When the storm was over, and anxious steps hastened up the mountain path, and horror-stricken faces gazed at the ruined home and the havoc all around, there was broken-hearted lamentation for the old man and the child, supposed to have perished in the tornado.  At last the mother’s searching eye discerned in the sunshine that lay across the still mountain-side an unfamiliar object; and hastening towards it with the lingering hope of learning some news of her darling, she perceived the old man lying in his last sleep, with the eternal Peace in his child-like face, still stretched as if in protection across a trench, in which the baby lay safe in its cradle, sleeping as peacefully as he.

THE ROAD BY THE SEA.

PART I.

From East to West there stretched a long, straight road, glimmering white across the grey evening landscape:  silently conscious, it seemed, of the countless human feet, that for ages had trodden it and gone their way—­their way for good, or their way for evil, while the road remained.  Coming as an alien from unknown scenes, the one thing in the country that spoke of change, yet itself more lasting than any, it seemed to be ever pursuing some secret purpose:  persistent, relentless:  a very Nemesis of a road.

On either side of it were barren “dunes,” grudgingly covered by straggling heather and gorse, and to the South, at a little distance, rolled the dark-blue sea.

On the edge of the dune, near to a cluster of sweet-scented pines, stood two or three cottages built of grey stone, after the Breton manner, with high-pitched roofs of dove-coloured slate, and arched stone doorways, around which scratched pigs and hens, on equal terms with barefooted children.  One of the cottages had “Buvette” inscribed over it in large, white letters, and a bench outside under a little awning; and opposite to this, a rough pathway led out of the road over the waste land to a hamlet on the dune, of which the grey, clustering cottages, crowning a rising ground about half a mile off, stood distinct against the opal sky of early evening.

Framed in the stone doorway of the Buvette, was the figure of a girl in a snow-white coiffe, of which the lappets waved in the wind, a short blue skirt, and sabots.  She had a curious, inexpressive face, with the patient look of a dumb creature, and an odd little curl in her upper lip, which, with her mute expression, made her seem to be continually deprecating disapproval.  She stood shading her eyes from the slanting sunbeams, as she looked up the road to the West.  A little before her, out on the road, stood two other women, elderly, both white-capped, one leaning on a stick:  they addressed brief sentences to one another now and again, in the disconnected manner of those who are expecting something:  and they also stood looking up the road to the West.