k once in a ford and had to be fished out with three
yoke of cream-colored bulls and a long ship's rope. That was about noon,
and they decided to lunch at the next inn, though it did not look
inviting. However, Milly's French coaxed a tolerable meal from the fat
housewife whom they discovered cleaning fish in the kitchen, and even
the stodgy Roy mellowed under the influence of fresh fish and a
drinkable bottle of wine which he and Milly discovered somewhere.

That evening, without further mishap, they rumbled into the hamlet of
Poldau. For the last hour they had seen signs of the coming _fete_. All
the natives, arrayed in their best clothes, were drifting westward to
the rocky cape, where, perched on a lonely cliff, was the tiny chapel,
"Our Lady of the Guard," which was the scene of the _Pardon_ on the
morrow. Before they entered Poldau night had fallen, and the long yellow
beams from the powerful _Phare_ glanced out across the sullen waters and
the level land. It was beneath this lofty lighthouse they slept, in a
clean, bare little inn. Milly, lying in her cushiony bed, could hear the
waves grumbling around the rocks, and watch the sweep of that golden
beam of light,--speaking to the distant passers-by upon the Atlantic,
warning them of the dangers of this treacherous coast....

It was the first time she had been separated from her family, and she
lay awake long hours, restless and sleepless, wondering whether Yvonne
would remember to pull up the extra blanket over Virginia before the
early morning dampness. And she thought about her husband, fleetingly,
contrasting him with Roy Gilbert, who seemed to have grown heavier in
mind as well as in person these last years. Roy was surely what the
artists called _bourgeois_, but she liked him--he was so kind and good
to Nettie. She felt at home, getting back to the familiar _bourgeois_
atmosphere of the Gilberts, where life was made easy and comfortable,
and you knew every idea any one would advance before the words were half
spoken....

Milly was wakened before dawn by the sound of a drunken quarrel beneath
her window. Some Breton evidently had begun to celebrate the _Pardon_
too soon; a shrill woman's voice broke the silence with unintelligible
reproaches. There was the sound of blows, of crashing glass, a scuffle,
sobs,--then silence, broken now and again by fresh sobs. Ah, those
men,--men!... The lamp in the _Phare_ went out: it was dawn. Milly fell
into a broken sleep.