler's staff; and now and then an angry puffin, as his hand slips into her hole, clings to his finger like a parrot, is drawn out a ruffled wrath of feathers, and is flung shrieking away into the air.

The fowler's feet are naked--so his toes sometimes suffer from a random bite or peck, but his only answer is a merry laugh. He flits about as if completely unconscious of danger, or if conscious, as if the peril of the sport made it exhilarating tenfold.

It is exciting to see him moving about in his joyous strength amid the dizzy void, with the sunset burning on his figure, the sea sparkling beneath his feet. His head is bare; his hair, of perfect golden hue, floats to his shoulders, and is ever and anon blown into his face, but with a toss of his head he flings it behind him. The head is that of a lion; the throat, the chin, leonine; and the eyes, even when they sparkle as now, have the strange, far-away, visionary look of the king of animals. His figure, agile as it is, is herculean; for is he not a Gwenfern, and when, since the memory of a man, did a Gwenfern ever stand less than six feet in his sabots? Stripped of his raiment and turned to stone, he might stand for Heracles--so large of mould is he, so mighty of limb. But even in his present garb--the peasant dress of dark blue, shirt open at the throat, gaily-coloured sash, and trousers fastened at the knee with a knot of scarlet ribbon--he looks sufficiently herculean.

He plies his trade. Secured to his waist hangs a net of dark earth-coloured eggs, and it is nearly full.

The sunset deepens, its flashes grow more blinding as they strike on the reddened cliff but the fowler lifts up his eyes in the light, and sees the dark face of the maiden shining down upon him through the snow of birds.

"Rohan, Rohan!" she cries again.

He waves his fowler's staff and smiles, preparing to ascend.

"I am coming, Marcelle!" he calls.

And through the flying snow he slowly comes, till it is no longer snow around his head, but snow around his feet. Partly aided by the rope, partly by the hook of his fowler's staff, he clings with hands and feet, creeps from ledge to ledge, crawling steadily upward. Sometimes the loose conglomerate crumbles in his hands or beneath his feet, and he swings with his whole weight upon the rope; then for a moment his colour goes, from excitement, not fear, and his breath comes quickly. No dizziness with him! his calm blue eyes look upward and downward with equal unconcern, and he knows each footstep of his way. Slowly, almost laboriously, he seems to move, yet his progress is far more rapid than it appears to the eye, and in a few minutes he has drawn himself up the overhanging summit of the crag, reached the top, gripped the horn of rock with hands and knees, and swung himself on to the greensward, close to the girl's side.

All the prospect above the cliffs opens suddenly on his sight. The cloudy east is stained with deep crimson bars, against which the grassy hills, and fresh-ploughed fields, and the squares of trees whose foliage hides the crowning farms, stand out in distinct and beautiful lines.

But all he sees for the moment is the one dark face, and the bright eyes that look lovingly into his.

"Why will you be so daring, Rohan?" she inquires in a soft Breton patois. "If the rope should break, if the knot should slip, if you should grow faint! Gildas and Hoël both say you are foolish. St. Gurlan's Craig is not fit for a man to climb!"

To creep where foot of man has never crept before, to crawl on the great cliffs where even the goats and sheep are seldom seen, to know the secret places as they are known to the hawk and the raven and the black buzzard of the crags, this is the joy and glory of the man's life--this is the rapture that he shares with the winged, the swimming, and the creeping things. He swims like a fish, he crawls like a fly, and his joy would be complete if he could soar like a bird! His animal enjoyment, meantime, is perfect. Not the peregrine, wheeling in still circles round the topmost crags, moves with more natural splendour on its way.

All the peasants and fishers of Kromlaix are cragsmen too, but none possess his cool sublimity of daring. Rohan Gwenfern will walk almost erect where no other fowler, however experienced, would creep on hands and knees. In the course of his lifelong perils he has had ugly falls, which have only stimulated him to fresh exploits.

He began, when a mere child, by herding sheep and goats among these very crags, and making the lonely caverns ring with his little goatherd's horn. By degrees he familiarized himself with every feature of the storm-rent terrible coast; so that even when he grew up towards manhood, and joined his fellows in fishing expeditions far out at sea, he still retained his early passion for the crags and cliffs. While others were lounging on the beach or at the door of the calozes, while these were drinking in the cabaret and those were idling among their nets, Rohan was walking in some vast cathedral not made with hands, or penetrating like a spectre, torch in hand, into the pitch-black cavern where the seal was suckling her young, or swimming naked out to the cormorant's roost on the base of the Needle of Gurlan.

Even in wildest winter, when for days together the cormorants sat on the ledges of the cliffs and gazed despairingly at the sea, starving, afraid to stir a feather lest the mighty winds should dash them to pieces against the stones; when the mountains of foam shook the rocks to their foundation; when the earthquakes of ocean were busy, and crag after crag loosened, crumbled, and swept like an avalanche down to the sea,--even in the maddest storms of nature's maddest season, Rohan was abroad,--not the great herring-gull being more constant a mover along the black water-mark than he.

Hence there had arisen in him, day by day and year by year, that terrible and stolid love for Water which wise critics and dwellers in towns believe to be the special and sole prerogative of the poets, particularly of Lord Byron, and which, when described as an attribute of a Breton peasant or a Connaught "boy," they refer to the abysses of sentimentality. Does a street-girl love the street, or a ploughman love the fields, or a sailor love the ship that sails him up and down the world? Even so, but with an infinitely deeper passion, did Rohan love the sea. It is no exaggeration to say that even a few miles inland he would have been heartily miserable. And that he should love the sea as he did, not with a sentimental emotion, not with any idea of romancing or attitudinizing, but with a vital and natural love, part of the very beatings of his heart, was only just. He was its foster-child.

Weird and thrilling superstitions are still afloat on this wild coast; grotesque and awful legend; many of them full of deep faith and pathetic beauty, still pass from mouth to mouth; but among them there is one which is something more than a mere legend, something more than a fireside dream. It tells of the sore straits and perils on the lonely seas during "the great fishing," and how, one summer night, a fisher, Raoul Gwenfern, took with him to sea his little golden-haired child. That very night, blowing the trumpets of wrath and death, Euroclydon arose. Lost, shrieking, terror-stricken, the fleet of boats drifted before the wind in the terrible mountainous sea; and at last, when all hope had fled, the crew of this one lugger knelt down together in the darkness for the last time--knelt as they had often done side by side in the little chapel on the cliff; and invoked the succour of Our Blessed Lady of Safety;--and no less than the others prayed the little child, shivering and holding his father's hand. And at last, amid all the darkness of the tempest and the roaring of the sea, there dawned a solemn shining, which for a moment stilled the palpitating waters around the vessel; and that one innocent child on board, he and none other beside, saw with his mortal eyes, amid that miraculous light, and floating upon the waters--all spangled and silver as she stands, an image, up there in the little chapel of Notre Dame de la Garde--the face and form of the Mother of God!

Be that as it may, the storm presently abated, and the fleet was saved; but when the light dawned, and the fishers on board the lugger came to their senses again they missed one man. The child cried "Father!" but no father answered; he had been washed over in the darkness, and his footprints in the land of men were never seen more. It was then that the child, wailing for his beloved parent, told what he had seen upon the waters in that hour of prayer. Whether it was a real vision, or a child's dream, or a flash of memory illuminating the image he had often seen and thought so lovely, who can tell? But that day he ran and flung himself into his mother's arms, an orphan child; and from that day forth he had no father but the Sea.

His mother, a poor widow now, dwelt in a stone cottage just outside the village, and under the shelter of a hollow in the crag. Her son, the only child of her old age, the child of her prayers and tears, obtained by the special intercession of the Virgin and her cousin St. Elizabeth, grew fairer and fairer as he approached manhood, and ever on his face there dwelt a brightness which the mother, in her secret heart, deemed due to that celestial vision.

Now, tales of wonder travel, and in due course the legend travelled to the priest; and the priest came and saw the child, and (being a little bit of a phrenologist) examined his head and his bumps, and saw the shining of his fair face with no ordinary pleasure. It is not every day that the good God performs a miracle, and this opportunity was too fine a one to be lost. So the curé, a remarkable man in his way, and one of considerable learning, then and there made the widow a proposition which caused her to weep for joy, and cry that St. Elizabeth was her friend indeed. It was this--that Rohan should be trained in holy knowledge, and in due season become a priest of God. Of course the offer was joyfully accepted, and Rohan was taken from the solitary crags, where he had been herding goats to eke out the miserable pittance that his mother earned, to live in the house of the priest. For a time the change was pleasing, and Rohan was taught to read and write, and to construe a little Latin, and to know a word or two of Greek; he was, moreover, a willing child, and he would get up without a murmur on the darkest and coldest winter's morning to serve the curé's mass. He evinced, on the other hand, an altogether stupendous capacity for idleness and play. As he grew older his inclinations grew more irrepressible, and he would slip off in the fishing boats that were going out to sea, or run away for a long day's ramble among the crags, or spend the summer afternoon on the shore, alternately bathing naked and wading for shrimps and prawns. When most wanted he was often not to be found. One day he was carried home with his collar-bone broken, after having in vain attempted to take the nest of an indignant raven. Twice or thrice he was nearly drowned.

This might have been tolerated, though not for long; but presently it was discovered that Master Rohan had a way of asking questions which were highly puzzling to the priest. It was still Revolution time. Though the kingdom was an Empire, and though the terrible ideas of '93 had scarcely reached Kromlaix, the atmosphere was full of strange thoughts. The little acolyte began secretly to indulge in a course of secular reading; the little eyes opened, the little tongue prattled; and the good priest discovered, to his disgust, that the child was too clever.

When the time came for the boy, in the natural course of things, to be removed from the village, Rohan revolted utterly. He had made up his mind, he said, and he would never become a priest!

That was a bitter blow for the mother, and for a space her heart was hard against the boy; but the priest, to her astonishment, sided with the revolter.

"Come, mother!" he said, nodding his big head till his great hollow cheeks trembled with his earnestness. "After all, it is ill to force a lad's inclination. The life of a priest is a hard one, see you, at the best. The priesthood is well enough, but there are better ways of serving the good God."

Rohan's heart rejoiced and the widow cried, "Better ways!--ah, no, m'sieu le curé."

"But yes," persisted his reverence. "God's will is best of all; and better even a good ropemaker than a bad priest!" It was settled at last, and the boy returned to his home. The truth is, the priest was glad to be rid of his bargain. He saw that Rohan was not the stuff that holy men are made of, and that, sooner or later, he would be inventing a heresy or adoring a woman. He did not relinquish his charge without a sigh, for that business of the miraculous vision, if consummated by a life of exemplary piety, would have been a fine feather in the Church's cap. He soon found a more fitting attendant, however, and his former annoyances and disappointments were forgotten.

