ing the cow home from her
scanty bit of grazing, kneeling on the stone edge of the pond by the
well, to wash the clothes, or within doors cooking the soup in the huge
cauldron that stood on the granite hearth. A sight indeed it was to see
the aged dame bending over the tripod, with the dried gorse blazing
beneath it, while its glow illumined the dark, cavernous chimney above,
was flashed back from the polished doors of the great oak chest, with
its burnished brass handles, and from the spotless copper saucepans
hanging on the walls; and brightened the red curtains of the cosy
box-bedstead in the corner by the fire.

The second inhabitant of the cottage was Aimee's son, Jean, the
fisherman, with his blue blouse, and his swarthy, rough-hewn face,
beaten by wind and weather into an odd sort of resemblance to the rocks
among which he passed his life--the hardy and primitive life to which he
had been born, and to which all his ideas were limited, a life of
continual struggle with the elements for the satisfaction of primary
needs, and which was directed by the movements of nature, by the tides,
the winds, and the rising and setting of the sun and the moon.

And thirdly there was Jean's nephew, Antoine.

The day before Antoine was born, his father had been drowned in a storm
which had wrecked many of the fishing-boats along the coast, and his
mother, from the shock of the news, gave premature birth to her babe,
and died a few hours after. His grandmother had brought up the child,
and his silent, rough-handed uncle had adopted him, and worked for him,
as if he were his own. So the little Antoine, with his blond head, and
his little bare feet, grew up in the rock-hewn cottage, like a bright
gorse-flower among the boulders, and spent an untaught childhood,
pattering about the granite floor, or clambering over the rough rocks,
and dabbling in the salt water, where he would watch the beautiful green
anemones, that had so many fingers but no hands, and which he never
touched, because, if he did, they spoilt themselves directly, packing
their fingers up very quickly, so that they went into nowhere: or the
prawns, that he always thought were the spirits of the other fish, for
they looked as if they were made of nothing, and they lay so still under
a stone, as if they were not there, and then darted so quickly across
the pool that you could not see them go.

Antoine knew a great deal about the spirits: how there were evil ones,
su