, that once I thought I heard through the roar of wind and sea
the sound of a far cannonading. But I said to myself that it was only the
imagination of a haunted mind; that in my ears still thundered the
cannonade of Lens."

"Was it nevertheless true?" She had turned around from the fire where her
own soup simmered in the kettle. As she spoke again she rose and came to
the table.

He said: "It must have been cannon that I heard. Because, not long
afterward, out of the fog came a great aeroplane rushing inland from the
sea--flying swiftly above me--right over me!--and staggering like a
wounded duck--it had one aileron broken--and sheered away into the fog,
northward, Marie-Josephine."

Her work-worn hands, tightly clenched, rested now on the table and she
leaned there, looking down at him.

"Was it an enemy--this airship, Jacques?"

"In the mist flying and the ragged clouds I could not tell. It might have
been English. It must have been, I think--coming as it came from the sea.
But I am troubled, Marie-Josephine. Were the guns at sea an enemy's guns?
Did the aeroplane come to earth in safety? Where? In the Forest of Lais? I
found no trace of it."

She said, tremulous perhaps from standing too long motionless and intent:

"Is it possible that the Boches would come into these solitary moors,
where there are no people any more, only the creatures of the Lais woods,
and the curlew and the lapwings which pass at evening?"

He ate thoughtfully and in silence for a while; then:

"They go, usually--the Boches--where there is plunder--murder to be
done.... Spying to be done.... God knows what purpose animates the
Huns.... After all, Lorient is not so far away.... Yet it surely must have
been an English aeroplane, beaten off by some enemy ship--a submarine
perhaps. God send that the rocks of the Isle des Chouans take care of
her--with their teeth!"

He drank his cider--a sip or two only--then, setting aside the glass:

"I went from the Rocks of Eryx to Lais Woods. I called as loudly as I
could; the wind whirled my voice back into my throat.... I am not yet very
strong....

"Then I went into the wood as far as my strength permitted. I heard and
saw nothing, Marie-Josephine."

"Would they be dead?" she asked.

"They were planing to earth. I don't know how much control they had,
whether they could steer--choose a landing place. There are plenty of safe
places on these moors."

"If their airship is crippled, what ca