“Let me see the skull again,” said I.

Max Fortin picked it up from the sod.

“It’s like all the others,” he repeated, wiping his glasses on his handkerchief.  “I thought you might care to see one of the skulls, so I brought this over from the gravel pit.  The men from Bannalec are digging yet.  They ought to stop.”

“How many skulls are there altogether?” I inquired.

“They found thirty-eight skulls; there are thirty-nine noted in the list.  They lie piled up in the gravel pit on the edge of Le Bihan’s wheat field.  The men are at work yet.  Le Bihan is going to stop them.”

“Let’s go over,” said I; and I picked up my gun and started across the cliffs, Portin on one side, Mome on the other.

“Who has the list?” I asked, lighting my pipe.  “You say there is a list?”

“The list was found rolled up in a brass cylinder,” said the chemist.  He added:  “You should not smoke here.  You know that if a single spark drifted into the wheat—­”

“Ah, but I have a cover to my pipe,” said I, smiling.

Fortin watched me as I closed the pepper-box arrangement over the glowing bowl of the pipe.  Then he continued: 

“The list was made out on thick yellow paper; the brass tube has preserved it.  It is as fresh to-day as it was in 1760.  You shall see it.”

“Is that the date?”

“The list is dated ‘April, 1760.’  The Brigadier Durand has it.  It is not written in French.”

“Not written in French!” I exclaimed.

“No,” replied Fortin solemnly, “it is written in Breton.”

“But,” I protested, “the Breton language was never written or printed in 1760.”

“Except by priests,” said the chemist.

“I have heard of but one priest who ever wrote the Breton language,” I began.

Fortin stole a glance at my face.

“You mean—­the Black Priest?” he asked.

I nodded.

Fortin opened his mouth to speak again, hesitated, and finally shut his teeth obstinately over the wheat stem that he was chewing.

“And the Black Priest?” I suggested encouragingly.  But I knew it was useless; for it is easier to move the stars from their courses than to make an obstinate Breton talk.  We walked on for a minute or two in silence.

“Where is the Brigadier Durand?” I asked, motioning Mome to come out of the wheat, which he was trampling as though it were heather.  As I spoke we came in sight of the farther edge of the wheat field and the dark, wet mass of cliffs beyond.

“Durand is down there—­you can see him; he stands just behind the mayor of St. Gildas.”

“I see,” said I; and we struck straight down, following a sun-baked cattle path across the heather.

When we reached the edge of the wheat field, Le Bihan, the mayor of St. Gildas, called to me, and I tucked my gun under my arm and skirted the wheat to where he stood.