I am avenged upon mine enemy.
Guise is dead! But some others yet live."

CHAPTER XXII.

BERAK THE LIGHTNING AND TOAH HIS DOG

The blue midland sea, the clear blue of heaven just turning to opal, and
the glint of mother-of-pearl coming up with the gloaming! A beach, not
flattened out and ribbed by the passage of daily tides, but with the
sand and pebbles built steeply up by the lashing waves and the furious
wind Euroclydon.

On different planes, far out at sea, were the sails of fishing-boats,
set this way and that, for all the world like butterflies in the act of
alighting. It was early spring--the spring of Roussillon, where it is
never winter. Already the purple flowers of the wild Provencal mustard
stood out from the white and yellow rocks, on which was perched a little
town, flat-roofed and Moorish. Their leaves, grey-green like her own
northern seas, of which she had all but lost the memory, drew Claire's
attention. She bit absent-mindedly, and was immediately informed as to
the species of the plant, without any previous knowledge of botany.

She kicked a strand of the long binding sea-grass, and then, after
looking a moment resentfully at the wild mustard, she threw the plant
pettishly away. Our once sedate Claire had begun to allow herself these
ebullitions with the Professor. They annoyed the Abbe John so much--and
it was practice. Also, they made the Professor spoil her. He had never
watched from so near the sweet, semi-conscious coquetry of a pretty
maid. So now he studied Claire like a newly-found fragment of
Demosthenes, of which the Greek text has become a little fragmentary and
wilful during the centuries.

"This will serve you better, if you must take to eating grass like an
ox," said the Professor of Eloquence, reaching out his hand and plucking
a sprig of sweet alison, which grew everywhere about.

Claire stretched out hers also and took the honey-scented plant, on
which the tiny white flowers and the shining fruit were to be found
together.

"Buzz-uzz-uzz!" said half-a-dozen indignant bees, following the sprig.
For at that dead season of the year, sweet alison was almost their only
joy.

"Ugh!" exclaimed Claire, letting it go. She loved none of the
sting-accoutred tribe--unless it were the big, heavy, lurching
bumble-bees, which entered a room with such blundering pomp that you had
always time to get out before they made up their mind about you.

The Professor watched her with som