Presently clattering sabots were heard coming down the road, and he perceived old Jeanne Le Gall trudging along, her back nearly bent double under a large bundle of dried sea-weed.  She and her goat lived in the low, rubble-built hovel, that adjoined the Pierres’ cottage, and from her lonely, eccentric habits, and uncanny appearance, she had the reputation of being a sorceress.  Antoine called to her to know where Marie was.

“Gone to the widow Conan’s,” mumbled the old woman, her strange eyes gleaming under the sprays of sea-weed, “she and her father and mother, all of them.”

She deposited her load, and hobbled off again, fixing her eyes on Antoine as she turned away, but saying nothing more.

Antoine strolled a little down the lane, seated himself on the steps of the cross at the corner, and waited—­evening was drawing on and they were sure to return before dark.

Presently the cluck, cluck of the sabots was heard again, and old Jeanne slowly approached him from behind.  She said something in her toothless, mumbling way, and held out a crumpled bit of paper in her shaking hand.  He opened it and read, scrawled as if in haste, in ill-spelt Breton: 

“I go to a baptism at St. Jean-du-Pied, and cannot return before sun-down.  Meet me at the cross on the hill-side at six o’clock, as I fear to pass through the valley alone in the dark.  Marie.”

As he studied the writing, the old woman’s mumblings became more articulate.  She was saying, “’Twas the child Conan should have brought it an hour ago.  But he is ever good-for-nothing, and forgot it.”

Antoine looked at the sun, which was already westering, and perceived that he must set out to meet Marie in half-an-hour.  He got up and walked slowly towards the sandy shore of the little inlet, wide and wet at low tide, on the other side of which lay his own home.  He walked slowly, but he felt as if he were hurrying at a headlong pace.  The thought kept going round and round in his brain like a little torturing wheel, which nothing would stop, that after all Marie was going to the Dwarf’s Valley this evening, just as Geoffroi had said.  Geoffroi’s words were still sounding in his ears, and his right hand was clenched, as he had clenched it when the whirlwind of anger first convulsed him.

He entered his own cottage, hardly knowing what he did.

Old Aimee was bending over the cauldron, cutting up cabbage for the soup.

“Good-bye, Grandmother,” he said.  “I am going to the Dwarf’s Valley.”

Aimee looked up at him out of her keen old eyes.

“And why are you going there in the dark?” she said, “’Tis an evil meeting place after the sun has set.”

“Why do you say meeting place, Grandmother Whom do you think I am going to meet there?”

“The blessed Saints protect you,” she replied, “less you should meet Whom you would not.”