fashion of a terrier shaking a rat. And with that gust, loosening the dilapidated fastening on the casement, a window crashed inward, shattering the pane against the wall.

"Sacré bleu!" shouted a man, springing smartly to his feet from his seat at a small table as the rain lashed him. "What a dog of a night!"

Against the opposite wall, tilted back in a chair, Papa Fregeau, the patron, a rotund, aproned little individual, stopped the humming of his song.

"Tiens!" said he fatuously. "But it is worse than that, Alcide, since it is bad for business—hah! Not a franc profit to-night—the Bas Rhône is desolated." And he resumed his song:

"In Languedoc, where the wine flows free,
We drink to——"

"Hold your bibulous tongue, Jacques Fregeau, and get something with which to fix that window before we are as wet inside as you!"—it was Madame Fregeau, stout, middle-aged and rosy, already hurrying to the aid of the first speaker, who was wrestling with the dismantled fastening.

Usually the nightly resort of the little fishing village of Bernay-sur-Mer, the Bas Rhône, inn, cabaret, tavern or cafe, as it was variously styled, now held but two others in the room that was habitually crowded to suffocation. One was a young man, sturdily built, with a tanned, clean-cut face, smooth-shaven save for a small black moustache, whose rumpled black hair straggled in pleasing disarray over his forehead; the other was older, a man of forty, whose skin was bronzed almost to blackness from the Mediterranean sun. Both were in rough fishermen's dress, sitting at dominoes under the hanging lamp in the centre of the room. On the table, pushed to one side, were the remains of a simple meal of bread and cheese; and from the inside of the loaf, the younger man, somewhat to the detriment of his own game and to the advantage of his opponent, had plucked out a piece of the soft bread, which he had kneaded between his fingers into a plastic lump, and thereafter, with amazing skill and deftness, had been engaged in moulding into little faces, and heads, and figures of various sorts, as he played.

The older man spoke slowly now:

"It is twenty years since we have had the like—you do not remember that, Jean? You were too young."

Jean Laparde, an amused smile lurking in his dark eyes as he watched Jacques Fregeau waddle obediently to his wife's side, shook his head.

"I was on the Étoile that night," said the other, pulling at his beard. "The good God dealt hardly with us—we lost two when we beached; but not so hardly as with the Antoinette—none came to shore from her. It was a night just such as this."

"Ay, that is so," corroborated Papa Fregeau, removing his apron and stuffing it into the broken window pane. "It is, after all, small blame to any one that they stay indoors to-night and forget my profits."

"Profits!" ejaculated Madame Fregeau tartly. "You drink them all up!" She shook her short skirts, damp from her skirmish with the storm, and turned to Jean's companion at the table. "Pray the blessed Virgin," she said softly, crossing herself reverently, "that there be no boats out to-night, Pierre Lachance."

"And God for pity on them if there are!" returned the fisherman. "But there are none from Bernay-sur-Mer, that is sure." He played the last domino before him with a little triumphant flourish. "Ah, Jean, count—you are caught, my boy! It will teach you to pay more attention to the game, and less to the waste of Madame Fregeau's good bread!"

"She is used to that!" smiled Jean Laparde good-naturedly, as he faced his dominoes, disclosing the measure of his defeat, and, pushing back his chair, stood up.

"But," protested the other, "you are not going! We will play again. See, it is early, the clock has but just struck eight."

"Not to-night, Pierre," said Jean, laughing now, as he began to button his jacket around his throat. "Play with Alcide there."

"Chut!" cried Madame Fregeau, bustling forward, her eyes twinkling. "The little minx will not expect you a night like this—Marie-Louise is too sensible a girl to be piqued for that. You are not going out to-night, Jean, ma foi!"

"And why not?" asked Jean innocently. "Why not, Mother Fregeau? What is a little wind, and a little rain, and a little walk along the beach?"

"But a night like this!" sighed Papa Fregeau dolorously, as he joined the group, his forefinger laid facetiously against the side of his stubby little nose. "Nom d'un nom! What constancy—what sublime constancy!"

"Ah, you laugh at that, mon petit bête!" exclaimed Madame Fregeau sharply, instantly changing front. "You are an old fool, Jacques Fregeau!"

"But I was a young one once, ma belle—eh?" insinuated Jacques, pinching his wife's plump cheek, and winking prodigiously at Jean Laparde. "It is of that you are thinking, eh?"

"You are ridiculous!" declared Madame Fregeau, blushing and pushing him away.

"You see, Jean?" said Jacques Fregeau plaintively, shrugging his shoulders. "You see, eh, mon gaillard? You see what you are coming to! Oh, là, là, once I was young like you, and Lucille, ma chérie, here, was like—eh?—like Marie-Louise. You see, eh? You see what you are coming to!"

There was a roar of laughter from the man at the table in the rear, that was echoed in a guffaw by Pierre Lachance, as Jean, leaning suddenly forward, caught Madame Fregeau's comely, motherly face between his hands and kissed her on both cheeks.

"I'd ask for no better luck, Jacques!" he cried—and ran for the door.

Laughing, and with a wave of his hand back at the little group, he opened the door, closed it behind him with a powerful wrench against the wind; and then, outside, stood still for a moment, as though taken utterly by surprise at the abandon of the night. He had not been out before that day. Like all, or nearly all of Bernay-sur-Mer he had remained snugly indoors—for what was a fisherman to do in weather like that! Mend nets? Well, yes, he had mended nets. One must do that. He shrugged his shoulders, making a wry grimace. Nets! But the night was bad—much worse than he had imagined. And yet—yes—the storm was at its height now, but the wind had changed—by morning, thank the saints, it would be better.

It was black about him, inky black—all save a long, straggling, twinkling line of lights from the cottage windows that bordered the beach, and the dull yellow glow from the windows of the Bas Rhône at his side. Around him a veritable bedlam seemed loosed—the wind, like a horde of demons, shrieking, whistling and howling in unholy jubilee; while heavier, more ominous, in a deeper roar came the booming of the surf from where it broke upon the beach but little more than a hundred yards in front of him.

Jean Laparde stood hesitant. It was quite true; Mother Fregeau had been right! Marie-Louise would not expect him to-night, and it was a good mile from the village to the house on the bluff, and yet—he smiled a little, and suddenly, head down, struck out into the storm.

A flash of lightning, jagged, threw the night into a strange, tremulous luminance—the headlands of the little bay; the mighty combers, shaking their topped crests like manes, hurling themselves in impotent fury at the shore, then spreading in thin creamy layers to lick up wide, irregular patches of the beach; the sweep of the Mediterranean, so slow to anger, but a tumbling rage of waters now as far as the eye could reach; the whitewashed cottages; boats, dark objects without form or shape, drawn far up on the sand; the pale, yellowish-green of the sward stretching away behind the village; the road beneath his feet a pool of mud—and then blackness again, utter, impenetrable, absolute.

Jean passed the last of the cottages—there were but four on that side of the Bas Rhône—and kept on, following the curve of the beach toward the eastern