e slept the round of the clock before I opened my eyes,
for the room was now bright with candles, and in the arm-chair by the
fire sat the Breton lady sewing as if for dear life.

But the wonder of her was that she now wore a short plain dress such as
girls wear in the convent schools in Brittany, and her grey hair was
tied just like a girl's. One little foot rested on the brass fender,
and the firelight played on its silver shoe-buckle.

I coughed, to let her know that I was awake, and she looked across and
nodded.

"Almost ten o'clock, Yann, and time for you to rise and have supper.
And after supper--are you sorry?--another journey for you. At midnight
you start in the gig with Farmer Ellory, who will drive you to the
coast, to a town called Fowey, where some friends of his 'in the trade'
are starting for Roscoff. In six hours you will be aboard ship again;
and in another twenty, perhaps, you will see your mother--and your
father too, if he escaped clear away. In little more than a day you
will be back in Brittany. But first you must lie quite still, and I
will show you something."

"To be sure I will, madame."

"You must not call me that. I am the Demoiselle Heloise Keranguin.
You know St. Pol de Leon, Yann?"

"Almost as well as my own town, mademoiselle."

"And the Convent of the Grey Nuns, on the road to Morlaix, a little
beyond the town?"

It was on my tongue to tell her that fire and soldiery had wiped it
even with the ground, during the "Terror." But she interrupted me.
Setting down her work-basket, which was heaped high with reels and
parti-coloured rags of silk, she pushed a small table over to the big
bed and loaded it with candlesticks. There were three candles already
alight in the room, but she lit others and set them in line--brass
candlesticks, plated candlesticks, candlesticks of chinaware--fourteen
candlesticks in all, and fresh candles in each. Laying a finger on her
lip, she stepped to the big bed and unfastened the corking-pins which
held the green curtains together. As she pushed the curtains back I
lifted myself on an elbow.

It was into a real theatre that I looked. She had transformed the whole
level of the bed into a miniature stage, with buildings of cardboard,
cleverly painted, and gardens cut out of silk and velvet and laid down,
and rose-trees gummed on little sticks, and a fish-pond and brook of
looking-glass, with embroidered flowers stuck along their edges, and
al