hrough Paimpol, looking at no one, her body bent
slightly like one about to fall, with a rushing of blood in her ears;
pressing and hurrying along like some poor old machine, which could not
be wound up, at a great pressure, for the last time, without fear of
breaking its springs.

At the third mile she went along quite bent in two and exhausted; from
time to time her foot struck against the stones, giving her a painful
shock up to the very head. She hurried to bury herself in her home, for
fear of falling and having to be carried there.

CHAPTER VI--A CHARITABLE ASSUMPTION

"Old Yvonne's tipsy!" was the cry.

She had fallen, and the street children ran after her. It was just at
the boundary of the parish of Ploubazlanec, where many houses straggle
along the roadside. But she had the strength to rise and hobble along on
her stick.

"Old Yvonne's tipsy!"

The bold little creatures stared her full in the face, laughing. Her
_coiffe_ was all awry. Some of these little ones were not really wicked,
and these, when they scanned her closer and saw the senile grimace of
bitter despair, turned aside, surprised and saddened, daring to say
nothing more.

At home, with the door tightly closed, she gave vent to the deep scream
of despair that choked her, and fell down in a corner, her head against
the wall. Her cap had fallen over her eyes; she threw off roughly what
formerly had been so well taken care of. Her Sunday dress was soiled,
and a thin mesh of yellowish white hair strayed from beneath her cap,
completing her pitiful, poverty-stricken disorder.

CHAPTER VII--THE COMFORTER

Thus did Gaud, coming in for news in the evening, find her; her hair
dishevelled, her arms hanging down, and her head resting against the
stone wall, with a falling jaw grinning, and the plaintive whimper of
a little child; she scarcely could weep any more; these grandmothers,
grown too old, have no tears left in their dried-up eyes.

"My grandson is dead!" She threw the letters, papers, and medal into her
caller's lap.

Gaud quickly scanned the whole, saw the news was true, and fell on
her knees to pray. The two women remained there together almost dumb,
through the June gloaming, which in Brittany is long but in Iceland is
never-ending. On the hearth the cricket that brings joy was chirping his
shrill music.

The dim dusk entered through the narrow window into the dwelling of
those Moans, who had all been devoured by the sea, an