e out of the eight she had caught, she
said:

"It matters not so much to me, but there are others poorer than I, they
suffer."

With a leer the fellow stooped, and, taking up the fish, put them in the
pockets of his queminzolle, all slimy from the sea as they were.

"Ba su, you haven't got much to take care of, have you? It don't take
much to feed two mouths--not so much as it does three, Ma'm'selle."

Before he had ended, the woman, without reply to the insult, took the
child by the hand and moved along her homeward path towards Plemont.

"A bi'tot, good-bye!" the bailiff laughed brutally. Standing with his
legs apart and his hands fastened on the fish in the pockets of his long
queminzolle, he called after her in sneering comment: "Ma fistre, your
pride didn't fall--ba su!" Then he turned on his heel.

"Eh ben, here's mackerel for supper," he added as he mounted his horse.

The woman was Guida Landresse, the child was her child, and they lived
in the little house upon the cliff at Plemont. They were hastening
thither now.

CHAPTER XXX

A visitor was awaiting Guida and the child: a man who, first knocking
at the door, then looking in and seeing the room empty, save for the dog
lying asleep by the fire, had turned slowly away, and going to the cliff
edge, looked out over the sea. His movements were deliberate, his body
moved slowly; the whole appearance was of great strength and nervous
power. The face was preoccupied, the eyes were watchful, dark,
penetrating. They seemed not only to watch but to weigh, to meditate,
even to listen--as it were, to do the duty of all the senses at once. In
them worked the whole forces of his nature; they were crucibles wherein
every thought and emotion were fused. The jaw was set and strong, yet
it was not hard. The face contradicted itself. While not gloomy it had
lines like scars telling of past wounds. It was not despairing, it
was not morbid, and it was not resentful; it had the look of one both
credulous and indomitable. Belief was stamped upon it; not expectation
or ambition, but faith and fidelity. You would have said he was a man
of one set idea, though the head had a breadth sorting little with
narrowness of purpose. The body was too healthy to belong to a fanatic,
too powerful to be that of a dreamer alone, too firm for other than a
man of action.

Several times he turned to look towards the house and up the pathway
leading from the hillock to the doorway. Tho