Chapter I.

By the time she had reached the narrow strip of beach, one of the few and difficult landing-places which the island offered, the two fishermen were already out of the boat, which they were mooring to an iron ring fastened in the rock. One of the men was young; the other might be, from his appearance, between sixty and seventy. A strange jerking gait, which was disclosed as soon as he began to move on his own feet, suggested the idea that his natural habitat was the sea, and that he was as little at ease on land as some kinds of waterfowl appear to be when walking. He could not hold himself upright when on one foot, so that his whole person turned first to one side and then to the other as he walked.

"Marie!" he called to the girl as she alighted at the bottom of the cliff, and he shouted something briefly which the strange jargon in which it was spoken and the gruff, wind-roughened voice of the speaker, would have made unintelligible to any but a native of the islands.

The girl, without replying, took the basket of fish which he handed her, slung it on her back by a rope passed over one shoulder, and stationed herself at the foot of the path, waiting for him to begin the ascent: the younger man, who was busy with the tackle of the boat, apparently intending to stay behind.

"Now, Daddy, hoist away!" she cried in her clear, piping voice, using, like her father, the island dialect; and he dragged himself up to the first iron hold, wriggling his large, awkward form into strange contortions, till he found a secure position and could wait till his young assistant was beside him once more. She sprang up like a cat and balanced herself safely within reach of him. It was odd to see the implicit confidence with which he let her lift and place his feet; having now to support herself by the rope she had only one hand to spare; but the feat was accomplished each time with the same precision and skill, till the precipitous part of the ascent was passed and they had commenced the zigzag path.

Then Marie took her daddy's arm under hers, and carefully steadied the difficult, ricketty gait, supporting the heavy figure with a practised skill which took the place of strength in her slight frame. Her features were formed after the same pattern as his, the definite profile, tense spreading nostril, and firm lips, being repeated with merely feminine modifications; and as her clear, merry eyes, freshened by the sea-breeze, flashed with fun at the stumblings and uncertainties of their course, they met the same expression of mirth in his hard-set, rocky face.

"I'd sooner have their company than his, any day," with a little moue in the direction of the cove. "I just wish you wouldn't take him out fishing with you, Daddy, that I do!"

"Why not, girl?"

"It's he as works for himself and cares for himself and for no one else, does Pierre," said the girl. "Comin' a moonin' round and pretending he's after courting me, when all he wants, with takin' the fish round and that, is to get the custom into his own hands, and tells folks, if he had the ordering of it, there'd be no fear about them getting their fish punctual."

"Tells 'em that, does he?" said the father, his sea-blue eyes suddenly clouding over.

"That he does; and says he'd take up the inshore fishing, if he'd the money to spend: and they should be supplied regular with crabs and shrimps and such; and then drops a word that poor André he's gettin' old, and what with being lame, and one thing and another, what can you expect, and such blathers!"

"Diable! Do you know that for certain, child?" said André, stopping in the path, and turning round upon her with a face ablaze with anger. "I should like to hear him sayin' that, I should."

"H'm! 'Poor André a gettin' old,' is he?" grunted her father, somewhat calmed. "Poor André won't be takin' him out with him again just yet awhile—that's a certain thing. Paul Nevin would suit me a deal better in many ways, only I' bin keepin' Pierre on out o' charity, his pore father havin' bin a pal o' mine. But he's a deal stronger in the arms, is Paul."

They reached the cottage, which stood on the first piece of level ground on the way to the mainland. There was no other building within sight; and with its bleak boulders and rocks of strangest form, in perpetual death-struggle with the mighty force of ocean, resounding night and day with the rush and tramp of the wild sea-horses, as they flung themselves in despair on their rocky adversary, and with the many voices of the winds, which scarcely ever ceased blowing in that exposed spot, while the weird notes of the sea-fowl floated in the air, like the cries of wandering spirits, the solitary headland seemed indeed as if it might be the world's end.