Meantime, Rohan returned to his old haunts with the rapture of a prisoned bird set free. He soon persuaded his mother that it was all arranged for the best; for would he not, instead of being taken away as a priest must be, remain with her for ever, and supply his father's place, and be a comfort to her old age? There were two sorts of lives that he detested with all his heart, and in either of these lives he would be lost to home and to her. He would never become a Priest, because he liked not the life, and because (he naïvely thought to himself) he could never marry his little cousin Marcelle! He could never become a Soldier (God and all the saints be praised for that!), because he was a widow's only son.

But it was the year 1813, the "soote spring season" of that year, and the great Emperor, after having successfully allayed the fear of invasion which had filled all France ever since his disastrous return from Moscow, was preparing a grand coup by which all his enemies were utterly to be annihilated. There were strange murmurs afloat, but nothing definite was yet known. The air was full of that awful silence which precedes thunderstorm and earthquake.

Down here at Kromlaix, however, down here in the loneliest and saddest corner of the Breton coast, the sun shone and the sea sparkled as if Moscow had never been, as if becatombs of French dead were not lying bleaching amid the Russian snows, as if martyred France had never in her secret heart shrieked out a curse upon the Avatar. The sounds of war had echoed far away, but Rohan had heeded them little. Happiness is uniformly selfish, and Rohan was happy. Life was sweet to him. It was a blessed thing to breathe, to be, to remain free; to raise his face to the sun, to mark the cliffs and caves, to watch the passing sails, or the blue smoke curling from the chimneys of the little fishing village; to listen to the plump curé, "fatter than his cure;" to hear the strange stories of bivouac and battle-field told by the old Bonapartist burnpowder, his uncle; to hear Alain or Jannick play wild tunes on the biniou, or bagpipe; to hunt the nests of gulls and seapies; to go out on calm nights with his comrades and net the shining shoals of herring: best of all, to walk with Marcelle along the sward or shore; to kneel at her side, holding her hand, before the statue of Our Lady; to look into her eyes, and, pleasanter still, to kiss her ripe young lips. What life could be better, what life, all in all, could be sweeter than this?

And Marcelle?

His mother's sister's child, and only niece of the quaint old corporal with whom she lives, with her four great brothers, each strong as Anak. Since they were children together--and he first appalled her young heart by his reckless daring--they have been accustomed to meet in all the innocence of Nature. While her great brothers care not for her society, but haunt the cabaret or go courting when ashore, Rohan seeks the maiden, and is more gentle than any brother, though still her kin. He loves her dark eyes and her hidden black hair, and her gentle ways, and her tender admiration of himself. She has been his playmate for years--now she is, what shall we say? his companion--soon, perhaps, to be known by a nearer name. But the marriage of such close kin is questionable in Brittany, and a special consent from the Bishop will be needed to bring it about; and besides, after all, they have never exchanged one syllable of actual love.

Doubtless they understand each other; for youth is electrical, and passion has many tones far beyond words, and it is not in Nature for a man and a maiden, both beautiful, to look upon each other without joy. To their vague delicious feeling in each other's society, however, they have never given a name. They enjoy each other as they enjoy the fresh sweet air, and the shining sun, and the happy blue vault above, and the sparkling sea below. They drink each other's breathing, and are glad. So is the Earth glad, whenever lovers so unconscious stir and tremble happily in her arms.

Mark them again, as Rohan rises from the cliff, and stands by the girl's side, and listens to her laughing rebuke. How does he answer? He takes her face between his two hands and kisses her on either cheek.

She laughs and blushes slightly; the blush would be deeper if he had kissed her on the lips.

Then he turns to the block of granite where he has left his hat and sabots, and slowly begins to put them on.

The sunset is fading now upon the ocean.

The vision of El Dorado, which has been burning for an hour on the far sea-line, will soon be lost for ever. The golden city with its purple spires, the strange mountains of pink-tinged snow beyond, the dark dim cloud-peak softly crowned by one bright green opening star, are dissolving slowly, and a cold breath comes now from those ruined sunset shores. The blood-red reefs, the wet sands, the flashing pools of water along the shingle and beneath the crags, are burning with dimmer and dimmer colours; the crows are winging past to some dark rookery inland; the sea-fowl are settling down with many murmurs on the nests among the cliffs; the night-owl is fluttering forth in the dark shadow of a crag; and the fishing lugger yonder is drifting on a dark and glassy sea.

Rohan looks down.

The lugger glides along on the swift ebb tide, and he can plainly see the men upon her deck, bare-headed, with hands folded in prayer and faces upraised to the very crags on which he stands; for not far beyond him, on the very summit of the cliffs, stands the little Chapel of Our Lady of Safety--the beloved beacon of the homeward-bound, the last glimpse of home the fisher sees as he sails away to the west, and the help, night and day, of all good mariners.

All this picture Rohan has taken in at a glance, and now, grasping his fowler's hook in one hand, and coiling the rope around his arm, he moves along the summit of the cliff followed by Marcelle. A well-worn path along the scanty sward leads to the door of the little Chapel, and this path they follow.

They have not proceeded far when a large white goat, which has been busy somewhere among the cliffs, climbs up close by, and stands looking at them curiously. The inspection is evidently satisfactory, for it approaches them slowly with some signs of recognition.

"See!" cries the girl. "It is Jannedik."

Jannedik answers by coming closer and rubbing its head against her dress. Then it turns to Rohan, and pushes its chin into his outstretched hand.

"What are you doing so far from home, Jannedik?" he asks, smiling, surprised. "You are a rover, and will some day break your neck. It is nearly bed-time, Jannedik!"

Jannedik is a lady among goats, and she belongs to the mother of Rohan. It is her pleasure to wander among the cliffs like Rohan himself; and she knows the spots of most succulent herbage and the secretest corners of the caves. There is little speculation in her great brown eyes, but she comes to the whistle like a dog, and she will let the village children ride upon her back, and she is altogether more instructed than most of her tribe, in which the cliffs abound.

As Rohan and Marcelle wander on to the little Chapel, Jannedik follows, pausing now and then to browse upon the way; but when they enter--which they do with a quiet reverence--Jannedik hesitates for a moment, stamps her foot upon the ground, and trots off homeward by herself.

She has many points of a good Christian, but the Church has no attractions for her.

The little Chapel stands open night and day. It was built by sailor hands, for sailor use, and with no small labour were the materials carried up hither from the village below. It is very tiny, and it nestles in the highest cliff like a white bird, moveless in all weathers.

It is quite empty, and as Rohan and Marcelle approach the altar, the last light of sunlight strikes through the painted pane, illumining the altar-piece within the rails--a rudely painted picture of shipwrecked sailors on a raft, raising eyes to the good Virgin, who appears among the clouds. Close to the altar stands the plaster figure of Our Lady, dressed in satin and spangles. Strewing the pedestal and hanging round her feet are wreaths of coloured beads, garlands of flowers cut in silk and satin, little rude pictures of the Virgin, medals in tin and brass, wooden rosaries, and strings of beads.

Marcelle crosses herself and falls softly upon her knees.

Rohan remains standing, hat in hand, gazing on the picture of the Virgin on the altar-piece behind the rails.

The little Chapel grows darker and darker, the rude timbers and storm-stained walls are very dim, and the last sunlight fades on Marcelle's bent head and on the powerful lineaments of Rohan.

Faith dwells here, and the touch of a passionate peace and love which are worth more.

Peace be with them and with the world to-night--peace in their hearts, love in their breasts, peace and love in the hearts and breasts of all mankind!

But ah! should to-morrow bring the Shadow of the Sword!

Not far from the Chapel of Our Lady of Safety, but situated on the wild sea-shore under the crags, stands a Cathedral fairer than any wrought by man, with a roof of eternal azure, walls of purple, crimson, green, gold, and a floor of veritable "mosaic paven." Men name its chief entrance the Gate of St. Gildas, but the lovely Cathedral itself has neither name nor worshippers.

At low water this Gate is passable dry-shod, at half-tide it may be entered by wading waist-deep, at three-quarters or full flood it can only be entered by an intrepid swimmer and diver.

Two gigantic walls of crimson granite jut out from the mighty cliff-wall and meet together far out on the edge of the sea, and where the sea touches them it has hollowed their extremity into a mighty arch, hung with dripping moss.

Entering here at low water, one sees the vast walls towering on every side, carved by wind and water into fantastic niches and many-coloured marble forms; with no painted windows, it is true, but with the blue cloudless heaven for a roof far above, where the passing sea-gull hovers, small as a butterfly, in full sunlight. A dim religious light falls downward, lighting up the solemn place, and showing shapes which superstition might fashion into statues and images of mitred abbots and cowled monks and dusky figures of the Virgin; and here and there upon the floor of weeds and shingle are strewn huge blocks like carven tombs, and in lonely midnights the seals sit on these and look at the moon like black ghosts of the dead.

Superstition has seen this place, and has transformed its true history into a legend.

Here indeed in immemorial time stood a great abbey reared by hands, and surrounded by a fertile plain; but the monks of this abbey were wicked, bringing their wantons into the blessed place, and profaning the name of the good God. But the good God, full of His mercy, sent a Saint--Gildas indeed by name--to warn these wicked ones to desist from their evil ways and think of the wrath to come. It was a cold winter night when Gildas reached the gate, and his limbs were chill and he was hungry and athirst, and he knocked faintly with his frozen hand; and at first, being busy at revel, they did not hear; he knocked again and they heard, but when they saw his face, his poor raiment, and his bare feet, they bade him begone. Then did Gildas beseech them to receive and shelter him for Our Lady's sake, warning them also of their iniquities and of God's judgment; but even as he spoke, they shut the gate in his face. Then St. Gildas raised his hands to Heaven and cursed them and that abbey, and called on the great sea to arise and destroy it and them. So the sea, though it was then some miles away arose and came; and the wicked ones were destroyed, the likeness of the abbey was changed, and the great roof was washed away. Even unto this day the strange semblance remains as a token that these things were so.

We said this Cathedral had no worshippers. It had two, at least.

Within it sat, not many days after they had stood together in the little chapel, Rohan and Marcelle. It was morte mer, and not a ripple touched the light cathedral floor; but it was damp and gleaming with the last tide, and the weed-hung granite tombs were glittering crimson in the light.

They sat far within, on a dry rock close under the main cliff, and were looking upward. At what? At the Altar.

Far up above them stretched the awful precipices of stone, but close over their heads, covering the whole side of the cliff for a hundred square yards, was a thick curtain of moss, and over this moss, from secret places far above, poured little runlets of crystal water, spreading themselves on the soft moss-fringes and turning into innumerable drops of diamond dew: here scattering countless pearls over a bed of deepest emerald, there trickling into waterfalls of brightest silver filagree, and again gleaming like molten gold on soft trembling folds of the yellow lichen; and over all this dewy mass of sparkling colours there ebbed and flowed, and flitted and changed, a perpetually liquid light, flashing alternately with all the colours of the prism.

