at dusk: the sides of the ravine towering up stern and gloomy on either
hand: and high above all against the sky, the grey stone cross at which
he was to meet Marie. He saw it all as if he were there, and the ground
beneath him, as he tramped on, seemed unreal. Twilight was already
falling over the rocks and the grey sea: there were no lights in the
village, except such as shone here and there in a cottage window: the
distant roar of the sea was heard, as it dashed over a long line of
rocks two or three miles out, but there was hardly any other sound: the
place indeed seemed God-abandoned, like some long-forgotten strand of a
dead world, with the skeleton house on the rock above for its forsaken
citadel.

It was already dark in the ravine when Antoine arrived there, and anyone
not knowing how instinctive is the feeling for the ways of his mother
earth in a son of the soil, would have thought his straightforward
stride, in such a chaos of rocks and pitfalls, reckless, till they
observed with what certainty each step was taken where alone it was
possible and safe. He was making his way through the valley to the cross
above, where the light still lingered, and it yet wanted some fifteen
minutes to the time of _rendez-vous_, when he suddenly stopped in a
listening attitude; he had reached a part of the valley to which
superstition had attached the most dangerous character. A particular
rock called "The Black Stone," which towered over him on the left, and
slightly bending towards the centre of the valley, seemed like some
threatening monster about to swoop upon the traveller, was especially
regarded as the haunt of evil spirits. It was in this direction that he
now heard a slight sound, which his practised ear discerned at once as
not being one of the sounds of nature. Immediately afterwards the shadow
of the rock beside him seemed to move and enlarge, and out of it there
sprang the figure of a man, and stood straight in Antoine's path.