It was here that Marie had lived, ever since she could remember, in close and contented companionship with her father: whom indeed, especially since he had the fever which crippled him three years before, she had fed, clothed, nursed and guarded with a care almost more motherly than filial.

Chapter II.

"And high time it is too that André had his eyes opened," rejoined Mrs. Nevin; "often it is I've told Marie, as there she stands, that her father don't ought to trust the fish-sellin' too much to that Pierre: a lad as could rob his own grandmother the moment the life was out o' her body."

"Well, Mother, you've often told me about that five franc piece, but nobody can't say that she hadn't given it him before she died, as he said—"

"Given it him, I should think so, when she never would have aught to say to him for all his wheedling ways, and his brother Jacques was her favourite; and poor old lady if she'd a known that Pierre was goin' to be alone with her, when she went off suddint in a fit, I guess she'd a locked up her purse first, I do."

"Well, I must say he turned a queer colour when he heard André say he didn't want him no more: and you should have seen the look he gave him, sort of squintin' out of his eyes at him, when he went away. He ain't a man I would like to meet unawares in a dark lane, if I'd a quarrel with him."

Marie's slight, girlish figure vanished quickly round the turning in the lane, and Mrs. Nevin could not see her pass swiftly by her own cottage, and up the ridge to the old mill. When she reached the point at which the path began to descend to the cove, she paused and looked down. The keen glance and alert figure, poised on guard, suggested the idea of a mother bird watching her nest from afar. The tide had gone out sufficiently for the boats to be drawn up on the eight or ten feet of the shelving shore, which was thus laid bare, and the glowing light of the sunset touched in slanting rays the head and hands of an old man seated on a rock and bending over some fishing tackle, which he seemed to be repairing.

Her clear, defiant tone put the meaning of a whole discourse into the word. The man turned sharply round with an expression of vindictive malice in his fox-like face.

"Well, what do you want?"

"What are you doing here, please?"

"What's that to you, I should like to know?"

"Come nearer, then I can hear what you say."

"I sha'n't come no nearer than I choose."

"Don't be afraid. I ain't a-goin' to hurt you!"

The taunt seemed to have effect, for he leaped hurriedly along over the rocky path, with an angry, threatening air that would have frightened some girls. Marie stood like the rock beneath her.

"Now, Miss, I'll teach you to come interfering with business that's none o' yourn. What, you thought you'd come after me, did yer? because you was tired o' waitin' for me to come after you again, I suppose."

"It don't matter to you what I've got in my pocket," he rejoined, but his tone was uncertain. "I brought it to cut the tackle—we've got a job of mending to do."

"I don't know whether you think me an idiot," she replied; "but if you want me to believe your stories you'd better invent 'em more reasonable. Now, Pierre, this is what you've got to do before you leave this spot. You've got to promise me solemnly not to go near Daddy, nor threaten him as you once threatened me on a day you may remember, nor try to intimidate him into takin' you back. Neither down in the cove, nor anything else: neither now, nor at any other time."

Her girlish figure as she stood with one arm clasping the rock beside her, looked a slight enough obstacle in the path.

"Intimidate him! A parcel o' rubbish; who's goin' to intimidate him as you call it. Get out o' the way, and don't go meddling in men's concerns that you know nothing about."

"The jade," he muttered, "she did it on purpose," and even with his hatred and malice was mingled a gleam of admiration at the cleverness that had outwitted him. He hurried on towards the cliff path, but the sunset light was already fading into dusk, and he had to choose his footing more carefully. When he reached the point where the rope began, Marie had already gone down and was leaning on the rock beside her father. Had he been near he might have noticed a strange expression in her eyes, as she furtively watched the precipitous descent. The purple shadows now filled both sky and sea, and the island opposite reared its grand outline solemnly in the twilight depths, as though sitting in eternal judgment on the transient ways of men. The evening star shone softly above the sea. Suddenly a crash, followed by one sharp cry, was heard; then all was still.