A hundred yards above, all was rent again into fantastic columns and architraves. Just over the Altar, where the dews of heaven were perpetually distilling, was a dark blot like the mouth of a Cave.

"Is it not time to go?" said Marcelle, presently. "Suppose the sea were to come and find us here, how dreadful! Hoël Grallon died like that!"

Rohan smiled--the self-sufficient smile of strength and superior wisdom.

"Hoël Grallon was a great ox, and should have stayed praying by his own door. Look you, Marcelle! There are always two ways out of my Cathedral; when it is neap tide and not rough you can wait for the ebb up here by the Altar--it will not rise so far; and when it is stormy and blows hard you can climb up yonder to the Trou"--and he pointed to the dark blot above his head--"or even to the very top of the cliff."

Marcelle shrugged her shoulders.

"Climb the cliff!--why, it is a wall, and every one has not feet of a fly."

"At least it is easy as far as the Trou. There are great ledges for the feet, and niches for the hands."

"If one were even there, what then? It is like the mouth of Hell, and one could not enter."

Marcelle crossed herself religiously.

"It is rather like the little Chapel above, when one carries a light to look around. It is quite dry and pleasant; one might live there and be glad."

"It is, then, a cave?"

"Fit for a sea-woman to dwell in and bring up her little ones."

Rohan laughed, but Marcelle crossed herself again.

"Never name them, Rohan!--ah, the terrible place!"

"It is not terrible, Marcelle; I could sleep there in peace--it is so calm, so still. It would be like one's own bed at home but for the blue doves stirring upon the roosts, and the bats that slip in and out into the night."

"The bats--horrible! my flesh creeps!"

Marcelle, though a maid of courage, had the feminine horror of unclean and creeping things. Charlotte Corday slew the rat Marat, but she shivered at the sight of a mouse.

"And as for the crag above," said Rohan, smiling at her, "I have seen Jannedik climb it often, and I should not fear to try it myself; it is easier than St. Gurlan's Craig. Many poor sailors, when their ship was lost, have been saved like that, when the wind is off the sea; and they have felt God's hand grip them and hold them tight against the precipice that they might not fall--God's hand or the wind, Marcelle, that is all one?"

After this there was silence for a time. Marcelle kept her great eyes fixed upon the glittering curtain of moss and dew, while Rohan dropped his eyes again to a book which he held upon his knee--an old, well-thumbed, coarsely printed volume, with leaves well sewn together with waxed thread.

He read, or seemed to read; yet all the time his joy was in the light presence by his side, and he was conscious of her happy breathing, of the warm touch of her dress against his knee.

Presently he was disturbed in his enjoyment. Marcelle sprang to her feet.

"If we stay longer," she cried, "I shall have to take off my sabots and stockings. For my part, Rohan, I shall run."

And the girl passed rapidly towards the Gate and looked for Rohan to follow her.

Rohan, however, did not stir.

"There is time," he said, glancing through the Gate at the sea, which seemed already preparing to burst and pour in between the granite archway. "Come back, and do not be afraid. There is yet a half-hour, and as for the sabots and stockings, surely you remember how we used to wade together in the blue water of old. Come, Marcelle, and look!"

Marcelle complied. With one doubtful side-glance at the wall of water which seemed to rise up and glimmer close to the Gate, she stole slowly back, and seated herself by her cousin's side. His strength and beauty fascinated her, as it would have fascinated any maiden on that coast, and while she placed her soft brown hand on his knees, and looked up into his face, she felt within her the mysterious stirs of a yearning she could not understand.

"Look, then," he said, pointing out through the Gate; "does it not seem as if all the green waters of the sea were about to rush in and cover us, as they covered the great abbey long ago?"

Marcelle looked.

To one unaccustomed to the place it seemed as if egress were already impossible; for the great swell rose and fell close up against the archway, closing out all glimpses of blue air or sky. Out beyond the arch swam a great grey-headed seal looking with large wistful eyes into the Cathedral, and just then a flight of pigeons swooped through the Gate, scattered in swift flight as they passed overhead, and disappeared in the darkness of the great cave above the Altar.

"Let us go!" said Marcelle in a low voice.

She was superstitious, and the allusion to the old legend made her feel uncomfortable in that solemn place.

"Rest yet," answered Rohan, as he rose and closed his book and touched her arm. "In half an hour, not sooner, the Gate will be like the jaws of a great monster. Do you remember the story of the great Sea-beast and the Maiden chained to a rock, and the brave Youth with wings who rescued her and turned the beast to stone?"

Marcelle smiled and coloured slightly.

"I remember," she answered.

More than once had Rohan, who had a taste for mythology and fairy legend, told her the beautiful myth of Perseus and Andromeda; and more than once had she pictured herself chained in that very place, and a fair-haired form--very like Rohan's--floating down to her on great outspread wings from the blue roof above her head; and although in her dream she herself wore sabots and coarse stockings, and had her dark hair pinned in a coif while Perseus wore sabots too, and the long hair and loose raiment of a Breton peasant, was it any the less delicious to think of? As to slaying a monster, Rohan was quite equal to that, she knew, if occasion came; and taking his reckless daring and his wild cliff-flights into consideration, he really might have been born with wings.

Just then the incoming tide began to be broken into foam below one arch of the gateway, and the rocks with jagged teeth to tear the sea, and the whole side of the Gate, blackly silhouetted against the green water, seemed like the head and jaws of some horrible monster, such as the Greek sailor saw whenever he sailed along his narrow seas; such as the Breton fisher sees to this hour when he glides along the edges of his craggy coast.

"There is the great Sea-beast," said Rohan, "crouching and waiting."

"Yes! See the huge red rock--it is like a mouth."

"If you could stop here and watch, you would say so truly. In a little it will begin to lash and tear the water till the red mouth is white with foam and black with weeds, and the water below it is spat full of foam, and the air is filled with a roar like the bellowing of a beast. I have sat here and watched till I thought the old story was come true and the monster was there; but that was in time of storm."

"You watched it--up in the Trou?"

"It caught me one tide, and I had to sit shivering until sunset; and then the storm went down, but the tide was high. The water washed close to the roof of the Gate, and when the wave rose there was not room for a fly to pass--it surged right up yonder against the walls. Well, I was hungry, and knew not what to do. It was pleasant to see the water turn crystal green all along the cavern floor, and to watch it washing over the rocks and stones where we sat to-day, and to see the seals swimming round and round and trying in vain to find a spot to rest on. But all that would not fill one's stomach. I waited, and then it grew dark, but the tide was still high. It was terrible then, for the stars were clustered up yonder, and the shapes of the old monks seemed coming down from the walls, and I felt afraid to stay. So I left my hat and sabots at the mouth of the cave, and slipped down from ledge to ledge, and dropped down into the water--it was dark as death!"

Marcelle uttered a little terrified "Ah!" and clutched Rohan's arm.

"At first I thought the fiends were loose, for I fell amid a flock of black cormorants, and they shrieked like mad things; and one dived and seized me by the leg, but I shook him away. Then I struck out for the Gate, and as I drew near with swift strokes I saw the great waves rising momently and shutting out the light; but when the waves fell there was a glimmer, and I could just see the top of the arch. So I came close, treading on the sea, till I could almost touch the arch with my hand, and then I watched my chance and dived! Mon Dieu, it was a sharp minute! Had I swum awry, or not dived deep enough, I should have been lifted up and crushed against the jagged stones of the arch; but I held my breath and struck forward--eight, nine, ten strokes under water, when choking, I rose!"

"And then?"

"I was floating on the great wave just outside the arch, with the sea before me and the stars above my head. Then I thought all safe, but just then I saw a billow like a mountain coming in; I drew in a deep breath, and just as the wave rose above me I dived again; when I rose it had passed and was shrieking round the Gate of St. Gildas. So all I had to do then was to swim on for a hundred yards, and turn in and land upon the sands below the Ladder of St. Triffine."

The girl looked for a moment admiringly on her herculean companion--then she smiled.

"Let us go, now," she cried, "or the sea will come again, and this time one at least would drown."

"I will come."

"There, that last wave ran right down into the passage. We must wade, after all."

"What then? The water is warm."

So Rohan still standing rapidly pulled off his sabots and stockings; while Marcelle, sitting on a low rock, drew off hers--nervously, and with less sped. Then she rose, making a pretty grimace as her little white feet touched the cold shingle. Rohan took her hand, and they passed right under the portal, close up against which the tide had by this time crept.

At every step it grew deeper, and soon the maiden had to resign his hand; and gathering up her clothes above the knee, she moved nervously on.

No blush tinged her cheek at thus revealing her pretty limbs; she knew they were pretty, of course, and she felt no shame. True modesty does not consist in a prurient veiling of all that nature has made fair, and perhaps there is no more uncleanness in showing a shapely leg than in baring a well-formed arm.

On one point, however, Marcelle's modesty was supreme. According to the custom of the country, she carefully curled up and coifed her locks, which, unlike those of most Breton maidens, were long enough to reach her shoulders. Her hair was sacred from seeing. Even Rohan in all their later rambles had never beheld her without her coif.

They had reached the portal and were only knee-deep, but before them stretched for several yards a solid wall connected with the Gate, and round the end of this wall they must pass to reach the safe shingle beyond.

Marcelle stood in despair.

Before her stretched the great fields of the ocean, illimitable to all seeming--still but terrible, with here and there a red sail glimmering and following the shining harvest. On every side the tide had risen, and around the outlying wall it was quite deep.

"Ay me!" cried the girl in a pretty despair; "I told you so, Rohan."

Rohan, standing like a solid stone in the water, merely smiled.

"Have no fear," he replied, coming close to her. "Hold your apron!"

She obeyed, holding up her apron and petticoat together; and then, after putting in her lap his and her own sabots and stockings, with the book he had been reading, he lifted her like a feather in his powerful arms.

"You are heavier than you used to be," he said, laughing; while Marcelle, gathering her apron up with one hand, clung tightly round his neck with the other. Slowly and surely, step by step, he waded with her seaward along the moss-hung wall; he seemed in no hurry, perhaps because he had such pleasure in his burthen; but at every step he went deeper, and when he reached the end of the wall the water had crept to his hips.

"If you should stumble!" cried Marcelle.

"I shall not stumble," answered Rohan quietly.

Marcelle was not so sure, and clung to him vigorously. She was not afraid, for there was no danger; but she had the true feminine dread of a wetting. Place her in any circumstance of real peril, call up the dormant courage within her, and she would face the very sea with defiance, with pride, dying like a heroine. Meantime, she was timid, disliking even a splash.

