And not they only, but a group of peasants belonging to the hamlet on the hill; free-stepping, strong-limbed Breton women, returning from the cliffs with bundles of dried sea-weed on their backs:  a woman and two young lads from the furthermost cottage, with hoes in their hands, who had stepped out on to the road from their work of weeding the sorry piece of ground they had fenced in from the dune, and which yielded, at the best, more stones than vegetables:  a couple of fishermen, who were tramping along the road with a basket of mackerel:  and even old lame Jacques, who had risen from the bench on which he usually sat as though he had taken root there, and leant tottering on his stick, as he strained his blear eyes against the sunbeams:  all stopped as if by one impulse:  all seemed absorbed by one expectation, and stood gazing up the long, white road to the West.

The road was like a sensitive thing to ears long familiar with its various sounds, and vibrated at a mile’s distance with the gallop of unwonted hoofs, or the haste of a rider that told of strange news.  Moreover, all hearts were open to the touch of fear that October evening, when at any hour word might be brought of the fishing fleet that should now be returning from its long absence in distant seas:  and one dare hardly think whether Jean and Pierre and little Andre would all be restored safely to the vacant places around the cottage fire:  one dared not think:  one could only pray to the Saints, and wait.

The girl with the mute, patient face had been the first to catch the sounds of galloping hoofs.  She had from birth been almost speechless, with a paralysed tongue, but as if to compensate for this, her senses of touch and hearing were extraordinarily acute.  The daughter of the aubergiste, she knew all who came and went along the road:  the sights and sounds of the road were her interest the life of it was her life.  She had heard in the faint, faint distance the galloping hoofs to the West:  off the great rocks to the West the fleet should first be sighted:  towards the West all one’s senses seemed strained, on the alert for signals of danger, or hope:  and at the sound, the heart within Annette’s breast leaped with a sudden certainty of disaster.

Annette had never thought of love and marriage as possible for herself, but Paul Gignol had gone with the fleet for the first time this summer, and, for Annette, danger to the fleet meant danger to Paul.  Paul and Annette were kin on her mother’s side, and he being an orphan and adopted by her father, they had been brought up together like brother and sister.  This summer had separated them for the first time, and when he bade her good-bye and sailed away, Annette felt like an uprooted piece of heather cast loose on the roadside, and belonging nowhere.  And the first faint sounds of the hoofs on the road had struck on her ear as a signal from Paul.  She made no sign, only stood still with a beating heart.  And when the neighbours saw the dumb girl listening, they too came out into the road, and heard the galloping, now growing more and more distinct; and waited for the rider to appear on the ridge of the hill, which, some half mile off, raised its purple outline against the western sky.