ored to her, and
that she was now like any of the other women in the village; which, in
her own simple presentment of things, must be interpreted as meaning
that she might look to have a husband and a home of her own. It was as
though she had for the first time become a real woman. She saddled the
horse and rode off to fetch a doctor to attend to the sick man, thinking
all the while that the fleet would be in before morning, that Paul would
come home, and that he would hear her voice. She made little childish
plans of pretending to be still dumb when she first saw him, so that she
might surprise him the more when she should speak.

Darkness was fast gathering now, but the old horse knew every stone in
the road: he carried her with his steady jog-trot safely enough over the
two miles that lay between the auberge and the fishing village where the
doctor lived, in a house overlooking the _rade_ and the harbour. As she
passed along, the dark quays were full of moving lights and figures;
active women with short skirts and sabots, mingling in the groups of
fishermen; while a buzz of harsh Breton speech resounded on all sides.
She caught words about a gang of wreckers that had lately infested the
coast: and the names of one or two "_mauvais sujets_" in the village,
who were supposed to be their confederates. She saw a moving light at
the mouth of the harbour, and from a low-breathed murmur that ran below
the noisier speech of the crowd, she gathered that it was a boat's crew
going out in the darkness, to scale the precipitous rock, and extinguish
the light.

All her faculties seemed quickened, and she kept repeating aloud to
herself the words she heard in the crowd, to make sure that she could
articulate as clearly as she had done in the first moment that her voice
was given to her.

When she arrived at the doctor's gate, and dismounted to pull the great
iron bell-rope that hung outside, she was trembling violently, and could
hardly steady her hands to tie up the horse. Jeanne, the cook's sister,
took her into the kitchen, while some one fetched the doctor, and she
was so anxious that her speech should seem plain to them, that for the
few first moments, from sheer nervousness, she could not utter a word.
Then the doctor entered, a tall, well-built man, with stiff, iron-grey
hair and imperial, and an expression of genial contentment with himself
and the rest of the world.

"Mais, Mademoiselle Annette," he exclaimed the mome