The wall was quickly rounded, and Rohan was wading with his burthen to the shore, so that he was soon only knee-deep again. His heart was palpitating madly, his eyes and cheeks were burning, for the thrill of his delicious load filled him with strange ecstasy; and he lingered in the water, unwilling to resign the treasure he held within his arms.

"Rohan! quick! do not linger!"

It was then that he turned his face up to hers for the first time; and lo! he saw a sight which brought the bright blood to his own cheeks and made him tremble like a tree beneath his load. Porphyro, gazing on his mistress,

"Half hidden like a mermaid in seaweed,"

and watching her naked beauty gleam like marble in the moonlight, felt no fairer revelation.

Rohan, too, "felt faint."

And why? It was only this--in the excitement and struggle of the passage Marcelle's white coif had fallen back, and her black hair, loosened from its fastenings, had rained down in one dark shower, round cheeks and neck; and cheeks and neck, when Rohan raised his eyes, were burning crimson with a delicious shame.

Have we not said that the hair of a Breton maid is virgin, and is as hallowed as an Eastern woman's face, and is only to be seen by the eyes of him she loves?

Rohan's head swam round.

As his face turned up, burning like her own, the sacred hair fell upon his eyes, and the scent of it--who knows not the divine perfume even scentless things give out when touched by Love?--the scent of it was sweet in his nostrils, while the thrill of its touch passed into his very blood. And under his hands the live form trembled, while his eyes fed on the blushing face.

"Rohan! quick! set me down!"

He stood now on dry land, but he still held her in his arms. The sweet hair floated to his lips, and he kissed it madly, while the fire grew brighter on her face.

"I love you, Marcelle!"

There is one supreme emotion in the life of Love which is never to be known again when once its holy flush has passed; there is one divine sensation when the wave of life leaps its highest and breaks softly, never to rise quite so high again in sunlight or starlight; there is one first touch of souls meeting, and that first touch is divinest, whatever else may follow. The minute, the sensation, the touch, had come to Rohan and Marcelle. Passion suddenly arose full-orbed and absolute. The veil was drawn between soul and soul, and they knew each other's tremor and desire.

Many a day had the cousins wandered alone together for hours and hours. From childhood upwards they had been companions, and their kinship was so close that few coupled their names together as lovers, even in jest. Now, when Rohan was three or four and twenty and Marcelle was eighteen, they were attached friends as ever, and no surveillance was set upon their meetings. Walking about with Rohan had been only like walking with Hoël, or Gildas, or Alain, her tall brothers.

Not that either was quite unconscious of the sweet sympathy which bound them together. Love feels before it speaks, thrills before it sees, wonders before it knows. They had been beautiful in each other's eyes for long, but neither quite knew why.

So their secret had been kept, almost from themselves.

But that disarrangement of the coif that loosening of the virgin hair, divulged all. It broke the barrier between them, it bared each to each in all the nudity of passion. They had passed in an instant from the cold clear air to the very heart of Love's fire, and there they moved, and turned to golden shapes, and lived.

Then, they passed out again, and through the flame, into the common day.

All this time he held her in his arms, and would not let her go. Her hair trembled down upon his face in delicious rain. She could not speak, now, nor struggle.

At last he spoke again.

"I love you, Marcelle!--and you?"

There was only a moment's pause, during which her eyes trembled on his with an excess of passionate light; then, stirring not in his arms, she closed her eyes, and in answer to him, then and for ever, let her lips drop softly down on his!

It was better than all words, sweeter than all looks; it was the very divinest of divine replies, in that language of Love which is the same all over the wide earth. Their lips trembled together in one long kiss, and all the life-blood of each heart flowed through that warm channel into the other.

Then Rohan set her down, and she stood upon her feet, dazzled, and trembling; and lo! as if that supreme kiss was not enough, he kissed her hands over and over, and caught her in his arms, and kissed her lips and cheeks again.

By this time, however, she had recovered herself; so she gently released herself from his embrace.

"Cease, Rohan!" she said softly. "They will see us from the cliffs."

Released by Rohan, she picked up her stockings and sabots, which had fallen on the dry sand, together with those of Rohan, and the book; all the contents of her lap. Then she sat down with her back to Rohan, and drew on her stockings, and could he have marked her face just then, he would have seen it illumined with a strange complacent joy. Then she softly up-bound her hair within its coif. When she rose and turned to him she was quite pale and cool--and the sweet hair was hid.

In these consummate episodes a woman subdues herself to joy sooner than a man. Rohan had put on his stockings and sabots, but he was still trembling from head to foot.

"Marcelle! you love me? ah, but you give me good news--it is almost too good to bear!"

He took both her hands in his, and drew her forward to him, but this time he kissed her brow.

"Did you not know?" she said softly.

"I cannot tell; yes, I think so; but now it seems so new. I was afraid because I was your cousin you might not love me like that. I have known you all these years, and yet it now seems most strange."

"It is strange also to me."

As she spoke she had drawn one hand away, and was walking on up the beach.

"But you love me, Marcelle?" he cried again.

"I have loved you always."

"But not as to-day?"

"No, not as to-day;" and she blushed again.

"And you will never change?"

"It is the men that change, not we women."

"But you will not?"

"I will not."

"And you will marry me, Marcelle?"

"That is as the good God wills."

"So!"

"And the good God's bishop."

"We shall have his blessing too."

"And my brothers also, and my Uncle the Corporal."

"Theirs also."

After that there was a brief silence. To be candid, Rohan was not quite sure of his uncle, who was a man of strange ideas, differing greatly from his own. The Corporal might see objections, and if he saw them he would try, being a man of strong measures, to enforce them. Still, the thought of him was only a passing cloud, and Rohan's face soon brightened.

It was a clear bright day, and every nook and cranny of the great cliffs was distinct in the sunlight. The sea was like glass, and covered as far as the eye could see with a dim heat, like breath on a mirror. Far up above their heads two ravens were soaring in beautiful circles, and beyond these dark specks the skies were all harebell-blue and white feathery clouds.

They soon sought and found a giddy staircase which, entering the very heart of the cliff, wound and wound until it reached the summit; it was partly natural, partly hewn by human hands: here and there it was dangerous, for the loose stone steps had fallen away and left only a slippery slide.

This was the Ladder of St. Triffine.

It was a hard pull to the summit, and for a great part of the way Rohan's arm was round Marcelle's waist. Again and again they stopped for breath, and saw through airy loop-holes in the rock the sea breaking far below them with a cream-white edge on the ribbed sands, and the great boulders glistening in the sun, and the white gulls hovering on the water's brim. At last they reached the grassy plateau above the cliffs, and there they sat and rested,--for Marcelle was very tired.

They could have lingered so for ever, since they were so happy.

It was enough to breathe, to be near each other, to hold each other's hands. The veriest commonplace became divine on their lips, just as the scenes around, common to them, became divine in their eyes. Love is easily satisfied. A look, a tone, a perfume will content it for hours. As for speech, it needs none, since it knows the language of all the flowers and stars, and the secret tones of all the birds.

When the lovers did talk, walking homeward along the greensward, their talk was practical enough.

"I shall not tell my uncle yet," said Marcelle, "nor any of my brothers, not even Gildas. It wants thinking over, and then I will tell them all. But there is no hurry."

"None," said Rohan. "Perhaps they may guess?"

"How should they if we are wise? We are cousins, and we shall meet no oftener than before."

"That is true."

"And when one meets, one need not show one's heart to all the world."

"That is true also. And my mother shall not know."

"Why should she? She will know all in good time. We are doing no wrong, and a secret may be kept from one's people without sin."

"Surely!"

"All the village would talk if they knew, and your mother perhaps most of all. A girl does not like her name carried about like that, unless it is a certain thing."

"Marcelle! is it not certain?"

"Perhaps--yes, I think so--but nevertheless who can tell?"

"But you love me, Marcelle!"

"Ah yes, I love you, Rohan!"

"Then nothing but the good God can keep us asunder, and He is just!"

So speaking, they had wandered along the green plateau until they came in sight of a Shape of stone, which, like some gigantic living form, dominated the surrounding prospect for many miles. It was a Menhir, so colossal that one speculated in vain over the means that had been adopted to raise it on its jagged end.

It surveyed the sea-coast like some dark lighthouse, but no ray ever issued from its awful heart. On its summit was an iron cross, rendered white as snow by the sea-birds; and down its sides, also, the same white snow dripped and hardened, making it hoary and awful as some bearded Druidic god of the primeval forest.

The cross was modern--a sign of capture set there by the new faith. But the Menhir remained unchanged, and gazed at the sea like some calm eternal thing.

It had stood there for ages--how many no man might count; but few doubted that it was first erected in the dim legendary times when dark forests of oak and pine covered this treeless upland; when the sea, if indeed there were any sea, and not in its stead a rocky arm reaching far away into the kindred woods of Cornwall--when the sea was so remote that no sound of its breathing shuddered through the brazen forest-gloom; and when the dark forms of the Druidic procession flitted in its shadow and consecrated its stone with human blood. All had changed on sea and land; countless races of men had winged past like crows into the red sunsets of dead Time, and had turned no more; mountains of sand had crumbled, whirlwinds of leaves had scattered; mighty forests had fallen, and had rotted, root and branch; and the sea, inexorable and untiring, had crawled and crawled over and under, changing, defacing, destroying,--washing away the monuments of ages as easily as it obliterates a child's footprints in the sand, But the Menhir remained, waiting for that far-away hour when the sea would creep still closer, and drink it up, as Eternity drinks a drop of dew. Against all the elements, against wind, rain, snow, yea, even earthquake, it had stood firm. Only the sea might master it--it, and the cross on its brow.

As the lovers approached, a black hawk, which was seated on the iron cross, flapped its wings and swooped away down over the crags into the abyss beneath.

"I have heard Master Arfoll say," observed Rohan as they approached the Menhir, "that the great stone here looks like some giant of old turned into stone for shedding human blood. For my part, it reminds me of the wife of Lot"

"Who was she?" asked Marcelle. "The name is not of our parish."

It must be confessed that Marcelle was utterly ignorant even of the literature of her own religion. Like most peasants of her class, she took her knowledge from the lips of the priest, and from the pictures of the Holy Virgin, the child Jesus, and the saints. In many Catholic districts the least known of all books is the Bible.

Rohan did not smile; his own knowledge of the Book was quite desultory.

"She was flying away from a city of wicked people, and God told her not to look back; but women are curious, above all, and she broke God's bidding, and for that He turned her into a stone like this, only it was made of salt. That is the story, Marcelle!"

"She was a wicked woman, but the punishment was hard."

"I think sometimes myself that this must once have been alive. Look, Marcelle! Is it not like a monster with a white beard?"

