“Thirty-eight skulls,” he said in his thin, high-pitched voice; “there is but one more, and I am opposed to further search.  I suppose Fortin told you?”

I shook hands with him, and returned the salute of the Brigadier Durand.

“I am opposed to further search,” repeated Le Bihan, nervously picking at the mass of silver buttons which covered the front of his velvet and broadcloth jacket like a breastplate of scale armor.

Durand pursed up his lips, twisted his tremendous mustache, and hooked his thumbs in his saber belt.

“As for me,” he said, “I am in favor of further search.”

“Further search for what—­for the thirty-ninth skull?” I asked.

Le Bihan nodded.  Durand frowned at the sunlit sea, rocking like a bowl of molten gold from the cliffs to the horizon.  I followed his eyes.  On the dark glistening cliffs, silhouetted against the glare of the sea, sat a cormorant, black, motionless, its horrible head raised toward heaven.

“Where is that list, Durand?” I asked.

The gendarme rummaged in his despatch pouch and produced a brass cylinder about a foot long.  Very gravely he unscrewed the head and dumped out a scroll of thick yellow paper closely covered with writing on both sides.  At a nod from Le Bihan he handed me the scroll.  But I could make nothing of the coarse writing, now faded to a dull brown.

“Come, come, Le Bihan,” I said impatiently, “translate it, won’t you?  You and Max Fortin make a lot of mystery out of nothing, it seems.”

Le Bihan went to the edge of the pit where the three Bannalec men were digging, gave an order or two in Breton, and turned to me.

As I came to the edge of the pit the Bannalec men were removing a square piece of sailcloth from what appeared to be a pile of cobblestones.

“Look!” said Le Bihan shrilly.  I looked.  The pile below was a heap of skulls.  After a moment I clambered down the gravel sides of the pit and walked over to the men of Bannalec.  They saluted me gravely, leaning on their picks and shovels, and wiping their sweating faces with sunburned hands.

“How many?” said I in Breton.

“Thirty-eight,” they replied.

I glanced around.  Beyond the heap of skulls lay two piles of human bones.  Beside these was a mound of broken, rusted bits of iron and steel.  Looking closer, I saw that this mound was composed of rusty bayonets, saber blades, scythe blades, with here and there a tarnished buckle attached to a bit of leather hard as iron.

I picked up a couple of buttons and a belt plate.  The buttons bore the royal arms of England; the belt plate was emblazoned with the English arms and also with the number “27.”

“I have heard my grandfather speak of the terrible English regiment, the 27th Foot, which landed and stormed the fort up there,” said one of the Bannalec men.

“Oh!” said I; “then these are the bones of English soldiers?”