“You rogue! You little villain!� she cried to the child she dragged. “What made you say it?�
“Be-be-cause—bub—bub—boo—because it’s true!� roared Gaos, through angry sobs.
His mother, with a hasty invocation of her patron saint, dropped his hand, stopped where the beach-pathway merged in the Paimpol road, and looked back. Mademoiselle Yvonne was nowhere to be seen at first, but presently her figure mounted into view climbing the pathway to the chapel.
“She has gone to burn a candle for her good news,� said Madame Pilot. “Now which have I for a son ... a liar or a prophet? If one were to mistake and smack the prophet, it’s enough to bring a judgment down....� She shook her head mournfully. “But it is to be prayed for, all the same, that that great rogue Yann may never come wheedling back. Drowned, did you suppose? Dead? Not a bit of it!... He’s living on the fat of the land in Ploubazou, where he landed his last cargo of fish nineteen years ago, married a tavern-keeper’s daughter, and set up a sailor’s drinking-house himself; ‘The Chinese Cider Cellars,’ they call it. May Heaven punish such vagabonds!� panted Madame Pilot. “As for us in Pors Lanec, we’re peace-lovers and law-abiders, but there are stones and cudgels waiting for Monsieur Yann Tregnier whenever he shows his nose here.�
Madame Pilot stopped, as a broad-shouldered young man in a sailor’s cap and pilot-cloth jacket came tramping toward her along the puddly Paimpol road, whistling a cheerful tune. He wore thick town-made brogues instead of wooden sabots, and saluted the women in the country fashion, though to him personally they were unknown, and passed by, leaving the mother of the possible prophet staring; for he was known to her as the son of the Ploubazou tavern-keeper Yann Tregnier, christened Jean-Marie after his mother’s father. He was a well-looking, sturdy young fellow of eighteen, who had always hankered to join the Icelanders, as the cod-trawlers are called, and sail with the yearly fleet on the last day of February for the big, dangerous fisheries in the icy regions where the summers have no night. But Yann, his father, would not hear of it, and Jean-Marie had been apprenticed to a cooper in Paimpol. He had grumbled, but his fate appeared less hard now that he was in love with Gaud. Gaud lived with an aunt in the village of Pors Lanec, a place Jean-Marie knew as yet only by hearsay, since her parents lived in Paimpol, and she had met her lover while upon a visit to them. Pors Lanec lay by the beach a mile or two from Paimpol, Gaud had told him. The cottage was built against a great rock, the doorstep was the beach, and the sea the duck-pond before the door; he could not fail to recognize the place, Gaud had described it so clearly.
Gaud was a little delicate creature, with hair of burning gold hidden under her shell cap, and great violet-gray eyes, full of possible adoration for any likely young fellow who should come wooing to Pors Lanec, and the likely young fellow had come along in the person of Jean-Marie. And he had won her promise, and meant to marry her and settle down to the cooper’s trade in earnest. True, the girl was without a dower, and his father, with whom he had had a talk at Ploubazou last Sunday, had pulled a long lip at that piece of information, and he had said to the old man straight out: “Either I get Gaud or go to sea!�
“Either I get Gaud—or go to sea!� Jean-Marie repeated now in the most deep and manly voice he had at command. For the cottage built against the cliff had come in sight, a dwelling so weather-worn and lichen-stained that it might have been an excrescence upon the side of the rock that sheltered it. “Either I get Gaud....� Jean-Marie squared his shoulders, and marched down upon the cottage where Gaud lived. As his firm footsteps crossed the plateau of sandy rock that lay before the cottage door he heard a cry from within, and before he could lift a hand to the rope-yarn of the latch, the door was pulled violently back, thrown open, and a woman fell upon his breast with a sobbing shriek of joy.
“Yann! Oh, my beloved, at last!�
“Madame!� he stuttered.
“Our Lady sent me word you would return to-day, and even as I was upon my way to thank her for such grace, I turned back thinking. ‘If he should come and miss me!’