Marcelle crossed herself rapidly.

"The good God forbid," she said.

"Have you not heard my mother tell of the great stones on the plain, and how they are petrified ghosts of men; and how, on the night of Noël, they turn into life again, and bathe in the river and quench their thirst?"

"Ah, but that is foolish!"

Rohan smiled.

"Is it foolish, too, that the stone faces on the church walls are the devils that tried to burst in when the place was built and the first mass was said, but that the saints of God stopped them and turned them into the faces you see? I have heard m'sieur le curé say as much."

"It may be true," observed Marcelle simply, "but these are things we cannot understand."

"You believe? Master Arfoll says that is foolish also."

Marcelle was silent for a minute, then she remarked quietly--

"Master Arfoll is a strange man. Some say he does not believe in God."

"Do not listen to them. He is good."

"I myself have heard him say wicked things--Uncle said they were blasphemous. It was shameful! He wished the emperor might lose, that he might be killed!"

The girl's face flashed with keen anger, her voice trembled with its indignation.

"Did he say that?" asked Rohan in a low voice.

"He did--I heard him--ah, God, the great good Emperor, that any one alive should speak of him like that! If my uncle had heard him there would have been blood. It was dreadful! It made my heart go cold."

Rohan did not answer directly. He knew that he was on delicate ground. When he did speak, he kept his eyes fixed nervously upon the grass.

"Marcelle, there are many others that think like Master Arfoll"

Marcelle looked round quickly into the speaker's face. It was quite pale now.

"Think what, Rohan?"

"That the Emperor has gone too far, that it would be better for France if he were dead."

"Ah!"

"More than that; better that he had never been born."

The girl's face grew full of mingled anger and anguish. It terrible to hear blasphemy against the creed we believe in all our heart and soul; most terrible, when that creed all the madness of idolatry. She trembled, and her hands were clenched convulsively.

"And you too believe this?" she cried, in a low shuddering whisper, almost shrinking away from his side.

He saw his danger, and prevaricated. "You are too quick, Marcelle--I did not say that Master Arfoll was right."

"He is a devil!" cried the girl, with a fierceness which showed the soldier-stock of which she came. "It is cowards and devils like him that have sometimes nearly broken the Old Emperor's heart. They love neither France nor the Emperor; they are hateful; God will punish them in the next world for their unbelief."

"Perhaps they are punished already in this," returned Rohan, with a touch of sarcasm which passed quite unheeded by the indignant girl.

"The great good Emperor," she continued, unconscious of his interruption, "who loves all his people like his children, who is not proud, who has shaken my uncle by the hand and called him 'comrade,' who would die for France, who has made her name glorious over all the world, who is adored by all save his wicked enemies--God punish them soon! He is next to God and the Virgin and God's Son; he is a saint; he is sublime. I pray for him first every night before I sleep--for him first, and then for my uncle afterwards. If I were a man, I would fight for him. My uncle gave him his poor leg--I would give him my heart, my soul!"

It came from her in a torrent, in a patois that anger rendered broader, yet that was still most musical. Her face shone with a religious ecstasy; she clasped her hands as if in prayer.

Rohan remained silent.

Suddenly she turned to him, with more anger than love in her beautiful eyes, and cried--

"Speak then, Rohan! Are you against him? Do you hate him in your heart?"

Rohan trembled, and cursed the moment when he had introduced the unlucky subject.

"God forbid!" he answered. "I hate no man. But why?"

Her cheeks went white as death as she replied--

"Because then I should hate you, as I hate all the enemies of God. I hate all the enemies of the great Emperor"

They had approached close to the Menhir, and were standing in its very shadow, while Marcelle spoke the last words. As she concluded, Rohan quietly put one hand on her arm, and pointed with the other.

Not far from the pillar, and close to the edge of the crag, stood a figure which, looming darkly against the white sheet of sky, seemed of superhuman height--resembling for the moment one of those wild petrified spirits of whom Rohan had spoken, in the act of turning to life. Lean and skeletonian, with stooping shoulders, and snow-white hair falling down his back, thin shrunken limbs, arms drooping by his side, he stood moveless, like a very shape of stone..

His dress consisted of the broad hat and loose jacket and pantaloons of the Breton peasant. His stockings were black; instead of sabots he wore old-fashioned leather shoes fastened with thongs of hide, but long usage had nearly worn these shoes away. His extreme poverty was perceptible at a glance. His clothes, where they were not hopelessly ragged, were full of careful patches and darns, and even his stockings showed signs of constant mending.

"See!" said Rohan in a whisper. "It is Master Arfoll himself."

The girl drew back, still full of the indignation that had overmastered her, but Rohan took her arm and pulled her softly forward, with whispered words of love. She yielded, but her face still wore a fixed expression of superstitious dislike.

The sound of. footsteps startled the man, and he turned slowly round.

If his form had appeared spectral at the first view, his face seemed more spectral still. It was long and wrinkled, with a powerful high-arched nose, and thin firm-set lips, quite bloodless, like the cheeks. The eyes were black and large, full of a weird, wistful expression and wild fitful light. An awful face, as of one risen from the dead.

But when the large eyes fell on Rohan he smiled, and the smile was one of beatitude. His face shone. You would have said then, a beautiful face, as of one who had looked upon angels.

Only for a moment; then the smile faded, and the old worn pallor returned.

"Rohan!" he cried, in a clear musical voice. "And my pretty Marcelle!"

Rohan raised his hat as to a superior, while Marcelle, still preserving her resolved expression, blushed guiltily, and made no sign.

There was that in this man which awed her as it awed all others. She might dislike him when he was absent, but in his presence she was conscious of a charm. Poor though he was in the world's goods, and unpopular as were many of his opinions, Master Arfoll possessed that dæmoniac and magnetic power which Goethe perceived in Bonaparte, and avowed to be, whether fashioned for good or evil, the especial characteristic of mighty men.

More will be spoken of Master Arfoll anon when the strange events on which this story is based come to be further rehearsed. Meantime it is necessary to explain that he was an itinerant schoolmaster, teaching from farm to farm, from field to field. From his lips Rohan had drunk much secret knowledge, seated in the open meadows in the summer-time, or in some quiet cave by the white fringe of the sea, or on some mossy stone on the summit of the high crags. He was a dreamer, and he had taught the boy to dream.

Men said that his face was pale because of the awful things he had seen when the seals of the Apocalypse were opened in Paris. He never entered a church, yet he prayed in the open air; he preferred perfect freedom of religious belief, yet he taught little children to read the Bible; he was the friend of many a curé and many a soldier, but ceremonies and battles were alike his abomination. In brief, he was an outcast; his bed was the earth, his roof heaven; but the holiness of Nature was upon him, and he crept from place to place like a spirit, sanctifying and sanctified.

It was some months since he had been in that neighbourhood, and his appearance there at that moment was a surprise.

"You are a great stranger, Master Arfoll," said Rohan, after they had taken each other by the hand.

"I have been far away this time, as far as Brest," was the reply. "Ah, but my journey has been desolate: I have seen in every village Rachel, weeping for her children. There have been great changes, my son; and there are more changes coming. Yet I return, as you see, and find the great Stone unchanged. Nothing abides but death: that only is eternal."

As he spoke, he pointed to the Menhir.

"Is there bad news, then, Master Arfoll?" inquired Rohan, eagerly.

"How should there be good? Ah, but you are children, and do not understand. Tell me, why should this cold loveless thing abide"--again he pointed to the Menhir--"when men and cities, and woods and hills and rivers, and the very gods on their thrones, and the great kings on theirs, perish away and leave no sign that they have been? Thousands and thousands of years ago there was blood on that stone; men were sacrificed there, Rohan; it is the same tale to-day--men are martyred still."

He spoke in low sad tones, as if communing with himself.

They perceived now that he held in his hand a book--the old Bible in the Breton tongue, from which he was wont to teach--and that his finger was inserted between the leaves as if he had just been reading.

He now walked slowly on, with Rohan and Marcelle close to his side, until he reached the edge of the glassy plateau and lo! lying just under the very edge of the sea was Kromlaix, with every house and boat mapped out clearly in the shining sun.

The light fell on glistening gables, on walls washed blue and white, on roofs of wrecked timber or stone tiles, or of thatch weighted with lumps of granite to resist the violence of the wind. The houses crouched on the very edge of the sea. Scattered among them were wild huts made of old fishing boats, upturned and roofed with straw; and though some of them were used for storing nets, sails, oars, and other boating implements and tackle, some served for byres, and many, occupied by the poorer families, sent up their curl of blue smoke through an iron funnel. Below the houses and huts, floating on the edge of the water--for it was high tide now--was the fishing fleet: a long line of boats, like cormorants with their black necks pointed seaward.

A village crouching on the very fringe of the wild ocean. The sea was around and beneath as well as before it; for it oozed below it into unseen shingly caves, and crawling inland underground for miles, finally bubbled into the green brackish pools that form the dreary tarns of Ker Léon. A lonely village, many miles from any other; a village cradled in tempest, daily rocked by death, and ever gazing with sad eyes seaward, hungry for the passing sail.

For miles and miles on either side stretches the great ocean wall, washed and worn into grandest forms of archway, dome, and spire, beaten against, storm shaken, undermined; gnawed, torn, rent, stricken by whirlwind and earthquake, yet still standing, with its menhirs and dolmens, firm and strong; a mighty line of weed-hung scaurs, precipices, and crags, of monoliths and dark aërial caves, towering above the ever-restless sea:--so high, that to him who walks above on the grassy edges of the crags the seagull hovering midway is a speck, and the dark seaweed-gatherers on the sands beneath are dwarfed by distance small as crawling mice. For many a league stretches the great wall, and the wayfarer threading its dizzy paths hears underneath his feet the rush and roar of water, and the flapping wings of winds, and the screams of birds from foam-splashed gulfs. But here, suddenly, the wall, rent apart as if by earthquake, leaves one mighty gap; and in the gap (which widening inward turns into a grassy vale fed by a dark river) the village crouches, winter and summer, changeless through the generations, with its eyes ever fixed on the changeless sea.

A village ever doomed and ever saved. For the river, when it reaches the tarns of Ker Léon, plunges into the earth, and mingles with the increeping ocean, and so crawls onward unseen; and the houses are verily rocked upon the waves which moan sullenly beneath them, and the fountains are brackish wherever they burst, and the village trembles and cries like a living thing when the vials of heaven are opened and the great sea threatens with some mighty tide.

That day, however, while Master Arfoll gazed down, all was brightness and peace. In and about the boats children played, while the men lounged in twos and threes, or lay smoking on the sands, or lazily sat in the sunlight mending their nets. The smoke went up straight to heaven, and heaven was calm. All was quite still, but you could hear the village just breathing, like a creature at rest.

