perchance out of which she could make some profit for herself. Already
that day, she had earned a sou by carrying a bit of a letter, and
telling one or two little lies. As the steps came nearer, a kind of
moaning and sobbing was heard, and the old woman, muttering to
herself--"It is the voice of Marie. What has the devil's imp been doing
to her?"--hobbled as fast as she could to the turning that led to the
sea, and just as the flying figure appeared, put out her skinny hand to
arrest it. There was a sudden scream, a fall, and Marie lay in the road,
like one dead.

The cry brought to their doors, one after another, the occupants of the
neighbouring cottages; and as the dark-shawled, free-stepping Breton
women gathered round, for the clattering of sabots and of tongues, it
might have been a group of black sea-fowl clamouring over some
'trouvaille' of the sea, thrown up among their rocks.

They raised her painfully, with kind but ungentle hands, wept and called
on the saints, availing little in any way, till the heavy tramp of a
fisherman's nailed boots was heard on the rocks, and Antoine thrust the
throng aside, and bending over, took her up in his arms, as a mother
might her child, and without a word bore her along the road towards her
home.

But he had scarcely placed her on the settle beside the bed, when her
eyes opened, and as they rested on him, again the look of terror came
into them: she flung herself away from him with a scream, and sobbing
and uttering strange sounds of fear and aversion, was hardly to be held
by the other women.

"She has lost her wits!" they cried. "Our Blessed Lady help her!"