ss the bar, leaving every ledge a glowing
cinder under the widening conflagration in the west.

The mayor carried his silver-buttoned jacket over his arm; the air had
grown sultry. As we walked our gigantic shadows strode away before us
across the kindling stubble, seeming to lengthen at every stride.

Below the cliffs, on a crescent of flat sand, from which sluggish,
rosy rivulets crawled seaward, a man stood looking out across the
water. And the mayor stopped and called down to him: "Ohe, the
Lizard! What do you see on the ocean--you below?"

"I see six war-ships speeding fast in column," replied the man,
without looking up.

The mayor hastily shaded his eyes with one fat hand, muttering: "All
poachers have eyes like sea-hawks. There is a smudge of smoke to the
north. Holy Virgin, what eyes the rascal has!"

As for me, strain my eyes as I would, I saw nothing save the faintest
stain of smoke on the horizon.

"He, Lizard! Are they German, your six war-ships?" bawled the mayor.
His voice had suddenly become tremulous.

"They are French," replied the poacher, tranquilly.

"Then Sainte-Eline keep them from the rocks!" sang out the mayor.
"Ohe, Lizard, I want somebody to drum and read a proclamation.
Where's Jacqueline?"

At that instant a young girl, a mere child, appeared on the beach,
dragging a sea-rake over the ground behind her. She was a lithe
creature, bare-limbed and ragged, with the sea-tan on throat and knee.
The blue tatters of her skirt hung heavy with brine; the creamy skin
on her arms glittered with wet spray, and her hair was wet, too,
clustering across her cheeks in damp elf-locks.

The mayor glanced at her with that stolid contempt which Finistere
Bretons cherish toward those women who show their hair--an immodesty
unpardonable in the eyes of most Bretons.

The girl caught sight of the mayor and gave him a laughing greeting
which he returned with a shrug.

"If you want a town-crier," she called up, in a deliciously fresh
voice, scarcely tinged with the accent, "I'll cry your edicts and
I'll drum for you, too!"

"Can your daughter beat the drum?" asked the mayor of the poacher,
ignoring the girl's eager face upturned.

"Yes," said the poacher, indifferently, "and she can also beat the
devil with two sticks."

The girl threw her rake into a boat and leaped upon the rocks at the
base of the cliff.

"Jacqueline! Don't come up that way!" bawled the mayor, horrified.
"Hey! Robert! Ohe! Liz