"Good God! That's some one fallen down the path—why don't you go and see, child?" but Marie seemed as if she could not stir. Old André slowly dragged himself on to his feet, and took her arm, and they went together. At the foot of the path they found the body of Pierre, dead, his head having struck against a rock.

"He must have missed his footing in the dark; and then the rope broke with his weight and the clutch he give it. It lies there all loose on the ground."

"It shouldn't have broken," said the constable. "But I always did say we'd ought to have an iron chain down there."

Chapter III.

Fifty years had passed, with all their seasons' changes, and the changing life of nature both by land and sea, and had made as little impression on the island as the ceaseless dashing of the waves against its coast. The cliffs, the caves and the sea-beaten boulders were the same; the colours of the bracken on the September hills, and of the sea anemones in their green, pellucid pools, were the same, and the fishermen's path down to the cove was the same. No iron chain had been put there, but the rope had never broken again.

The good French pastor, who struggled to discharge the offices of religion in that impoverished and for the most part socially abandoned spot, had just allowed himself to be persuaded by his wife that it was unnecessary to visit his sick parishioner at the other end of the island that afternoon, when a loud rat-tat was heard in the midst of a shriek of wind, through a grudged inch of open door-way. The hurricane burst into the house while a dripping, breathless girl panted forth her message, that "old Marie" had been suddenly taken bad, and was dying, and wanted but one thing in the world, to see the Vicar.

"I wonder what it is she has got to say," said the Vicar, as his wife buttoned his mackintosh up to his throat. "I always did think there was something strange about old Marie."

A mile of bitter, breathless battling with the storm, then a close cottage-room, with rain-flooded floor, the one small window carefully darkened, and on a pillow in the furthest corner, shaded by heavy bed-curtains, a wrinkled old woman's face, pinched and colourless, on which the hand of Death lay visibly.

But in the eagerness with which she signed to the pastor to come close, and in the keen glance she cast round the room to see that no one else was near, the vigour of life still asserted itself.

She lowered her voice, and spoke in a hoarse whisper.

The failing eye was fixed on the pastor's face, as if it would search his soul for the truth. The fellow-being, on whom she laid so great a burden, for one moment, quailed: then spoke assuring words of the mercy of that God to whom all hearts are open: but already the ebbing strength, too severely strained in the effort of disclosure, was passing away, and the words of comfort were spoken to ears that were closed in death.

Under the South wall of the island burying-ground is a nameless grave: where in the summer days fragments of toys and nose-gays are often to be seen scattered about; for the sunny corner is a favourite play-place, and the voices of children sound there; and they trample with their little feet the grass above Marie's grave, and strew wild flowers on it.

Part I.

n a wild and little-known part of the coast of Brittany, where, in place of sandy beach or cliff, huge granite boulders lie strewn along the shore, like the ruins of some Titan city, and assuming, here the features of some uncouth monster, there the outline of some gigantic fortress, present an aspect of mingled farce and solemnity, and give the whole region the air of some connection with the under-world,—on this coast, and low down among the boulders out to sea, stands a little fishing village.

The second inhabitant of the cottage was Aimée's son, Jean, the fisherman, with his blue blouse, and his swarthy, rough-hewn face, beaten by wind and weather into an odd sort of resemblance to the rocks among which he passed his life—the hardy and primitive life to which he had been born, and to which all his ideas were limited, a life of continual struggle with the elements for the satisfaction of primary needs, and which was directed by the movements of nature, by the tides, the winds, and the rising and setting of the sun and the moon.

And thirdly there was Jean's nephew, Antoine.

In the confused clamour of harsh Breton speech that arose, as neighbours rushed to separate the two and friends took one side or the other, Antoine strode away with a brain on fire and a mind intent on one object—to prove the lie at once.

Presently clattering sabots were heard coming down the road, and he perceived old Jeanne Le Gall trudging along, her back nearly bent double under a large bundle of dried sea-weed. She and her goat lived in the low, rubble-built hovel, that adjoined the Pierrés' cottage, and from her lonely, eccentric habits, and uncanny appearance, she had the reputation of being a sorceress. Antoine called to her to know where Marie was.

