* * * * *

The _Pardon_ itself, they all agreed, was wonderfully impressive and
picturesque, as Baedeker had promised. The little chapel on the cliffs
was stuffed with kneeling women in their stiff, starched coifs and heavy
velvet-trimmed skirts. The men, slinking up sheepishly, as always to
religious ceremonies, fell on their knees on the rocky ground all about
the chapel when the priests advanced with the sacred emblems, and prayed
vigorously with tight-closed eyes. The strangers, under the guidance of
the chauffeur, who maintained a supercilious disdain for these "stupid
Brittany pigs," took their position at the apex of the cliff, where they
could see everything to advantage. The Gilbert girl kodaked the kneeling
throng, which distressed Milly; she thought the people might resent it,
but they paid no attention to the Americans.

Her own eyes were filled with unaccountable tears. The symbols of the
Catholic religion always affected her in this way; while Nettie Gilbert
stared rather disapprovingly at the superstitious ceremony. In spite of
its quaint mediaevalism, it seemed to Milly quite human,--the gathering
together of suffering, sinning human beings around the gray chapel on
the storm-beaten coast--"Our Lady of the Guard"--their prayers, the
absolution granted by the robed priests, and the going forth to another
year of trials and temptations, efforts and sins.... Just below the
chapel, withdrawn only a few feet from the religious ceremony, was a
cluster of tents, sheltering hurdy-gurdys, merry-go-rounds, cook-shops,
and cider--plenty of cider. A few indifferent males, bedecked in their
short coats brightly trimmed with yellow braid, were already feasting,
even while the host was being elevated above the kneeling throng. But
most of the people, with reverently bent heads and murmuring lips,
received the sacrament, kneeling around the gray chapel. It was solemn
and moving, Milly thought, and she wished that Jack might have had the
experience....

"Baedeker says," Roy Gilbert pronounced in her ear, in the midst of the
ceremony, "that there must be Spanish blood among these people because
their costumes show Spanish designs.... They all look like Irish or
monkeys to me."

Milly smiled responsively to him.

"The costumes are lovely, aren't they?"

The crowd of women worshippers had burst forth from the chapel: there
was a swarm of white and black figures over the rocky headlan