But neither the union nor the child brought happiness to these twain, so much at one in their woodland life, so hopelessly alien in all else. One day a man named Iouenn Kerbac'h, passing by the tent where Judik and Annaik had taken shelter from a violent thunder-storm, overheard a savage upbraiding on the part of Kerbastiou. Annaik was his wife, it was true—so he cried—but a wife who had in nothing short of madness renounced every thing, and now would claim nothing of her own nor allow him to claim aught; a wife whom he loved with another madness, and yet hated because she was so hopelessly remote from himself; a wife who had borne a child, but a child that had nothing of the gypsy eyes and swarthy darkness of Judik Kerbastiou, but was fair, and with skin as white and eyes as blue as those of Alan de Kerival.
It was this, and the terrible words that were said, which made Iouenn Kerbac'h hurry onward, dreading to listen further. Yet nothing that he overheard gave him so strange a fear as the laugh with which Annaik de Kerival greeted a savage, screaming threat of death, hurled at her because of her silence after the taunting accusation he had made ... had made, and defied her to refute.
None heard or saw Annaik Kerbastiou after that day, till the night of the evening when Judik came into Haut-Kerloek and went straight to Jehan Rusgol, the Maire.
When asked what he had come for he had replied simply: "The woman Annaik is dead." It was commonly thought that he had killed her, but there was no evidence of this, and the end of the inevitable legal procedure was the acquittal of the woodlander. From that day the man was rarely seen of his fellows, and even then, for the most part, only by charcoal-burners and others who had forest business. A few peasants knew where his hut was, and now and again called to speak with him, or to drink a cup of cider; but oftener than not he was absent, and always with the child. The boy had survived his mother's death, and in some strange way had suddenly become so dear to Judik Kerbastiou that the two were inseparable.
This, then, was the tidings which startled Alan and Ynys out of their remote quiescence.
The unexpected news, coupled with the urgent request that both should return to Kerival, if only for a brief while, so as to prevent the property falling into absolute ruin, came as a whip upon Alan's mind. To all he said Ynys agreed, and was even glad to leave Rona and return to Brittany.
So it was that, with the first days of April, they bade farewell to Ian and his sister, whom they left at Caisteal-Rhona, which was henceforth to be their home, and to all upon the island, and set forth in a fishing smack for Borosay.
It was not till the last of the precipices of Rona was lost to view behind the south headland of Borosay that Ynys clearly realized the deep gladness with which she left the lonely Isle of the Caves. That it would have been impossible for her to live there long she was now well assured; and for Alan, too, the life was not suitable. For the north, and for the islands, they would ever have a deep feeling, almost sacred in its intensity; but all that had happened made living there a thing difficult and painful for them, and moreover each, though Ynys most, missed that green woodland beauty, the ceaseless forest charm, which made the very memory of Kerival so fragrant.
They went away, then, not as travellers who fare far with no thought of return, but rather as pilgrims returning homeward from a shrine sacred to them by profound and intimate associations.