"Listen, then, my friends," said Pontcalec.
And he began, in the midst of the most scrupulous attention, the following recital, for they knew that if Pontcalec were afraid there must be a good cause.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE SORCERESS OF SAVERNAY.
"I was ten years old, and I lived at Pontcalec, in the midst of woods, when one day my uncle Crysogon, my father, and I, resolved to have a rabbit hunt in a warren at five or six miles distance, found, seated on the heath, a woman reading. So few of our peasants could read that we were surprised. We stopped and looked at her—I see her now, as though it were yesterday, though it is nearly twenty years ago. She wore the dark costume of our Breton women, with the usual white head-dress, and she was seated on a large tuft of broom in blossom, which she had been cutting.
"My father was mounted on a beautiful bay horse, with a gold-colored mane, my uncle on a gray horse, young and ardent, and I rode one of those little white ponies, which to strength and activity unite the docility of a sheep.
"The woman looked up from her book at the group before her, and seeing me firm in my stirrups near my father, who seemed proud of me, she rose all at once, and approaching me, said—
"'What a pity!'
"'What do you mean?' asked my father.
"'It means that I do not like that white pony,' replied the woman.