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:

"I go to a baptism at St. Jean-du-Pied, and cannot return before sun-down. Meet me at the cross on the hill-side at six o'clock, as I fear to pass through the valley alone in the dark. Marie."

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."

"Why do you say meeting place, Grandmother Whom do you think I am going to meet there?"

"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.

It was already dark in the ravine when Antoine arrived there, and anyone not knowing how instinctive is the feeling for the ways of his mother earth in a son of the soil, would have thought his straightforward stride, in such a chaos of rocks and pitfalls, reckless, till they observed with what certainty each step was taken where alone it was possible and safe. He was making his way through the valley to the cross above, where the light still lingered, and it yet wanted some fifteen minutes to the time of rendez-vous, when he suddenly stopped in a listening attitude; he had reached a part of the valley to which superstition had attached the most dangerous character. A particular rock called "The Black Stone," which towered over him on the left, and slightly bending towards the centre of the valley, seemed like some threatening monster about to swoop upon the traveller, was especially regarded as the haunt of evil spirits. It was in this direction that he now heard a slight sound, which his practised ear discerned at once as not being one of the sounds of nature. Immediately afterwards the shadow of the rock beside him seemed to move and enlarge, and out of it there sprang the figure of a man, and stood straight in Antoine's path. Antoine's whole frame became rigid, like that of a beast of prey on the point of springing, even before the shadow revealed its limping foot.

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?"

"It is this—that I have arranged a nice little meeting for you. Hein? Are you not obliged to me?"

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."

She clung to Geoffroi's arm, and screamed when Antoine would have touched her. Antoine stood for a moment as if turned to stone. Marie seemed half fainting and clung hysterically to Geoffroi, apparently hardly conscious of what she was doing. Geoffroi took her in his arms and kissed her. The act was so loathsome in its deliberate effrontery, that Antoine felt as if he was merely crushing a serpent when he struck him to the ground and tore Marie from his hold. But he was dealing with something which he did not understand for Marie, finding herself in his grasp, opened her eyes on his face with a look of speechless terror, and breaking from him, fled down the ravine, springing from rock to rock with the security of recklessness.

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.

Old Jeanne Le Gall was leaning on her stick in her solitary way beside the arched wellhead at the top of the lane, when she heard flying steps along the pathway of rock that bordered the sea, and peered through the twilight with her cunning old eyes, alert for something uncanny, or perchance out of which she could make some profit for herself. Already that day, she had earned a sou by carrying a bit of a letter, and telling one or two little lies. As the steps came nearer, a kind of moaning and sobbing was heard, and the old woman, muttering to herself—"It is the voice of Marie. What has the