anced he came close to her and murmured in her ear:

"What have you done with the golden ring that you received from me at
the door of this very house?"

The bride stared at him in wild dismay. "Oh, heaven," she cried,
"behold, I have now two husbands! I who thought I was a widow!"

"You think wrongly, _ma belle_," hissed the beggar; "you will have no
husband this side of the grave," and drawing a dagger from under his
cloak he struck the lady to the heart.

In the abbey of Daoulas there is a statue of the Virgin decorated with
a splendid girdle of purple sparkling with rubies, which came from
across the sea. If you desire to know who gave it to her, ask of a
repentant monk who lies prostrate on the grass before the figure of
the Mother of God.

It is strange that the faithless damsel should have alleged that she
saw her lover perish in a naval combat when in the very year to which
the circumstances of the ballad refer (1405) a Breton fleet
encountered and defeated an English flotilla several leagues from
Brest. "The combat was terrible," says a historian of the Dukes of
Burgundy, "and was animated by the ancient hate between the English
and the Bretons." Perhaps it was in this sea-fight that the lady
beheld her lover; and if, as she thought, he was slain, she scarcely
deserves the odium which the balladeer has cast upon her memory.

_The Combat of Saint-Cast_

This ballad somewhat belies its name, for it has some relation to an
extraordinary incident which was the means rather of preventing
than precipitating a battle. In 1758 a British army was landed upon
the shores of Brittany with the object of securing for British
merchant ships safety in the navigation of the Channel and of creating
a diversion in favour of the German forces, then our allies. A
company of men from Lower Brittany, from the towns of Treguier and
Saint-Pol-de-Leon, says Villemarque, were marching against a
detachment of Scottish Highlanders. When at a distance of about a
mile the Bretons could hear their enemies singing a national song. At
once they halted stupefied, for the air was one well known to them,
which they were accustomed to hear almost every day of their lives.
Electrified by the music, which spoke to their hearts, they arose
in their enthusiasm and themselves sang the patriotic refrain. It
was the Highlanders' turn to be silent. All this time the two
companies were nearing one another, and when at a suitable distance
their re