He turned to his prostrate friend. As he did so, something strange and
disagreeable smote his senses. For a half-moment he did not appreciate
its nature. Then his teeth clacked together, his feet, his outstretched
arms pointed towards the woods. But he sprang to the side of the man and
bent down and peered into his face. There was no face.




III

The Dead and the Countess

(Republished from the _Smart Set_)


It was an old cemetery, and they had been long dead. Those who died
nowadays were put in the new burying-place on the hill, close to the
Bois d'Amour and within sound of the bells that called the living to
mass. But the little church where the mass was celebrated stood
faithfully beside the older dead; a new church, indeed, had not been
built in that forgotten corner of Finisterre for centuries, not since
the calvary on its pile of stones had been raised in the tiny square,
surrounded then, as now, perhaps, by gray naked cottages; not since the
castle with its round tower, down on the river, had been erected for the
Counts of Croisac. But the stone walls enclosing that ancient cemetery
had been kept in good repair, and there were no weeds within, nor
toppling headstones. It looked cold and gray and desolate, like all the
cemeteries of Brittany, but it was made hideous neither by tawdry