White with fear themselves, and half believing it to be some supernatural visitation, they clung round her, supporting her till the fit had passed, and she lay back on the bed exhausted and half unconscious: her fresh, young lips drawn with an unnatural expression of suffering, and her frank, blue eyes heavy and lifeless. Antoine was turned out of the cottage, lest the sight of him should excite her again, and he marched away across the low rocks to his own home on the solitary foreland. As he passed the chapel on the shore, he saw through the open door, a single taper burning before the shrine of St. Nicholas, and just serving to show the gloom and emptiness of the place; and it seemed to him as though the Saints had deserted it.
He never saw Marie again. Once during her illness, the kind, clever old Aimée, wrung by the sight of her boy's haggard face, as he went to and fro about the boats, without food or sleep, took her way to the Pierrés' cottage, with the present of a fine fresh "dorade" for the invalid; and when she had stood for a minute by the bedside leaning on her stick, and looking on the face of the half-unconscious girl, she began with her natty old hand to pat Marie's shoulder, and with coaxing words to get her to say that she would see Antoine. But at the first sound of the name, the limp figure started up from the pillows, and from the innocent, childish lips came a stream of strange, eager speech, as she poured forth her conviction, like a cherished secret, that Antoine was possessed of the Evil One: for Jeanne, the sorceress, had told her so: that he was one of Them, and by night in the valley you could see him in his own shape. Then she grew more wild, crying out that Antoine would kill her: that he had bewitched her, and she must die.
Anyone unaware of the hold which superstition has over the Breton mind, would perhaps hardly believe that the women stood round awe-struck at this revelation, seeing nothing improbable in it. In spite of her dangerous state of excitement, they eagerly pressed her with questions as to what she had seen, and what Jeanne had said, but she had become too incoherent to satisfy them, and only flung herself wildly about, crying, "Let me go—he will kill me—let me go:" till she suddenly sank down motionless on the pillow, was silent for a few moments, and then began to murmur over and over in an awe-struck, eager whisper, "Go to the Black Stone this night, and you shall see. Go to the Black Stone this night, and you shall see."
While the old cronies shook their heads, muttering that it was true, there had always been something uncanny about Antoine: and see the way he would draw the fish into his net, against their own better sense: it was plain there was something in Antoine they dared not resist:—old Aimée hobbled out with her stick and sabots, without saying a word, went round to the open door of the next cottage, and peered round the rough wooden partition that screened off the inner half of the room. On a settle beside the hearth, where a cauldron was boiling, sat Jeanne, the sorceress, with her absorbed, concentrated air, as though her thoughts were fixed on something which she could communicate to no one: she turned her strange, bright eyes on the figure in the entrance, without change of expression, and waited for Aimée to speak.
Aimée's face was like a cut diamond, so keen and bright was it, as leaning on her stick, which she struck on the floor from time to time with the emphasis of her speech, she said in her shrill Breton tones:—
"Mademoiselle Jeanne, I have come to ask of you what evil lie it is that you have told to the child Marie, that lies on her death-bed yonder. Come. You have been bribed by Geoffroi, that I know, and a son will purchase snuff, and for that you will sell your soul. Good—It is for you to do what you will with your own affairs: but when you cause an injury to my belle-fille, so that she becomes like a mad woman and dies, I come to ask you for an account of what you have done, Mademoiselle: that you may undo what you have done, while there is yet time, Mademoiselle."
Jeanne's thin, stern lips trembled, almost as if in fear, as she listened to Aimée. She turned her shaking head slowly towards her, then fixed her deep eyes on hers, and said:
"I have warned your belle-fille, that she may be saved. It was my love for her. Let her have nought to do with Them that dwell in the rocks and the trunks of the great trees."
Old Aimée shook her stick on the floor with rage.
"Impious and wicked woman! Confess, I say, or I will tell the good curé, who knows your tricks, and he will not give you absolution; and then the Evil Ones will have their way with you yourself, for what shall save you from them?"