“There’s a shady spot under the cliff,” I said; “come on, Le Bihan, and read me what is in the scroll.”

In a few moments we reached the shadow of the cliff, and I threw myself upon the turf, chin on hand, to listen.

The gendarme, Durand, also sat down, twisting his mustache into needlelike points.  Fortin leaned against the cliff, polishing his glasses and examining us with vague, near-sighted eyes; and Le Bihan, the mayor, planted himself in our midst, rolling up the scroll and tucking it under his arm.

“First of all,” he began in a shrill voice, “I am going to light my pipe, and while lighting it I shall tell you what I have heard about the attack on the fort yonder.  My father told me; his father told him.”

He jerked his head in the direction of the ruined fort, a small, square stone structure on the sea cliff, now nothing but crumbling walls.  Then he slowly produced a tobacco pouch, a bit of flint and tinder, and a long-stemmed pipe fitted with a microscopical bowl of baked clay.  To fill such a pipe requires ten minutes’ close attention.  To smoke it to a finish takes but four puffs.  It is very Breton, this Breton pipe.  It is the crystallization of everything Breton.

“Go on,” said I, lighting a cigarette.

“The fort,” said the mayor, “was built by Louis XIV, and was dismantled twice by the English.  Louis XV restored it in 1730.  In 1760 it was carried by assault by the English.  They came across from the island of Groix—­three shiploads, and they stormed the fort and sacked St. Julien yonder, and they started to burn St. Gildas—­you can see the marks of their bullets on my house yet; but the men of Bannalec and the men of Lorient fell upon them with pike and scythe and blunderbuss, and those who did not run away lie there below in the gravel pit now—­thirty-eight of them.”

“And the thirty-ninth skull?” I asked, finishing my cigarette.

The mayor had succeeded in filling his pipe, and now he began to put his tobacco pouch away.

“The thirty-ninth skull,” he mumbled, holding the pipe stem between his defective teeth—­“the thirty-ninth skull is no business of mine.  I have told the Bannalec men to cease digging.”

“But what is—­whose is the missing skull?” I persisted curiously.

The mayor was busy trying to strike a spark to his tinder.  Presently he set it aglow, applied it to his pipe, took the prescribed four puffs, knocked the ashes out of the bowl, and gravely replaced the pipe in his pocket.

“The missing skull?” he asked.

“Yes,” said I, impatiently.

The mayor slowly unrolled the scroll and began to read, translating from the Breton into French.  And this is what he read: 

“ON THE CLIFFS OF ST. GILDAS,
APRIL 13, 1760.

“On this day, by order of the Count of Soisic, general in chief of the Breton forces now lying in Kerselec Forest, the bodies of thirty-eight English soldiers of the 27th, 50th, and 72d regiments of Foot were buried in this spot, together with their arms and equipments.”