Higher up the valley and partly on a rising slope stood, surrounded by its graveyard, the little red granite church, with its stone-tiled roof and ruddy tower crusted with dark green mosses and a hoary rime of salt blown from the sea. The sunlight struck along the gorge, so that even from the height they could see the rude group of the CALVARY close by, the stone head of the Christ drooping in death, the little wells of holy water sparkling on the tombstones, and along the wall of the charnel-house the dark dots where the skulls of the dead, each in its little pigeon-box, were nailed up as a ghastly memento mori.

"Could the Stone yonder speak," said Master Arfoll, looking down, "what a tale it could tell! I will tell you something it could remember. The time when all around us stretched mighty forests, and when a deep river ran down yonder gorge, and when a great City stood on the river's banks full of people who worshipped strange gods."

"I have heard m'sieu le curé speak of that," said Rohan. "It is very strange; and they say that if you listen on the eve of Noël you can hear the bells ringing, and the dead people flocking in the streets, far under the ground. Old Mother Brieux, who died last Noël, heard it all, she said, before she died."

Master Arfoll smiled sadly.

"That is an old wife's tale: a superstition--the dead sleep."

Marcelle felt herself bound to put in a word for her traditions.

"You do not believe," she said. "Ah, Master Arfoll, you believe little; but Mother Brieux was a good woman, and she would not lie."

"All that is superstition, and superstition is an evil thing," returned Master Arfoll quietly. "In religion, in politics, in all the affairs of life, my child, superstition is a curse. It makes men fear the gentle dead, and phantoms, and darkness; and it makes them bear wicked rulers and cruel deeds, because they see in them an evil fate. It is superstition which holds bad kings on their thrones, and covers the earth with blood, and breaks the hearts of all who love their kind. Superstition, look you, may turn an evil man into a god, and make all men worship him and die for him as if he were divine."

"That is true," said Rohan, with a rather anxious glance at Marcelle. Then, as if wishing to change the subject, "It is certain, is it not, that the great City once stood there?"

"We know that by many signs, " answered the schoolmaster; "one need not dig very deep to come upon its traces. Oh yes, the City was there, with its houses of marble and temples of gold, and its greet baths and theatres, and its statues of the gods; and a fair sight it must have been glittering in the sunlight as Kromlaix glitters now. Then the river was a river indeed, and white villas stood upon its banks, and there were flowers on every path and fruit on every tree. Well even then our Stone stood here, and saw it all. For the City was built like many another of our own with human blood, and its citizens were part of the butchers of the earth, and a sword was at each man's side, and blood was on each man's hand. God was against them, and their stone gods could not save them. They were a race of wolves, these old Romans! they were the children of Cain! So what did God do at last?--He wiped them away like weeds from the face of the earth!"

The speaker's face was terrible; he seemed delivering prophecy, not describing an event.

"He lifted his finger, and the sea came up and devoured that City, and covered it over with rock and sand. Every man, woman, and child were buried in one grave, and there they sleep."

"Till the Last Judgment!" said Marcelle solemnly.

"They are judged already," answered Master Arfoll

"Their doom was spoken, and they sleep; it is only 'superstition' that would awake them in their graves."

Marcelle seemed about to speak, but the large word "superstition" overpowered her. She had only a dim notion of its meaning, but it sounded conclusive. It was Master Arfoll's pet word, and it must be confessed that he used it in a confusing way to express all sorts of ideas and conditions.

Rohan said little or nothing. In truth, he was slightly astonished at the exceedingly solemn tone of Master Arfoll's discourse; for he knew well the wanderer's gentler and merrier side, and he had seldom seen him look so sad and talk so cheerlessly as to-day. It was clear to his mind that something unusual had happened; it was clear also, from certain significant looks, that Master Arfoll did not care to express himself fully in the presence of Marcelle.

Meantime they had begun descending the slope that led to the village. Marcelle fell a few steps behind, but Rohan kept by the itinerant's side, quietly solicitous to discover the cause of his unusual melancholy.

As they went Master Arfoll's eye fell upon Rohan's book, which he still carried in his hand.

"What is that you read?" he asked.

Rohan delivered up the book. It was a rudely printed translation of Tacitus into French, with the original Latin on the opposite page. It bore a date of the Revolution, and had been printed in some dark den when Paris was trembling with the storm.

Master Arfoll looked at the volume, then returned it to its owner. He himself had taught Rohan to see, however dimly, the spirit of such books as that; but to-day he was bitter.

"Of what do you read there?" he exclaimed. "Of what but blood, and battles, and the groans of people under the weight of thrones? Ah, God, it is too terrible! Even here, in what men call God's own book"--and he held up the old Bible--"it is the same red story, the same mad cry of martyred men. Yes, God's book is bloody, like God's earth."

Marcelle shuddered. Such language was veriest blasphemy.

"Master Arfoll--" she began.

His large wild eyes seemed fixed as in a trance; he did not heed her.

"For ever and ever, now as it was in the beginning, this wild beast's hunger to kill and kill, this madman's thirst for war and glory. Who knows but the great Stone yonder holds the spirit of some mighty murderer of old times, some Cain the Emperor, turned to rock, but with consciousness still left to see what glory is, to watch while kingdoms wither and kings waste and dead people are shed down like leaves? Well, that is superstition; but had I my will, I would serve each tyrant like that. I would petrify him--I would set him as a sign! He should see, he should see! And then there would be no more war, for there would be no more Cains to make it and to drive the people mad!"

Marcelle only half understood him, but some of his words jarred upon her heart. She did not address Master Arfoll, but with angry flashing eyes she turned to Rohan.

"It is only cowards that are afraid to fight. Uncle Ewen was a brave soldier and shed his blood for France: witness the beautiful medal of the great Emperor! The country is a great country, and it is the wars against the wicked that have made it great. It is the bad people that rise against the Emperor because he is good and so grand; that makes war, and the Emperor is not to blame."

Master Arfoll heard every word, and smiled sadly to himself. He knew the maiden's worship for the Emperor; how she had been brought up to think of him next to God: so without attacking her Idol, he said softly, with that benign smile which owed its chief charm to an inexpressible sadness--"That is what Uncle Ewen says? Well, Uncle Ewen is a brave man. But do you, my little Marcelle, want to know what war is? Look then!"

He pointed inland, and the girl followed the direction of his hand.

Far away, towering solitary among the winding hedgerows of the vale, was another deserted Calvary,--so broken and so mutilated that only an eye familiar with it could have told what it was. One arm and a portion of the body was still intact, but the head and the other limbs had disappeared, and what remained was stained almost to blackness by rain and foul verdure. Beneath, wild underwood and great weeds climbed,--darnel and nettle made their home there, and there in its season the foxglove flowered. Yet, broken and ruined as the figure was, it dominated the inland prospect, and lent to the wild landscape around it a wilder desolation.

"That is war!" said Master Arfoll solemnly. "Our roads are strewn with the stone heads of angels and the marble limbs of shapes like that. The gospel of love is lost; the figure of love is effaced. The world is a battlefield, France is a charnel-house, and--well, you were right, my child!--the Emperor is a god!"

Marcelle made no reply; her heart was full of indignation, but she felt herself no match for her opponent. "That is treason," she thought to herself; "if the Emperor heard him talk like that he would be killed." Then she looked again sidelong into the worn wild face and the great sorrowful eyes, and her anger passed away in pity. "What they say is right," she thought, "it is not his fault--he has grown foolish with much sorrow; his lonely life has made him almost mad. Poor Master Arfoll!"

By this time they had reached the outskirts of the village. Their way was a footpath winding hither and thither until it passed close under the walls of the old church. Here Marcelle, with a quiet squeeze of Rohan's hand and a quick glance at Master Arfoll, slipped away and disappeared.

The itinerant walked on without noticing her absence; his heart was too full, his brain too busy, and he held his eyes fixed upon the ground.

Rohan disturbed him abruptly from his reverie.

"Master Arfoll--tell me--speak--Marcelle is no longer here--what has happened? Something dreadful, I fear!"

Master Arfoll looked up wearily.

"Be not impatient to hear bad news--it will come soon enough, my son. There is a thunderstorm brewing, that is all."

"A thunderstorm?"

"That: and earthquake, and desolation. The snows of Russia are not tomb enough; we shall have the waters of the Rhine as well," he added, solemnly. "We are on the eve of a new conscription."

Rohan trembled, for he knew what that meant.

"And this time there are to be no exemptions except pères de familles! Prepare yourself, Rohan! This time even only sons will take their chance!"

Rohan's heart sank within him, his blood ran cold. A new and nameless horror took possession of him. Looking up, he saw in the distance the broken Calvary, like a sign of misery and desolation.

He was about to speak, when the church gate swung open, and forth from the churchyard stepped monsieur le curé, with his breviary tucked under his arm, and a short pipe, black as ebony with tobacco stains, held between his lips.

He walked with a waddle, his shoulders thrown back, his chest thrust forward, and his portly stomach shaking at every step. His legs were short and bandy, his arms long and powerful, his body long and loose and well covered with fat. There was nothing of the soft sybarite, however, about Father Rolland. He could run, leap, and wrestle with any man in Kromlaix.

His face was coloured almost to a mahogany hue by constant exposure to sun and wind, and above his dark brown cheeks glittered two eyes as black as coals, as comic as the eyes of any ignis fatuus. His mouth, from which he ever and anon drew his pipe to emit a cloud of smoke, was firm yet merry.

As he came out of the churchyard, he might have been taken for some comical bird unused to walking; for he waddled like any crow, and the skirts of his threadbare black cassock were drawn up clumsily, and his little legs in their worn black stockings appeared peeping out behind. Marcelle's uncle the Corporal, who exercised the old soldier's prerogative of inventing nick-names, and who had a keen eye for detecting odd resemblances, was in the habit of calling the birds who flocked to his window in wintertime "the little curés of God," and the robins in particular "the little curés au rabat rouge."

And truth to say, Father Rolland possessed in a large degree two strong characteristics of the robin redbreast--extreme patience and contentedness under difficulties, and an immense amount of good-natured pugnacity.

His life was hard, and had been a perilous one. He rose with the lark, although (to be quite honest) he not unfrequently went to bed with it! He lived in a dismal hut, where an Englishman would scarcely keep his cow; he was liable to be called out at any hour and in any weather to exercise his holy vocation; his food was miserable; and, to crown all his miseries, the "drink" of the country was vile!

Now, Father Rolland was a convivial man, a gourmet in good liquors--a man, indeed, who needed good liquor to loosen his tongue and complete his good-humour. He was by nature and instinct and habit a gossip. If the earth had been deserted, and himself left all alone with the Enemy of mankind, he would have gossiped and drunk with "Master Robert" for company. And in good sooth, he bore no malice in his heart to any creature--not even "Master Robert" or Bonaparte.

