with Max Portin at the Groix Inn?"

Le Bihan turned red, but Durand rattled his saber and winked at Max
Fortin, and I slipped my arm through the arm of the sulky magistrate,
laughing.

"There's a shady spot under the cliff," I said; "come on, Le Bihan, and
read me what is in the scroll."

In a few moments we reached the shadow of the cliff, and I threw myself
upon the turf, chin on hand, to listen.

The gendarme, Durand, also sat down, twisting his mustache into
needlelike points. Fortin leaned against the cliff, polishing his
glasses and examining us with vague, near-sighted eyes; and Le Bihan,
the mayor, planted himself in our midst, rolling up the scroll and
tucking it under his arm.

"First of all," he began in a shrill voice, "I am going to light my
pipe, and while lighting it I shall tell you what I have heard about the
attack on the fort yonder. My father told me; his father told him."

He jerked his head in the direction of the ruined fort, a small, square
stone structure on the sea cliff, now nothing but crumbling walls. Then
he slowly produced a tobacco pouch, a bit of flint and tinder, and a
long-stemmed pipe fitted with a microscopical bowl of baked clay. To
fill such a pipe requires ten minutes' close attention. To smoke it to a
finish takes but four puffs. It is very Breton, this Breton pipe. It is
the crystallization of everything Breton.