irregular
entrance of the hollow place under the stones.

His heart throbbed violently, his breath almost failed him; but he
forced himself to crawl a few feet into the cavity, and then groped with
his hand on the ground about him.

He touched something! Something which it made his flesh creep to handle;
something which he would fain have dropped, but which he grasped tight
in spite of himself. He drew back into the outer air and sunshine. Was
it a human bone? No! he had been the dupe of his own morbid terror--he
had only taken up a fragment of dried wood!

Feeling shame at such self-deception as this, he was about to throw the
wood from him before he re-entered the place, when another idea occurred
to him.

Though it was dimly lighted through one or two chinks in the stones, the
far part of the interior of the cavity was still too dusky to admit
of perfect examination by the eye, even on a bright sunshiny morning.
Observing this, he took out the tinder-box and matches, which, like the
other inhabitants of the district, he always carried about with him for
the purpose of lighting his pipe, determining to use the piece of wood
as a torch which might illuminate the darkest corner of the place when
he next entered it. Fortunately the wood had remained so long and had
been preserved so dry in its sheltered position, that it caught fire
almost as easily as a piece of paper. The moment it was fairly aflame
Gabriel went into the cavity, penetrating at once--this time--to its
furthest extremity.

He remained among the stones long enough for the wood to burn down
nearly to his hand. When he came out, and flung the burning fragment
from him, his face was flushed deeply, his eyes sparkled. He leaped
carelessly on to the heath, over the bushes through which he had
threaded his way so warily but a few minutes before, exclaiming, "I may
marry Perrine with a clear conscience now; I am the son of as honest a
man as there is in Brittany!"

He had closely examined the cavity in every corner, and not the
slightest sign that any dead body had ever been laid there was visible
in the hollow place under the Merchant's Table.

CHAPTER III.

"I may marry Perrine with a clear conscience now!"

There are some parts of the world where it would be drawing no natural
picture of human nature to represent a son as believing conscientiously
that an offense against life and the laws of hospitality, secretly
committed by his father, rend