He had not been long curé in Kromlaix; his predecessor, whom Rohan Gwenfern had worried so tremendously, having only been removed some few years. But he was a native of the district, and knew every menhir, every village roof; and every fireside for miles along the coast. He still spoke his native Brezonec to perfection, and in using the politer French he was guilty, especially when excited, of a strong patois--pronouncing (for example) poëme as if it meant an apple (pomme), couteau, ktay, and chevaux, jvak. In recording his conversation in an English translation it would be quite impossible to follow this peculiarity, but the reader must imagine a thick shower of gutturals, very peculiar and very difficult for any but Bretons to comprehend.

Father Rolland had passed with a sound skin through all the storms of the Revolution and the Civil War. He was a man of no "ideas," and he performed his priestly functions--such as marrying and giving in marriage, shriving the sick and dying--automatically enough, with a certain eye to his monetary dues. The great Figures of Contemporary History passed like contending Titans above his head; he saw them from afar, and discussed them with unconcern. He was not the stuff of which martyrs are made. His sole business was with his flock, to whom he ever commended patience, good gossip, and contented drinking.

To sum up, his intellectual grasp was small, but his scholastic attainments were fair. He was a good Latinist, an excellent grammarian, and he counted among his stock of quotations some half-dozen lines of Homer, among others the famous

Deine de klagge genet argureoio bioio

and the still more famous and commonplace

Be d'akeon para thina polyphloisboi thalasses

both of which he hurled at the heads of new acquaintances in a thick patois with all the charm of novelty.

Conceive, then, a jovial peasant taken from the soil and supplied with a little learning, and you have Father Rolland.

As he sallied from the church gate he held out both his brown hands to Master Arfoll, and nodded kindly to Rohan.

He had a greeting for everybody, had Father Rolland--Legitimist, Bonapartist, or Republican; and Master Arfoll's love of the "rights of man" did not daunt him. The only recusant and hopeless offender was the parishioner who had not paid his dues, or who attempted in any way to diminish the Priest's perquisites! Yet Father Rolland was not mean. He demanded his rights on principle, and then when they were paid, whether in the shape of money or grain, he rattled them in his pocket or stored them in his yard, and incontinently chuckled over them. And then, perhaps the very next day, he turned them into bread or wine or brandy, and shared them among the sick and hungry at his door.

"Welcome, Master Arfoll!" cried the curé, "You are a stranger to Kromlaix; 'tis months since we had a glass or a pipe together. Where have you been? What have you been doing? Welcome again!"

As he spoke his brown face beamed with pleasure.

Master Arfoll returned the greeting gently. They walked on a few paces side by side.

Presently the priest, linking his arm familiarly through that of Master Arfoll, while Rohan strode beside them like the giant that he was, began to demand his news.

The itinerant shook his head sadly.

"News, father," he exclaimed. "Ah, there is none--only, of course, the old bad news. Red blood on the battle-field, and black crape in all the lands around. I do not think that it can last long--the patience of the world is exhausted."

"Humph!" muttered the curé, with his fat little finger in the bowl of his pipe. "The world seems topsy-turvy, honest brother--it is standing on its head."

It seemed odd to the little curé more odd than terrible. He had seen so much of terror and death that he had no particular horror for them, or for War. In his heart he loved, as in duty bound, the White better than the Blue, but he would never have instigated any man to die for the White. The respectable sort of thing, he believed, was to die, after "anointing," in one's bed at home. He nevertheless believed battles, large and small, to be the expression of an irrepressible element in human nature, and he was not politician enough to blame any one in particular for encouraging bloodshed.

Master Arfoll continued, in a low voice--"I will tell you something, a small thing, but a sign of the end. I was stopping in a village far away east, and I entered the house of a woman who had lost both her sons in the last campaign, and but a week before buried her husband."

"God rest his soul!" interrupted the curé, making the sign of the cross.

"She was sitting on a form, staring into the fire, and her eyes seemed fixed and mad. I touched her on the shoulder, and she did not stir; I spoke, and she did not hear. By slow degrees I roused her from her trance. She rose mechanically, my father, and opened her press and set before me food and drink. Then she sat down again before the fire, and I saw that her hair was white, though she was not old. When I had eaten and drunken--for I was very hungry--I spoke to her again, and this time she listened, and I told her I was a schoolmaster and was seeking for pupils. 'What can you teach, master?' she asked suddenly turning her eyes on mine. I answered softly, telling her I could teach her children to write and read. She laughed, father--ah, it was a terrible laugh. 'Go then and seek them,' she cried, pointing to the door, 'and when you have found them in their graves among the snow, come back and teach me to curse the hand that killed them and buried them there. Teach me to curse the Emperor, teach me a curse that will drag him down! Teach me how to kill him, and curse him down into hell-fire! O my poor boys, my poor boys!--André! Jacques!' She shrieked, and cast herself down on her knees, and bit her hair between her teeth and spat it out. My heart was sick. I could not help her, and I crept away."

The curé nodded his head thrice musingly. He was well used to such grief; and it moved him little. Nevertheless, in the true spirit of a good gossip, he condoled.

"It is terrible--it is terrible indeed, Master Arfoll!"

"That is but one house out of thousands upon thousands. The curses go up to God. Shall they not be heard?"

"Softly, Master Arfoll," murmured the curé, with an anxious glance around, "some one may hear you."

"I care not," cried the schoolmaster. "The Emperor may be a great tactician, a great engineer, a great soldier, but he is not a great man, for he has no heart. Mark me, my father, this is the beginning of the end. It is your Christ against the Emperor, and Christ will win."

The little curé made no reply; such language was terribly serious, and the times were dangerous. He compromised.

"After all, if the Emperor could but give us peace!"

"Could? And could he not?" asked the itinerant suddenly.

"All the world is against our France," answered the curé.

"All humanity is against our Emperor," retorted Master Arfoll.

"But the Emperor fights for France, Master Arfoll. Without him, the English, and the Russians, and the Germans would eat us up alive." He added, seeing Master Arfoll's half amazed, half indignant look, "Well, I am no politician!"

"You have eyes and you can see, my father. It is well to stay at Kromlaix by the sea, far away from the march of men, but were you to wander out on the broad highway, you would know. It is all a living sacrifice to feed the horrible vanity of one Man. How should he give us peace? His trade is war. He declares now that it is England that will not allow him to make peace; he declares that it is for peace he fights. he lies, he lies!"

"Strong language, Master Arfoll!"

"When last he rode through the streets of Paris, the common people clamoured to him for peace, peace at any cost. They might as well have prayed to the great Stone up yonder; he passed on silent like a marble man, and did not hear them. Ah, God! the people are weary, father! they would rest!"

"That is true," exclaimed Rohan in a decided tone. The curé glanced at Rohan.

"Master Arfoll has taught you to think with him in many things, and Master Arfoll is a good man, whether he is right or wrong. But beware, my son, of hot speeches here in Kromlaix. What Master Arfoll could say boldly, might cost you your liberty, and perhaps your life."

He did not explain, what was a fact, that Master Arfoll was by a large majority of people considered simply insane, and in no way responsible for the strange things he said and did. Even Bonapartist officials heard his diatribes with a smile, and touched their foreheads significantly when he had finished. This is not the only instance on record of the one sane man in a district being mistaken for a Fool.

"I will remember," answered Rohan, half shrugging his great shoulders.

"The people are right, Father Rolland!" resumed the schoolmaster. "The wealth and pride of France is being blown away in cannon smoke. The loss of mere money would be little, had we only strong hands to work for more. But where are those same strong hands? The conscription has lopped them off with its bloody knife, and left us only the useless stumps."

"Not quite all," answered the priest, smiling; "for example, Rohan here has a pair of strong fists, and there are many bold lads left beside."

Master Arfoll glanced strangely at Rohan, and then said in a voice more tremulous than before--"The conscription is famished still--the monster cries for more human flesh. Out there"--and he pointed with his lean hand inland, as at some scene afar off--"out there the land is a desert, ay, darker than the desert of La Bruyère,--for the men who should till it are lying under the growing grain of strange countries, or in the deep sea, or beneath the snow. I tell you, father, France is desolate; she has nursed a serpent in her bosom: it has stung her children one by one, and it is now stinging her. Oh, how deaf you must be out here at Kromlaix by the sea, not to hear her crying--not to hear the new Rachel, wailing and weeping for her children!"

Master Arfoll had mounted his hobby, and there is no saying how far he would have ridden in his denunciation of Avatarism; but suddenly monsieur le curé put his plump hand on his arm and whispered--"Hush!"

Master Arfoll paused suddenly, not too soon, for as be ceased a clear sharp voice quickly demanded--"Who is this new RACHEL, Master Arfoll?"

The speaker sat on a form in the open sunshine, at his own door, in the main street of the village. He wore horn spectacles, tied to his ears by pieces of string, and he held in his hand a paper which he had just been reading.

His face was as red as a berry; his hair, which was cropped close, reminded one of a stubble white with hoar-frost.

His dress, half rustic half military, consisted of a loose open corporal's jacket from which the epaulets and adornments had long been worn away, loose trousers reaching to the knee, and beneath the knee, one light red stocking and an old slipper, for he had only one natural leg, the place of the other being supplied by a sturdy implement of wood.

"Good morning, Uncle Ewen!" said the curé, anxious to divert attention from Master Arfoll's last remarks, while Rohan gave good-morrow too, and shook his uncle's hand.

For it was none other than Corporal Derval who sat there, the hero of many battles, the liege worshipper of Bonaparte, and uncle to both Rohan and Marcelle.

The Corporal, who well knew and detested Master Arfoll's sentiments, was not to be baffled; so after greeting the schoolmaster and shaking his hand, he repeated his question--

"But what about this new Rachel, Master Arfoll?" he said, taking off his spectacles.

The wondering scholar thus challenged pointblank, showed the courage of his opinions, and replied--"I spoke of these latter days of France, Corporal Derval; another conscription, it appears, is talked of; and it seems to me the best blood of the country is drained away already. I compared our poor country to Rachel, who grieved for the children who had gone from her, and would not be comforted. That was all."

The veteran did not reply, but rose suddenly to his feet.

"That was all!" he repeated, in a voice like low thunder. As he spoke the forefinger and thumb of his left hand were plunged violently into his waistcoat pocket, while his right hand made a pass in the air and was plunged back into one of his coat tails; then forefinger and thumb, grasping a mighty pinch of snuff; were applied vigorously to his swelling nostrils, while he threw out his chest and stamped on the ground with his leg of wood!