"Gone to the widow Conan's," mumbled the old woman, her strange eyes gleaming under the sprays of sea-weed, "she and her father and mother, all of them."

She deposited her load, and hobbled off again, fixing her eyes on Antoine as she turned away, but saying nothing more.

Antoine strolled a little down the lane, seated himself on the steps of the cross at the corner, and waited—evening was drawing on and they were sure to return before dark.

Presently the cluck, cluck of the sabots was heard again, and old Jeanne slowly approached him from behind. She said something in her toothless, mumbling way, and held out a crumpled bit of paper in her shaking hand. He opened it and read, scrawled as if in haste, in ill-spelt Breton:

As he studied the writing, the old woman's mumblings became more articulate. She was saying, "'Twas the child Conan should have brought it an hour ago. But he is ever good-for-nothing, and forgot it."

Antoine looked at the sun, which was already westering, and perceived that he must set out to meet Marie in half-an-hour. He got up and walked slowly towards the sandy shore of the little inlet, wide and wet at low tide, on the other side of which lay his own home. He walked slowly, but he felt as if he were hurrying at a headlong pace. The thought kept going round and round in his brain like a little torturing wheel, which nothing would stop, that after all Marie was going to the Dwarf's Valley this evening, just as Geoffroi had said. Geoffroi's words were still sounding in his ears, and his right hand was clenched, as he had clenched it when the whirlwind of anger first convulsed him.

He entered his own cottage, hardly knowing what he did.

Old Aimée was bending over the cauldron, cutting up cabbage for the soup.

"Good-bye, Grandmother," he said. "I am going to the Dwarf's Valley."

Aimée looked up at him out of her keen old eyes.

"And why are you going there in the dark?" she said, "'Tis an evil meeting place after the sun has set."

"The blessed Saints protect you," she replied, "less you should meet Whom you would not."

Antoine strode out again, without saying more. He fancied he was in the Valley of Dwarfs already, about to meet Marie. He saw the weird, gnarled trunks of trees on either hand, that grew among—sometimes writhed around—the huge fantastic boulders: the dark cave-like recesses, formed strangely between and under them where the dwarfs lay hidden to emerge at dusk: the sides of the ravine towering up stern and gloomy on either hand: and high above all against the sky, the grey stone cross at which he was to meet Marie. He saw it all as if he were there, and the ground beneath him, as he tramped on, seemed unreal. Twilight was already falling over the rocks and the grey sea: there were no lights in the village, except such as shone here and there in a cottage window: the distant roar of the sea was heard, as it dashed over a long line of rocks two or three miles out, but there was hardly any other sound: the place indeed seemed God-abandoned, like some long-forgotten strand of a dead world, with the skeleton house on the rock above for its forsaken citadel.

Geoffroi was the first to speak.

"You gave me the lie this afternoon. Take it back now and see what you think of the taste of it. Would you like to see Marie?"

"What are you saying? What is it to you when I see Marie?"

Antoine's voice sounded hollow and muffled as he replied, "Stand out of the path. You have nought to do between her and me."

"You think so? Then you shall learn what I have to do. You think you are going to meet her at the cross at six o'clock. But you will not, you will meet her sooner than that. It was I that sent you that message, and I have advanced the time by half an hour. Am I not kind?"

Antoine's hand was on his collar like an iron vice.

"What have you done with her? Where is she?"

Geoffroi writhed himself free with movements lithe like those of a panther. "Will you take back the lie," he said, "or will you see the proof with your own eyes?"

He was turning with a mocking sign to Antoine to follow, when from the left of the rock beside which they stood, there darted forward the white-coiffed figure of a girl, who with extended arms and agonized face, rushed up to Geoffroi, crying, "Take me away—I have seen Them! Take me away."

Antoine followed her, stumbling through the darkness, but his speed was no match for the madness of fear, and his steps were still to be heard crashing through the furze bushes and loose stones, when the white coiffe had flitted, like some bird of night, round the projecting boulders of the sea-coast, and disappeared.

