bbed suddenly as he dared to drag to light a long-hidden
secret--kept hitherto from himself. He loved her. He had loved her
from childhood, when he, a big clumsy boy, had taken her part, and
fought her battles, at the parish school. He wanted her for his
wife. He wanted her for the mother of his children.

Ah, what a picture rose before him as his thoughts painted rapidly!
A little cottage on the moorland; a rose red _vraic_ fire; Ellenor
seated in a low chair, beside her a cradle; on her lap, a little
baby, with wide sad eyes like hers. He saw himself enter the cottage
and fling his net into a corner; he felt her kiss on his lips,
and....

"Wake up, Corbet! Not a word have you spoken since we left those
children--and what with you as glum as a fish and Ellenor gone in
front, its precious dull for me!"

Cartier slapped his friend on the back, and Perrin exerted himself
to chat and laugh. Then, all at once, Jean broke into the talk of
parish gossip.

"Look here, _mon gars_, I'm not happy about Ellenor. She is unhappy,
worse and worse each day; and so bad tempered. You know she never
gets on with her mother, poor girl; but now, even at me she snaps,
and, God knows, I love her well, and she loves me."

Perrin was silent.

"Does she treat you properly?" went on Cartier.

"Well, to tell you the truth, she is not very polite at times, but I
would not blame her. She always looks so sad, and, as you say, worse
than ever just now. Perhaps she's _ensorchelai_, who can say!"

"I've thought of that--perhaps I'll get her to tell me. Well, this
is your way--so a bientot, Perrin, a bientot!"

Corbet made his way to his home, a cottage not far from the
outskirts of the moorland at whose edge stood the Haunted House. He
lived with his mother, a widow and an invalid. She hardly ever left
the cottage, but she made it a palace of happiness to her son. Her
lovely placid old face brooded over his every want and his every
look. She lived the life of a saint and had brought up her son to
fear God and none else. Perrin's religious life was a deep reality
to him: he never spoke of it, but in it he moved, at home, in the
conscious joy of the presence of God.

Every night, when his mother had gone to bed in her tiny attic, he
knelt long beside the _jonquiere_ in the corner of the hearth: and
every night he prayed for Ellenor, naming her softly after the
beloved word "mother."

But this night. _Ellenor_ was first on his lips. Why was