"I thought it resembled a fish——"
"Do you understand French, Captain Neeland?"
"Yes."
"Then you know that L'Ombre means 'the shadow'."
"Yes."
"Did you know, also, that there is a fish called 'L'Ombre'?"
"No; I did not know that."
"There is. It looks like a shadow in the water. L'Ombre does not belong here in Brittany. It is a northern fish of high altitudes where waters are icy and rapid and always tinctured with melted snow ... would you accord me a little more patience, Monsieur, if I seem to be garrulous concerning my own family? It is merely because I want you to understand everything ... everything...."
"I am interested," he assured her pleasantly.
"Then—it is a legend—perhaps a superstition in our family—that any misfortune to us—and to France—is always preceded by two invariable omens. One of these dreaded signs is the abrupt appearance of L'Ombre in the[pg 105] waters of our moat—" She turned her head slowly and looked down over the parapet of the bridge.—"The other omen," she continued quietly, "is that the clocks in our house suddenly go wrong—all striking the same hour, no matter where the hands point, no matter what time it really is.... These things have always happened in our family, they say. I, myself, have never before witnessed them. But during the Vendée the clocks persisted in striking four times every hour. The Comte d'Aulnes mounted the scaffold at that hour; the Vicomte died under Charette at Fontenay at that hour.... L'Ombre appeared in the waters of the moat at four o'clock one afternoon. And then the clocks went wrong.