Part II.

The cry brought to their doors, one after another, the occupants of the neighbouring cottages; and as the dark-shawled, free-stepping Breton women gathered round, for the clattering of sabots and of tongues, it might have been a group of black sea-fowl clamouring over some 'trouvaille' of the sea, thrown up among their rocks.

They raised her painfully, with kind but ungentle hands, wept and called on the saints, availing little in any way, till the heavy tramp of a fisherman's nailed boots was heard on the rocks, and Antoine thrust the throng aside, and bending over, took her up in his arms, as a mother might her child, and without a word bore her along the road towards her home.

But he had scarcely placed her on the settle beside the bed, when her eyes opened, and as they rested on him, again the look of terror came into them: she flung herself away from him with a scream, and sobbing and uttering strange sounds of fear and aversion, was hardly to be held by the other women.

"She has lost her wits!" they cried. "Our Blessed Lady help her!"

Anyone unaware of the hold which superstition has over the Breton mind, would perhaps hardly believe that the women stood round awe-struck at this revelation, seeing nothing improbable in it. In spite of her dangerous state of excitement, they eagerly pressed her with questions as to what she had seen, and what Jeanne had said, but she had become too incoherent to satisfy them, and only flung herself wildly about, crying, "Let me go—he will kill me—let me go:" till she suddenly sank down motionless on the pillow, was silent for a few moments, and then began to murmur over and over in an awe-struck, eager whisper, "Go to the Black Stone this night, and you shall see. Go to the Black Stone this night, and you shall see."

Aimée's face was like a cut diamond, so keen and bright was it, as leaning on her stick, which she struck on the floor from time to time with the emphasis of her speech, she said in her shrill Breton tones:—

"Mademoiselle Jeanne, I have come to ask of you what evil lie it is that you have told to the child Marie, that lies on her death-bed yonder. Come. You have been bribed by Geoffroi, that I know, and a son will purchase snuff, and for that you will sell your soul. Good—It is for you to do what you will with your own affairs: but when you cause an injury to my belle-fille, so that she becomes like a mad woman and dies, I come to ask you for an account of what you have done, Mademoiselle: that you may undo what you have done, while there is yet time, Mademoiselle."

Jeanne's thin, stern lips trembled, almost as if in fear, as she listened to Aimée. She turned her shaking head slowly towards her, then fixed her deep eyes on hers, and said:

"I have warned your belle-fille, that she may be saved. It was my love for her. Let her have nought to do with Them that dwell in the rocks and the trunks of the great trees."

Old Aimée shook her stick on the floor with rage.

The thin lips in the strange face trembled more. "The old sorceress dwells alone, abandoned of all," she murmured. "If she take not a sou when one or another will give it her, how shall she contrive to live?"

"What is it," demanded Aimée, with increasing shrillness, "that you have told the child Marie about my grandson?"

A look of cunning suddenly drove away the expression of conscious guilt in Jeanne's face. She dropped her eyes on the floor, mumbled inarticulately a moment, and then said shiftily, "You have perhaps a few sous in your pocket, Madame, to show good-will to the sorceress; for without good-will she cannot tell you what you seek to know."

Aimée's keen eyes flashed, as drawing forth two sous from her pocket, she said in a tone of incisive contempt, "You shall have these, Mademoiselle, but not till you have told me the whole truth, as you would to the curé at confession. Come then—say."

The sorceress began with shuffling tones and glances, which grew more sure as she went on:

"I watched for the little one returning on the afternoon of Sunday—he told me to do so. I was to give her the message that Antoine desired to meet with her at the entrance of the Dwarf's Valley: I had but to give the message: it was not my fault. I am but a poor old woman that does the bidding of others."

Jeanne looked at her interlocutor again, and a strange expression grew in her eyes.

"It is Jeanne that knows the Evil Ones, that knows their shape and their speech. She knows them when they walk among men, and she knows them in their homes in the dark valley."

