n
snatched from him. She was his, and he would see her face once more: he
would go to Cherbourg, and look on her dead face, that he might know it,
for she was his.

He would be in time, if he caught the night train (the funeral was the
following day). He would have to walk to St. Jean-du-Pied, the next
village along the coast, from which a _diligence_ started in the
afternoon to the nearest railway station. Old Aimee did up a little
packet of necessaries for him, and borrowed money for the journey,
saying nothing as she watched his face, full of the inarticulate
suffering of the untaught. Antoine scarcely said farewell, as he walked
straight out of the cottage door towards the sea, to take the shortest
route to St. Jean-du-Pied by the coast. The rocks were white from the
sea-foam, as if with driven snow, and the black sea was lashed to
madness by a gale from the North East. The bitter wind tore across the
bleak country-side, scourging every rock, tree and living thing that
attempted to resist it, like the desolation of God descending in
judgment on the land. Wild, torn clouds chased each other across the
sky, and the deep roar of the sea among the rocks could be heard far
inland.

Antoine's thoughts meanwhile were whirling tumultuously round and round
one object--an object that had hovered fitfully before his mind for many
weeks--pressing closer and closer on it, till at length with triumphant
realization, they seized on it and made it the imperious necessity of
his will.

Ever since the night in the ravine, Antoine had been living in a strange
world: he had not known himself: his hand had seemed against every
man's, and every man's hand against his. He never went to mass, for he
felt that the good God had abandoned him.

Now he suddenly realised what it was he needed--the just punishment of
Geoffroi. The path of life would be straight again, and God on His
Throne in heaven, when Justice had been vindicated, and he had visited
his crime on the evil-doer. That he must do it himself, was plain to him.

He marched on, possessed with a feeling that it was Geoffroi whom he
was going to seek, towards the projecting foreland that shut in the
village on the east. He was drenched by the waves, as they dashed madly
against the walls of rock, and to get round the boulders under such
circumstances was a dangerous task even for a skilled climber: but
Antoine seemed borne forward by a force stronger than himself, and went
on w