plastered walls
dripping with saline ooze. From the roof depended three or four
rudely carved ships, hung there _ex voto_ by parishioners preserved
from various perils of the deep. He narrated their histories at
length.

"The roof leaks," he said, "but we are to remedy that. At length the
blessed Mary of Lezan will be housed, if not as befits her, at least
not shamefully." He indicated a niched statue of the Virgin, with
daubed red cheeks and a robe of crude blue overspread with blotches
of sea-salt. "Thanks to your England," he added.

"Why 'thanks to England'?"

He chuckled--or perhaps I had better say chirruped.

"Did I not say I had been visiting your country on business? Eh?
You shall hear the story--only I tell no names."

He took snuff.

"We will call them," he said, "only by their Christian names, which
are Lucien and Jeanne. . . . I am to marry them next month, when
Lucien gets his relief from the lighthouse on Ile Ouessant.

"They are an excellent couple. As between them, the wits are with
Lucien, who will doubtless rise in his profession. He has been
through temptation, as you shall hear. For Jeanne, she is _un coeur
simple_, as again you will discover; not clever at all--oh, by no
means!--yet one of the best of my children. It is really to Jeanne
that we owe it all. . . . I have said so to Lucien, and just at the
moment Lucien was trying to say it to me.

"They were betrothed, you understand. Lucien was nineteen, and
Jeanne maybe a year younger. From the beginning, it had been an
understood thing: to this extent understood, that Lucien, instead of
sailing to the fishery (whither go most of the young men of Ile Lezan
and the coast hereabouts) was destined from the first to enter the
lighthouse service under Government. The letters I have written to
Government on his behalf! . . . I am not one of those who quarrel
with the Republic. Still--a priest, and in this out-of-the-way
spot--what is he?

"However, Lucien got his appointment. The pay? Enough to marry on,
for a free couple. But the families were poor on both sides--long
families, too. Folk live long on Ile Lezan--women-folk especially;
accidents at the fishery keep down the men. Still, and allowing for
that, the average is high. Lucien had even a great-grandmother
alive--a most worthy soul--and on Jeanne's side the grandparents
survived on both sides. Where there are grandparents they must be
maintained.

"No one builds