When Annette brought the fallen man (who was already recovering consciousness when she reached him) safe back in the cart to the auberge, she found a little crowd of peasants, men and women, gathered there, talking loud and eagerly over the news, who looked at her with a reverent curiosity as she entered.  The injured man was assisted to a bed, but none spoke to Annette:  only silent, awe-struck glances were turned on her:  for they had gradually realized the fact that a voice had been given to the dumb girl, and Annette’s quiet, familiar presence had become charged with mystery for them.  They had no doubt that the blessed St. Yvon, the patron saint of mariners, had himself uttered the warning through her, at the moment when the safety of the fishing fleet depended on a spoken word:  and the miracle now occupied their attention almost to the exclusion of the false lights and the return of the boats.

But Annette observed their whisperings and glances with a slight touch of contempt:  she knew that her own voice had been restored to her, and that she was now like any of the other women in the village; which, in her own simple presentment of things, must be interpreted as meaning that she might look to have a husband and a home of her own.  It was as though she had for the first time become a real woman.  She saddled the horse and rode off to fetch a doctor to attend to the sick man, thinking all the while that the fleet would be in before morning, that Paul would come home, and that he would hear her voice.  She made little childish plans of pretending to be still dumb when she first saw him, so that she might surprise him the more when she should speak.

Darkness was fast gathering now, but the old horse knew every stone in the road:  he carried her with his steady jog-trot safely enough over the two miles that lay between the auberge and the fishing village where the doctor lived, in a house overlooking the rade and the harbour.  As she passed along, the dark quays were full of moving lights and figures; active women with short skirts and sabots, mingling in the groups of fishermen; while a buzz of harsh Breton speech resounded on all sides.  She caught words about a gang of wreckers that had lately infested the coast:  and the names of one or two “mauvais sujets” in the village, who were supposed to be their confederates.  She saw a moving light at the mouth of the harbour, and from a low-breathed murmur that ran below the noisier speech of the crowd, she gathered that it was a boat’s crew going out in the darkness, to scale the precipitous rock, and extinguish the light.

All her faculties seemed quickened, and she kept repeating aloud to herself the words she heard in the crowd, to make sure that she could articulate as clearly as she had done in the first moment that her voice was given to her.