road again, and started on--walking
rapidly. As he neared the little bridge, his pace slowed. At the
bridge he halted. Perhaps it would be better not to go--it would be
better left to Father Anton, that!

"_Sacre bleu_!" cried Jean suddenly aloud. "What is the matter with
me? What has happened?"

But he went no further along the road; for, after a moment, he turned,
retracing his steps slowly toward Bernay-sur-Mer.

And so that night Jean did not go to Marie-Louise. But there, at the
house on the bluff, later on, Marie-Louise, after Mother Fregeau had
gone to bed, took the beacon that Jean had made and placed it upon the
table in the front room where, before, that other beacon, the great
lamp, had stood. And for a long time she sat before it, her elbows on
the table, now looking at the little clay figure, now staring through
the window to the headland's point where sometimes she could see the
surf splash silver white in the moonlight. It had been a happy
afternoon in many ways; but there was something that would not let it
be all happiness, for there was confusion in her thoughts. The house
was lonely now, and Uncle Gaston had gone; it did not seem true, it did
not seem that it could be he would not open that door again and come
thumping in with the nets over his shoulders and the wooden floats
bumping on the floor--and the tears unbidden filled her eyes. And her
talk with Jean somehow had not satisfied her, had not dispelled that
intuition that troubled her, for all that he had laughed at her for it;
and they had not, after all, settled what she was to do now that Uncle
Gaston was gone, for, instead of talking more about it, Jean had
forgotten all about her for ever so long while he had worked at the
little clay figure.

Her eyes, from the window, fastened on the beacon with its open,
outstretched arms--and, suddenly, confusion went and great tenderness
came. He had made it for her, and he had said that--that it _was_ her.

"Jean's beacon," she said softly.

And presently she went upstairs to the little attic room, and
undressed, and blew out the candle; and, in her white night-robe, the
black hair streaming over her shoulders, the moonlight upon her, she
knelt beside the bed.

"Make me that, _mon Pere_," she whispered; "make me that--Jean's beacon
all through my life."

-- V --

"WHO IS JEAN LAPARDE?"

The mattress was of straw--and the straw had probably been garnered in
a previous gen