not a single fish home.  Jean, with the quick-blazing anger of his race, declared that if he could find the man who had done it, he would “break his skull.”  But Antoine, though he knew well enough who had done it, held his peace.  Geoffroi was quicker of speech than Antoine, and on the Sunday, when the whole village trooped out of the little chapel after mass, and streamed down the winding village road, the women in their white coiffes and black shawls, and the men in their round Breton hats with buckles and streaming ribbons, while knots began to collect about the doors of the village cafes, and laughter, gossip and the sound of the fiddle arose on the sunny air, Geoffroi would gather a circle round him to hear his quips and odd stories, and to join in the fun that he would mercilessly make of others less quick than himself at repartee.  It was extraordinary on these occasions how Geoffroi, like a spider in his web on the watch for a fly, would contrive to draw Antoine into his circle, sometimes as though it were merely to show off his cleverness before him, at other times adroitly lighting on some quaint habit or saying of Antoine’s, holding it up to ridicule, now in one light, now in another, with a versatility that would have made his fortune as a comedian, and returning to the charge again and again, in the hope, as it seemed, of provoking Antoine’s seldom-stirred anger:  but in this entirely failing, for Antoine would generally join heartily in the laugh himself.  Only once did a convulsion of anger seize him, and he strode forward in the throng and gave Geoffroi the lie to his face, when the latter had said that Marie Pierres kissed him in the Valley of Dwarfs, the evening before.  He knew that Geoffroi only said it to spite him; for Marie—­the daughter of Jean’s partner—­was his fiancee, and was as true as gold:  but the image the words called up convulsed his brain; a blind impulse sprang up within him to strike and crush that beautiful face of Geoffroi’s.  He clenched his fist and dared him to repeat the words.  Geoffroi would only reply, in his venomous way, “Come to-night to the Valley and see if I lie.”  And the same instant the keen, strident voice was silenced by one straight blow from Antoine’s fist.

In the confused clamour of harsh Breton speech that arose, as neighbours rushed to separate the two and friends took one side or the other, Antoine strode away with a brain on fire and a mind intent on one object—­to prove the lie at once.

To go to the Valley of Dwarfs in order to spy on Marie and Geoffroi was impossible to him.  But he marched straight off to Marie’s cottage.  He knew she would deny the charge, and her word was as good as the Blessed Gospel:  but he longed to hear the denial from her lips.  He pictured her as she would look when she spoke:  the hurt, innocent expression of her candid eyes:  her rosy cheeks flushing a deeper red under her demure snow-white cap:  her child-like lips uttering earnest and indignant protestation.  When he reached the cottage, he found the door locked; no one was about; he leaned his elbows on the low, stone wall in front and waited.