hing about _something_ being "_ueber alles_"--God, perhaps, perhaps
the blue sky overhead which covered him and his sickened friend alike, and
the hurt enemy whose closed lids shut out the sky above--and the dead man
lying very, very far below them--where river and forest and moss and
Parnassus were now alike to him.

CHAPTER VI

IN FINISTERE

It was a dirty trick that they played Stent and Brown--the three
Mysterious Sisters, Fate, Chance, and Destiny. But they're always billed
for any performance, be it vaudeville or tragedy; and there's no use
hissing them off: they'll dog you from the stage entrance if they take a
fancy to you.

They dogged Wayland from the dock at Calais, where the mule transport
landed, all the way to Paris, then on a slow train to Quimperle, and then,
by stagecoach, to that little lost house on the moors, where ties held him
most closely--where all he cared for in this world was gathered under a
humble roof.

In spite of his lameness he went duck-shooting the week after his arrival.
It was rather forcing his convalescence, but he believed it would
accelerate it to go about in the open air, as though there were nothing
the matter with his shattered leg.

So he hobbled down to the point he knew so well. He had longed for the sea
off Eryx. It thundered at his feet.

And, now, all around him through clamorous obscurity a watery light
glimmered; it edged the low-driven clouds hurrying in from the sea; it
outlined the long point of rocks thrust southward into the smoking
smother.

The din of the surf filled his ears; through flying patches of mist he
caught glimpses of rollers bursting white against the reef; heard duller
detonations along unseen sands, and shattering reports where heavy waves
exploded among basalt rocks.

His lean face of an invalid glistened with spray; salt water dripped from
cap and coat, spangled the brown barrels of his fowling-piece, and ran
down the varnished supports of both crutches where he leaned on them,
braced forward against an ever-rising wind.

At moments he seemed to catch glimpses of darker specks dotting the
heaving flank of some huge wave. But it was not until the wild ducks rose
through the phantom light and came whirring in from the sea that his gun,
poked stiffly skyward, flashed in the pallid void. And then, sometimes, he
hobbled back after the dead quarry while it still drove headlong inland,
slanting earthward before the gale.

Once,