[Illustration:  ROSCOFF.]

Roscoff itself is extremely fertile; the deadly aspect of the little town is not extended to the surrounding plains.  The climate is much influenced by the Gulf Stream, and the winters are temperate.  Flowers and vegetables grow here all the year round that in less favoured districts are found only in summer.  Like Provence in the far South, Roscoff is famous for its primeurs, or early vegetables.  If you go to some of the great markets in Paris in the spring and notice certain country people with large round hats, very primitive in appearance, disposing of these vegetables, you may at once know them for Bretons from Roscoff.  You will not fall in love with them; they are plain, honest, and stupid.  We found the few people we spoke to in Roscoff quite answering to this description, and could make nothing of them.

On our way back to the station we visited the great natural curiosity of the place:  a fig tree whose branches cover an area of nearly two hundred square yards, supported by blocks of wood or by solid masonry built up for the purpose.  It yields an immense quantity of fruit, and would shield a small army beneath its foliage.  Its immense trunk is knotted and twisted about in all directions; but the tree is full of life and vigour, and probably without parallel in the world.

Soon after this, we were once more steaming towards Morlaix, our head-quarters.  As we passed St. Pol de Leon, its towers and steeples stood out grandly in the gathering twilight.  Before us there rose up the vision of the aged Countess who had received and entertained us with so much kindness and hospitality.  It was not too much to say that we longed to renew our experience, to pass not hours but days in that charmed and charming abode, refined by everything that was old-world and artistic; and to number our hostess amongst those friends whom time and chance, silence and distance, riches or poverty, life or death, can never change.

We re-entered Morlaix with the shadows of night.  Despising the omnibus, we went down Jacob’s Ladder, rejoicing and revelling in all the old-world atmosphere about us, and on our way passed our Antiquarian.  He was still at his doorway, evidently watching for our arrival, and might have been motionless as a wooden sentry ever since we had left him in the morning.

The workshop was lighted up, and the old cabinets and the modern wood-carving looked picturesque and beautiful in the lights and shadows thrown by the lamps.  The son, handsome as an Adonis, was bending over some delicate carving that he was chiseling, flushed with the success of his work, yet outwardly strangely quiet and gentle.  The cherub we had seen a morning or two ago at the doorstep ought now to have been in bed and asleep.  Instead of that he was perched upon a table, and with large, wide-opened blue eyes was gazing with all the innocence and inquiry of infancy into his father’s face, as if he would there read the mystery of life and creation, which the wondering gaze of early childhood seems for ever asking.