In a moment one detected, despite the wooden leg, a curious and comical resemblance. Viewed cursorily sideways, in his quaint old imperial coat with its worn facings, in his black hat cocked à 1' Empereur, with his chest thrust forward and his legs wide apart, the wooden one shut out by the leg of flesh, he looked like a very bad and battered copy of the great Emperor; like a Napoleon with a Wellington nose, and six feet high; like (let us say) Mr. Gomersal at Astley's got up for the part, and really very much resembling the real thing, but for his nose, his height, and a certain shakiness in his legs.

Seen very closely, his face was deeply bronzed and wrinkled and scarred, his eyes of a piercing blackness, his chin and neck closely shaven, with prominent muscles standing out like whipcord, his nose vermilion-tipped and dew-dropped, his nostrils dilating and looking very black--the result of a habit of prodigal snuff-taking, which he shared with his great namesake "the Little Corporal".

It must not be supposed that he was ignorant of his resemblance to his Emperor and Master. He had been told of it, and he believed and gloried in it; it was the pride and delight of his existence. He assumed the imperial pose habitually--legs well apart, chest thrown out, hands clasped behind his back, head musingly dejected, all in the well-known fashion. And when Marcelle or some good gossip would whisper admiringly, "See! would you not say it was the Emperor himself?" or "God save us, it might be the Little Corporal's ghost!" his heart expanded exultingly, and his nose took a deeper red, and he strode on his own threshold like a colossus overstriding the world; and he saw his neighbours and his foes beneath his feet, like so many kings and princes; and he sniffed the air of battle from afar, and, snuffing vigorously, laid the plan of some cabaret campaign; and he went over his old glories like his Master, and sighed as he reflected that he could not hasten to further victories on his wooden leg!

Not that he was irreverent. He knew how far off he was from his Idol; he knew that the resemblance was that of a pigmy to a giant. His brother's wife was a religious woman, and the arid wind of French atheism had spared their hearth; so that he believed in God if not in the Saints, for to him there seemed but one saint in the calendar--St. Napoleon!

With all his good qualities, Corporal Derval was rather an unpopular man in Kromlaix. The village lay far away from ordinary political contagion, and though it had once, like the rest of Brittany, caught a particle of the Legitimist fever that time was well-nigh forgotten; but the chief prayer of the honest folk was to let Napoleon fight it out, and leave them alone. Of course this could not be; so they heartily cursed the conscription, and, in their hearts, Bonaparte. There being too many Bonapartist enthusiasts in the place to make open grumbling safe, the inhabitants held their tongues, sighed secretly for the days of the old régime, and avoided in particular any passage of words with the old Corporal

"That was all!" repeated the soldier a second time "Humph!--and you, Master Arfoll, believe that!"

"I am sure of it, my Corporal."

The Corporal's face grew red as the tip of his nose, his black eyes flashed terribly, he snapped his snuff-box fiercely, then opening it again, took from it a huge pinch, and drew it up into his dilated nostrils with a snort of angry scorn.

The action gave him time to master the first rush of savage wrath, and he answered civilly, though his voice trembled with excitement--"Your reasons, Master Arfoll?--come, your reasons?"

The schoolmaster smiled sadly.

"You may behold them with your eyes, my Corporal," he said. "Women sow and reap our fields--women and old men over fifty--the flower of our youth is gathered up with the bloody sheaves of war, and in a little time France will fall, for there will scarce be one hand to lift a sword."

Master Arfoll spoke of course hyperbolically; but as if directly to falsify his assertion, there suddenly came forth, from the Corporal's own door, four gigantic youths, in all the bloom of health and strength, whom Rohan greeted with a smile and a nod. These were the Corporal's four nephews--Hoël, Gildas, Alain, and Jannick.

The Corporal stood aghast, like one who hears blasphemy against his God; an oath unmentionable to ears polite was hissing between his teeth, half heard, but incomprehensible.

It was time for the little curé to interfere.

He plucked the old soldier by the sleeve, and whispered--"Calm yourself, Corporal! Remember it is only Master Arfoll!"

The words were as oil on water, and the Corporal's features relaxed somewhat. Slowly his stern frown grew into a grim contemptuous smile as he surveyed his antagonist. His look was supreme, Napoleonic. He surveyed the itinerant as Bonaparte would have surveyed one of those liliputians of the period--a King.

Nevertheless heresy had been uttered, and for the benefit of those who had overheard the abomination, it must be confuted.

The Corporal assumed a military attitude.

"Attention!" he cried; as if addressing a file of raw recruits.

All started. The youths, who had been leaning sheepishly in various attitudes against the wall, stood up erect.

"Attention!--Hoël!"

"Here!" answered the youth of that name.

"Gildas!"

"Here!"

"Alain!"

"Here!"

"Jannick!"

"Here!"

All stood in a row, like soldiers regarding their superior.

"Listen, all of you, for it concerns you all. Attention, while I answer Master Arfoll."

He turned to the schoolmaster. All his wrath had departed, and his voice was quite clear and calm.

"Master Arfoll, I will not say you blaspheme, for you have had sorrows enough to turn any man's brain, however wise; and you are a scholar, and you travel from village to village, and from farm to farm, all over the country. Like that a man learns much, but you have something yet to learn. 1 have read my history as well as you. France has not fallen, she is not like that Rachel of whom you speak! She is great! she is sublime! like the mother of the Maccabees!"

The comparison was a happy one. It was at once patriotic and religious. The little curé kindled, and looked at Master Arfoll as if to say, "There! answer that if you can, good friend!" The youths smiled at each other. They did not understand the allusion, but it was delivered like a musket-ball and seemed decisive. Rohan smiled too, but shrugged his shoulders with secret contempt.

The Corporal looked for a rejoinder, but none came.

Master Arfoll stood silent, a little pale, but with a pitying light on his sad and beautiful face that spoke far more than words; and his eyes rested on the Corporal with that sad affection good men feel for antagonists hopelessly deluded.

The veteran threw out his chest still more, displaying more prominently the medal of the Legion of Honour: and again, this time with a proud victorious smile, gave the word of command.

"Attention! Hoël, Gildas, Alain, and Jannick!"

The youths became rigid; but Jannick, who was the youthful humourist of the family, winked at Rohan, as much as to say, "Uncle is going ahead!"

"These are my boys; they were my poor brother's, and they are mine; you see them; they are mine, for my brother gave them into my keeping, and I have been a father to them, and to their sister Marcelle. I call them my sons, they are all I have in the world; I love them, I. They were little children when I took them, and who has fed them since that hour? I! Yes, but whose hand has given me the bread I gave to them? The Emperor, the great Emperor! God guard him, and give him victory over his enemies!"

As he spoke, his voice now trembling with emotion, he raised his hat reverently and stood bareheaded, the bright light burning on his bronzed face and snow-white hair. Such faith was as touching as it was contagious. Even a chouan might have been tempted to cry like those four youths with their voices of thunder: "Vive 1' Empereur!"

The veteran replaced his hat upon his head, and held up his hand for silence.

"The 'Little Corporal' forgets none of his children--no, not one! He has remembered these fatherless ones, he has fed them, and he has enabled them to become what you see! They have been taught to pray for him nightly, and their prayers have mingled with the prayers of millions, and these prayers have brought victory to him over the wide earth."

Master Arfoll, though gentle as a lamb, was human. An opportunity occurred of answering the Corporal's former furious fire, and he found it irresistible. While the veteran paused for breath, the Schoolmaster said, in a low voice, not raising his eyes from the ground--

"And what of their three brothers, Corporal Derval?"

The blow struck home, and for a moment the blood was driven from the soldier's cheek. Far away in foreign climes slept, with no stone to mark their graves, three other brothers of the same house, who had fallen at different times--two among the awful snows of Moscow.

The veteran trembled, and his eyes glanced for a moment uneasily into the house, where he knew sat his brother's widow, the mother of those dead and these living. Then he answered sternly--"Their souls are with God, and their bodies are at rest, and they died gloriously as brave men should die. Is it better to fall like that, or to breathe the last breath in a coward's bed? to die like a soldier, or to pass away like an old woman or a child? They did their duty, Master Arfoll--may we all do ours as well!"

"Amen!" said the little curé.

"And now," continued the Bonapartist, "if the 'little Corporal' away yonder should hold up his snuff-box"--he suited the action to the word--"and cry 'Corporal Ewen Derval, I have need of more of your boys,' they would smile--Hoël, Gildas, Alain, and Jannick--they would smile all four!--and I, the old grenadier of Cismone, Arcola and Austerlitz, I, do you see, with my rheumatism and my wooden leg, would march to join him--rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat--quick march!--at the head of my Maccabees!"

Strictly speaking, the enthusiasm of the Maccabees seemed greatly reduced by the sepulchral turn the conversation had taken. Hoël, Gildas, and Alain did not this time cry "Vive 1' Empereur," and the irreverent Jannick put his tongue in his cheek.

Another voice, however, now chimed in enthusiastically--

"And I would march with you, Uncle Ewen!"

It was Marcelle.

Standing on the threshold of the cottage, with her eye flashing and her cheek burning, she looked a Maccabee indeed.

Uncle Ewen turned quickly, and surveyed her with pride.

"Thou shouldst have been a man-child too!" he exclaimed, snuffing vigorously to conceal the emotion that filled his throat and dimmed his eyes; "but there, go too!" he added, with a grim laugh, "thou shalt be the vivandière of the Maccabees and watch the bivouac fire. But, mon Dieu, I forget, chouan that I am. I am keeping your reverence in the street--will you not walk in, Father Rolland?"

So saying, he stalked, clip-clop, to the door, and stood there bowing with a politeness uncommon among his class, but characteristic of the Breton peasant. The little curé followed, with a friendly nod to Master Arfoll, and the two disappeared into the cottage.

Master Arfoll stood with Rohan in the middle of the road; then, after hesitating a moment, he said hurriedly, holding out his hand--"Meet me to-night at thy mother's--I must go now!" Without awaiting any reply, Master Arfoll retreated rapidly down the narrow street leading to the sea, leaving Rohan to the society of his cousins--the gigantic Maccabees.

All that day Marcelle was full of the stirring of a new sweet trouble; she moved to and fro like one in a dream, to a music unheard by any ears save hers; her colour went and came, her hand trembled as she cut the black bread and made the galettes; she was low-spoken and loving with her brothers, and she had strange impulses to kiss her mother and the Corporal. Her mother looked at her very curiously, for, having loved herself; she half suspected what it all meant.

Silent love is sweet, but love first spoken is sweeter, for it brings with it calm assurance and love's first kiss. Up to that day Rohan had never spoken what was moving in the hearts of both; up to that hour he had never done more than kiss her on both cheeks, in the ordinary Breton fashion.

Now their lips had met, their silent plight was sealed. The meeting with Master Arfoll had somewhat depressed her, but the cloud soon passed away. She did not in her heart doubt for a moment that Rohan was a good Christian in both senses, believing first in God and secondly in the great