harbour, Elie, that we borrowed and promised to return. Will you see to it
for us?" and we sped on, to meet many such welcomes, and staring eyes and
gaping mouths, till we came to Beaumanoir, and walked into the kitchen.

"Oh, bon Dieu!" gasped Aunt Jeanne, and sat down suddenly on the green-bed
at sight of us, believing we were spirits bearing her warning.

But I flung my arms round her neck and kissed her heartily, and asked only,
"Carette?--and my mother?"

And she said, "But they are well, mon gars," and regarded me with somewhat
less of doubt, but no less amazement. And I kissed her again, and said,
"Helier will tell you all about it, Aunt Jeanne," and ran off across the
knoll, past Vieux Port, to Belfontaine.

I looked across at Brecqhou as I came in sight of the western waters, and
said to myself, "In an hour I will be over there to see Carette," and my
heart leaped with joy. Away up towards Rondellerie I thought I saw my
grandfather in the fields. I jumped over the green bank and came down to
the house through the orchard. The door stood wide and I went in. My
mother looked up in quick surprise at a visitor at so unusual an hour, and
in a moment she was on my neck.

"My boy! my boy!" she cried. "Now God be praised!" and sobbed and strained
me to her, and I felt all her prayers thrill through her arms into my own
heart.

It was quite a while before we could settle to reasonable talk, for, in
spite of her repeated assertions that she had never really given me up, she
could still hardly realise that I was truly alive and come back to her, and