eliness--to
that degree--as much as I had imagined I should. My friend had brought
his solicitor back from Quimper for the night, and seated beside a fat
and affable stranger I felt no inclination to talk of Kerfol...

But that evening, when Lanrivain and the solicitor were closeted in the
study, Madame de Lanrivain began to question me in the drawing-room.

"Well--are you going to buy Kerfol?" she asked, tilting up her gay chin
from her embroidery.

"I haven't decided yet. The fact is, I couldn't get into the house," I
said, as if I had simply postponed my decision, and meant to go back for
another look.

"You couldn't get in? Why, what happened? The family are mad to sell the
place, and the old guardian has orders--"

"Very likely. But the old guardian wasn't there."

"What a pity! He must have gone to market. But his daughter--?"

"There was nobody about. At least I saw no one."

"How extraordinary! Literally nobody?"

"Nobody but a lot of dogs--a whole pack of them--who seemed to have the
place to themselves."

Madame de Lanrivain let the embroidery slip to her knee and folded her
hands on it. For several minutes she looked at me thoughtfully.

"A pack of dogs--you SAW them?"

"Saw them? I saw nothing else!"

"How many?" She dropped her voice a little. "I've always wondered--"

I looked at her with surprise: I had supposed the place to be familiar
to her. "Have you never been to Kerfol?" I asked.

"Oh, yes: often. But never on that day."

"What day?"

"I'd quite forgotten--and so had Herve, I'm sure. If we'd remembered, we
never should have sent you today--but then, after all, one doesn't half
believe that sort of thing, does one?"

"What sort of thing?" I asked, involuntarily sinking my voice to the
level of hers. Inwardly I was thinking: "I KNEW there was something..."

Madame de Lanrivain cleared her throat and produced a reassuring smile.
"Didn't Herve tell you the story of Kerfol? An ancestor of his was mixed
up in it. You know every Breton house has its ghost-story; and some of
them are rather unpleasant."

"Yes--but those dogs?" I insisted.

"Well, those dogs are the ghosts of Kerfol. At least, the peasants say
there's one day in the year when a lot of dogs appear there; and that
day the keeper and his daughter go off to Morlaix and get drunk. The
women in Brittany drink dreadfully." She stooped to match a silk; then
she lifted her charming inquisitive Parisian face: "Did you REALLY