They did as he bade them, and when the dragon had been dragged from his lair the entire body went twice round the buckwheat-thrashing yard.
Overjoyed to be freed from so dangerous a foe, the grandfather kept his promise to Mao and gave him Liçzenn to wife. The young pennérèz was led to the church at Camfront, her right arm encircled, as usual, with a band of silver lace for each thousand francs in her dowry, and the story goes that she had eighteen.
Once married, Mao bought live-stock, hired servants, and the lands of the manor were soon worth more than ever. Then it was that the grandfather went to receive his reward from God, leaving all he owned to the young couple.
These last were happier than any other baptized creatures—so happy that every evening they could find nothing to ask of God, and could only thank him. But one day, just as they were sitting down to supper with their servants, who should come in with one of the maids but a soldier, so tall that his head touched the beams of the ceiling, and whom Liçzenn knew at once for her cousin Matelinn. He had come back from the French wars to marry the pennérèz, and, learning what had passed while he was away, great indeed was his wrath; but he took good care not to show it to the young couple, for he was a dissembler by nature.
Mao, nothing doubting, welcomed him with open arms; he gave him of the best in the manor, had the best room made ready for him, and rode with him everywhere about his fields, now covered with harvests.
But the taller Matelinn found the flax, and the heavier the wheat, the angrier he grew that all these things were not his, without speaking of his cousin Liçzenn, who seemed to him prettier than ever. So one day he got Mao to hunt with him on the downs of Logoma, and brought him to a far thicket where there was an abandoned windmill, against which bundles of furze had been piled for the baker of Daonlas; arrived there, he turned his eyes towards Camfront and said all of a sudden to the young man:
“Look! I can see from here the manor with its great court.”
“Which way?” asked Mao.
“Behind that little beechwood: don’t you see the windows of the great hall?”
“I am too short,” said Mao.