"Chut, chut," cried Aimée, the more irritably that her maternal feelings had to overcome her natural inclination to superstition. "It is only one thing you have to tell—how did you frighten Marie so that she is ready to go out of her wits at the sight of Antoine?"

"Nay, it was Geoffroi that frightened her, as they went up the ravine together. I had but told her not to go alone, for that They were abroad that night." The old woman broke into a curious chuckle. "How she shivered, like a chicken in the wind! H'ch, h'ch! Then he took hold of her arm and led her away, for I had told her he was a safe protector against the spirits, not like some that wear the face of man and go up and down in the village, saying that the people should not believe in Jeanne the sorceress, for that she tells that which is untrue—while they themselves have dealings such as none can know with the Evil Ones."

Aimée looked at her keenly for some moments with a curious expression on her tightly-folded lips.

"You would have me believe that Marie went into the ravine when she knew the spirits were about, and went on the arm of Geoffroi?"

It was strange to see the conflict between superstition and natural affection in the face of Aimée. Her thoughts seemed to be rapidly scanning the past, and there was fear as well as anger in her look. Could it be that this child, flung into her arms, as it were, from the shipwreck, born before his time of sorrow, the very offspring of death,—that had always lived apart from the other lads, with strange, quiet ways of his own—that had astonished her by his wise sayings as a child—and that, growing up had brought unnatural prosperity to the home, as though some higher hand were upon him—could it be that there was something in him more than of this earth? Her hand trembled so that it shook the stick on which she leant: she made one or two attempts to speak, then dropped the two halfpence on the table, as if they burnt her, and went out.

Antoine read the letter, crushed it in his great, trembling hand, and looked round him as though searching blankly for the hostile power, that had thus entangled, baffled and overthrown him. That voice from the grave seemed to call on him to claim again the rights that had been snatched from him. She was his, and he would see her face once more: he would go to Cherbourg, and look on her dead face, that he might know it, for she was his.

Antoine's thoughts meanwhile were whirling tumultuously round and round one object—an object that had hovered fitfully before his mind for many weeks—pressing closer and closer on it, till at length with triumphant realization, they seized on it and made it the imperious necessity of his will.

Ever since the night in the ravine, Antoine had been living in a strange world: he had not known himself: his hand had seemed against every man's, and every man's hand against his. He never went to mass, for he felt that the good God had abandoned him.

Now he suddenly realised what it was he needed—the just punishment of Geoffroi. The path of life would be straight again, and God on His Throne in heaven, when Justice had been vindicated, and he had visited his crime on the evildoer. That he must do it himself, was plain to him.

Geoffroi's position was (for him) extremely dangerous. A bold climber might have extricated himself; but for a lame man to reach safety across the sea-scourged rocks was almost impossible. Could he hold on long enough and the sea rose no higher, he might be saved: but there would yet be an hour before the turn of the tide, and already the waves were racing over the ledge on which he stood. Antoine sprang over the intervening rocks, scrambling and wading through the water, as if not seeing what he did, till he set foot on the ledge, and stood face to face with his enemy.

"Don't kill me," he cried abjectly. "Have mercy, for the love of God."

Antoine grasped the writhing creature by the shoulder. The white face of Marie rose up before him. Geoffroi shrieked. A huge, heaving billow advanced, swept round the feet of both and sank boiling in the gulf beneath. The next that came would leave neither of them there. Antoine stood with his hand on Geoffroi's shoulder, as if he would crush it. Somewhat higher, but within reach, was a narrow projection in the rock, to which there was room for one to cling, and only for one: and Geoffroi with his lame foot could not reach it alone.

"Let me go," he shrieked. "I will confess all: but save me, save me!"

So was he drawn out into the great deep, in whose arms his father lay: and the fisher-folk, when they knew it, looked for no sign of him more, for they said he had gone back to the sea, from whence he came. For, though they never knew the true story of his death, they felt that a spirit of a different mould from theirs had passed from among them in his own way.