left of the rock beside which they stood, there darted forward the
white-coiffed figure of a girl, who with extended arms and agonized
face, rushed up to Geoffroi, crying, "Take me away--I have seen Them!
Take me away."

She clung to Geoffroi's arm, and screamed when Antoine would have
touched her. Antoine stood for a moment as if turned to stone. Marie
seemed half fainting and clung hysterically to Geoffroi, apparently
hardly conscious of what she was doing. Geoffroi took her in his arms
and kissed her. The act was so loathsome in its deliberate effrontery,
that Antoine felt as if he was merely crushing a serpent when he struck
him to the ground and tore Marie from his hold. But he was dealing with
something which he did not understand for Marie, finding herself in his
grasp, opened her eyes on his face with a look of speechless terror, and
breaking from him, fled down the ravine, springing from rock to rock
with the security of recklessness.

Antoine followed her, stumbling through the darkness, but his speed was
no match for the madness of fear, and his steps were still to be heard
crashing through the furze bushes and loose stones, when the white
coiffe had flitted, like some bird of night, round the projecting
boulders of the sea-coast, and disappeared.


PART II.

Old Jeanne Le Gall was leaning on her stick in her solitary way beside
the arched wellhead at the top of the lane, when she heard flying steps
along the pathway of rock that bordered the sea, and peered through the
twilight with her cunning old eyes, alert for something uncanny, or