our welfare in her special
keeping; and the driver having done his best on the road, and having
fallen asleep not more than five times on his box, we forgot our
threat, and dismissed him with a _pourboire_, for which he returned us a
Breton benediction.

[Illustration: BRITTANY PEASANTS.]

Once again the next day was kindly, the sun shone, the sky was
unclouded. These are rare days in Brittany, which, surrounded on three
sides by water, lives in an atmosphere that is always damp and too often
gloomy and depressing.

Mindful of our host's wise counsel to profit by the fine weather, we
started for St. Jean-du-Doigt.

This time our drive lay in a different direction. Yesterday it had been
inland, to-day it was towards the sea-coast. The country for some time
was sad and barren-looking, but as we approached St. Jean and the coast
it became more interesting and fertile.

Lanmeur, a small town not far from St. Jean, lies in a rather sad and
solitary plain, and is said to occupy the site of a city of great
antiquity. Here runs the river Douron, a small stream that, considerably
higher up, separates the Department of Finistere from Les Cotes du Nord.
The ancient city was named _Kerfeunteun_, and possessed a wonderful
church which was destroyed by the Normans in the eleventh century, but
of which the crypt still remains. In the centre of this crypt springs a
fountain or well, dedicated to St. Melar, a Breton prince put to death
in the year 538, by that same Rivod who murdered his brother Miliau, and
then had himself proclaimed king. The crypt also contains a statue of
St. Melar of the fourteenth century, representing him minus a hand and
foot, which Rivod had had cut off before putting him to death, in order
that he should not be able to mount a horse or use a sword. Of the
church built in the eleventh century only a few arches in the nave and
the south porch remain. The rest of the existing building is modern.

The coast beyond Lanmeur is extremely broken, rugged and rocky, full of
small bays and sharp points of land jutting out into the sea. The whole
neighbourhood is interesting. Especially remarkable is the Pointe de Beg
an Fri, the fine and rugged rocks of Primel and of Plougasnou; whilst on
the land the pointed roofs of many an old manor rise above the trees.

St. Jean-du-Doigt is four miles from all this. It is a very pretty and
fertile village watered by the Dounant, which passes through it on its
way to the Bay