“A—­a very curious cobblestone, Monsieur Darrel,” said Fortin.

“I also was a victim to the same hallucination,” I continued, “and I regret to say that I took the trouble to roll two innocent cobblestones into the gravel pit, imagining each time that it was the skull I was rolling.”

“It was,” observed Le Bihan with a morose shrug.

“It just shows,” said I, ignoring the mayor’s remark, “how easy it is to fix up a train of coincidences so that the result seems to savor of the supernatural.  Now, last night my wife imagined that she saw a priest in a mask peer in at her window——­”

Fortin and Le Bihan scrambled hastily from their knees, dropping hammer and nails.

“W-h-a-t—­what’s that?” demanded the mayor.

I repeated what I had said.  Max Fortin turned livid.

“My God!” muttered Le Bihan, “the Black Priest is in St. Gildas!”

“D-don’t you—­you know the old prophecy?” stammered Fortin; “Froissart quotes it from Jacques Sorgue: 

    “’When the Black Priest rises from the dead,
    St. Gildas folk shall shriek in bed;
    When the Black Priest rises from his grave,
    May the good God St. Gildas save!’”

“Aristide Le Bihan,” I said angrily, “and you, Max Fortin, I’ve got enough of this nonsense!  Some foolish lout from Bannalec has been in St. Gildas playing tricks to frighten old fools like you.  If you have nothing better to talk about than nursery legends I’ll wait until you come to your senses.  Good-morning.”  And I walked out, more disturbed than I cared to acknowledge to myself.

The day had become misty and overcast.  Heavy, wet clouds hung in the east.  I heard the surf thundering against the cliffs, and the gray gulls squealed as they tossed and turned high in the sky.  The tide was creeping across the river sands, higher, higher, and I saw the seaweed floating on the beach, and the lancons springing from the foam, silvery threadlike flashes in the gloom.  Curlew were flying up the river in twos and threes; the timid sea swallows skimmed across the moors toward some quiet, lonely pool, safe from the coming tempest.  In every hedge field birds were gathering, huddling together, twittering restlessly.

When I reached the cliffs I sat down, resting my chin on my clenched hands.  Already a vast curtain of rain, sweeping across the ocean miles away, hid the island of Groix.  To the east, behind the white semaphore on the hills, black clouds crowded up over the horizon.  After a little the thunder boomed, dull, distant, and slender skeins of lightning unraveled across the crest of the coming storm.  Under the cliff at my feet the surf rushed foaming over the shore, and the lancons jumped and skipped and quivered until they seemed to be but the reflections of the meshed lightning.

I turned to the east.  It was raining over Groix, it was raining at Sainte Barbe, it was raining now at the semaphore.  High in the storm whirl a few gulls pitched; a nearer cloud trailed veils of rain in its wake; the sky was spattered with lightning; the thunder boomed.