life-saving crew short of Ylva Light. So my father went out in his little
American catboat, all alone.... Marie-Josephine saw his sail off Eryx
Rocks ... for a few moments ... and saw it no more."

The airman, still devouring his bread and meat, nodded in silence.

"That is how it happened," said Wayland. "The French authorities notified
me. There was a little money and this hut, and--Marie-Josephine. So I came
here; and I write children's stories--that sort of thing.... It goes well
enough. I sell a few to American publishers. Otherwise I shoot and fish
and read ... when war does not preoccupy me...."

He smiled, experiencing the vague relief of talking to somebody in his
native tongue. Quesnel Moors were sometimes very lonely.

"It's been a long convalescence," he continued, smilingly. "One of their
'coal-boxes' did this"--touching his leg. "When I was able to move I went
to America. But the sea off the Eryx called me back; and the authorities
permitted me to come down here. I'm getting well very fast now."

He had stripped every chassis of its canvas, and had made a roll of the
material.

"I'm very glad to be of any use to you," he said pleasantly, laying the
roll on the table.

Marie-Josephine, on her low chair by the hearth, sat listening to every
word as though she had understood. The expression in her faded eyes varied
constantly; solicitude, perplexity, vague uneasiness, a recurrent glimmer
of suspicion were succeeded always by wistful tenderness when her gaze
returned to Wayland and rested on his youthful face and figure with a
pride forever new.

Once she spoke in mixed French and Breton:

"Is the stranger English, Monsieur Jacques, _mon cheri_?"

"I do not doubt it, Marie-Josephine. Do you?"

"Why dost thou believe him to be English?"

"He has the tricks of speech. Also his accent is of an English university.
There is no mistaking it."

"Are not young Huns sometimes instructed in the universities of England?"

"Yes.... But----"

"_Gar a nous, mon p'tit_, Jacques. In Finistere a stranger is a suspect.
Since earliest times they have done us harm in Finistere. The
strangers--God knows what centuries of evil they have wrought."

"No fear," he said, reassuringly, and turned again to the airman, who had
now satisfied his hunger and had already risen to gather up the roll of
canvas, the hammer, nails, and shellac.

"Thanks awfully, old chap!" he said cordially. "I'll take these articles,
if I may