“What rot!” I said.  “Do you believe it was really written in his own blood?”

“I am going to test it,” said Fortin, “at the request of Monsieur le Maire.  I am not anxious for the job, however.”

“See,” said Le Bihan, holding out the scroll to me, “it is signed, ‘L’Abbe Sorgue.’”

I glanced curiously over the paper.

“It must be the Black Priest,” I said.  “He was the only man who wrote in the Breton language.  This is a wonderfully interesting discovery, for now, at last, the mystery of the Black Priest’s disappearance is cleared up.  You will, of course, send this scroll to Paris, Le Bihan?”

“No,” said the mayor obstinately, “it shall be buried in the pit below where the rest of the Black Priest lies.”

I looked at him and recognized that argument would be useless.  But still I said, “It will be a loss to history, Monsieur Le Bihan.”

“All the worse for history, then,” said the enlightened Mayor of St. Gildas.

We had sauntered back to the gravel pit while speaking.  The men of Bannalec were carrying the bones of the English soldiers toward the St. Gildas cemetery, on the cliffs to the east, where already a knot of white-coiffed women stood in attitudes of prayer; and I saw the somber robe of a priest among the crosses of the little graveyard.

“They were thieves and assassins; they are dead now,” muttered Max Fortin.

“Respect the dead,” repeated the Mayor of St. Gildas, looking after the Bannalec men.

“It was written in that scroll that Marie Trevec, of Groix Island, was cursed by the priest—­she and her descendants,” I said, touching Le Bihan on the arm.  “There was a Marie Trevec who married an Yves Trevec of St. Gildas——­”

“It is the same,” said Le Bihan, looking at me obliquely.

“Oh!” said I; “then they were ancestors of my wife.”

“Do you fear the curse?” asked Le Bihan.

“What?” I laughed.

“There was the case of the Purple Emperor,” said Max Fortin timidly.

Startled for a moment, I faced him, then shrugged my shoulders and kicked at a smooth bit of rock which lay near the edge of the pit, almost embedded in gravel.

“Do you suppose the Purple-Emperor drank himself crazy because he was descended from Marie Trevec?” I asked contemptuously.

“Of course not,” said Max Fortin hastily.

“Of course not,” piped the mayor.  “I only—­Hellow! what’s that you’re kicking?”

“What?” said I, glancing down, at the same time involuntarily giving another kick.  The smooth bit of rock dislodged itself and rolled out of the loosened gravel at my feet.

“The thirty-ninth skull!” I exclaimed.  “By jingo, it’s the noddle of the Black Priest!  See! there is the arrowhead branded on the front!”

The mayor stepped back.  Max Fortin also retreated.  There was a pause, during which I looked at them, and they looked anywhere but at me.