es. So I have tried to disentangle it, and
give it here in a simpler form. At times, however, I have reverted to
the text because no other words could have conveyed so exactly the sense
of what I felt at Kerfol; and nowhere have I added anything of my own.

III

It was in the year 16-- that Yves de Cornault, lord of the domain
of Kerfol, went to the _pardon_ of Locronan to perform his religious
duties. He was a rich and powerful noble, then in his sixty-second year,
but hale and sturdy, a great horseman and hunter and a pious man. So all
his neighbours attested. In appearance he was short and broad, with a
swarthy face, legs slightly bowed from the saddle, a hanging nose and
broad hands with black hairs on them. He had married young and lost his
wife and son soon after, and since then had lived alone at Kerfol. Twice
a year he went to Morlaix, where he had a handsome house by the river,
and spent a week or ten days there; and occasionally he rode to Rennes
on business. Witnesses were found to declare that during these absences
he led a life different from the one he was known to lead at Kerfol,
where he busied himself with his estate, attended mass daily, and found
his only amusement in hunting the wild boar and water-fowl. But these
rumours are not particularly relevant, and it is certain that among
people of his own class in the neighbourhood he passed for a stern and
even austere man, observant of his religious obligations, and keeping
strictly to himself. There was no talk of any familiarity with the women
on his estate, though at that time the nobility were very free with
their peasants. Some people said he had never looked at a woman since
his wife's death; but such things are hard to prove, and the evidence on
this point was not worth much.

Well, in his sixty-second year, Yves de Cornault went to the _pardon_ at
Locronan, and saw there a young lady of Douarnenez, who had ridden over
pillion behind her father to do her duty to the saint. Her name was Anne
de Barrigan, and she came of good old Breton stock, but much less
great and powerful than that of Yves de Cornault; and her father had
squandered his fortune at cards, and lived almost like a peasant in his
little granite manor on the moors.... I have said I would add nothing
of my own to this bald statement of a strange case; but I must interrupt
myself here to describe the young lady who rode up to the lych-gate
of Locronan at the very moment when the