tily, and asked only,
"Carette?--and my mother?"

And she said, "But they are well, mon gars," and regarded me with somewhat
less of doubt, but no less amazement. And I kissed her again, and said,
"Helier will tell you all about it, Aunt Jeanne," and ran off across the
knoll, past Vieux Port, to Belfontaine.

I looked across at Brecqhou as I came in sight of the western waters, and
said to myself, "In an hour I will be over there to see Carette," and my
heart leaped with joy. Away up towards Rondellerie I thought I saw my
grandfather in the fields. I jumped over the green bank and came down to
the house through the orchard. The door stood wide and I went in. My
mother looked up in quick surprise at a visitor at so unusual an hour, and
in a moment she was on my neck.

"My boy! my boy!" she cried. "Now God be praised!" and sobbed and strained
me to her, and I felt all her prayers thrill through her arms into my own
heart.

It was quite a while before we could settle to reasonable talk, for, in
spite of her repeated assertions that she had never really given me up, she
could still hardly realise that I was truly alive and come back to her, and
every other minute she must fling her arms round my neck to make sure.

Then up she jumped and set food before me, in quantity equal almost to the
time I had been away, as though she feared I had eaten nothing since I left
home. And I had an appetite that almost justified her, for the night had
been a wasteful one.

And while I ate, I told her briefly where I had been, and what had kept me
so long, and touched but lightly on the matter of Torode, for I saw that
was not what she would care to hear.

"And Carette?" I asked. "I know she is well, for Aunt Jeanne told me so;"
and she looked up quickly, and I hastened to add,--"We had to pass
Beaumanoir, and I left Helier Le Marchant there. I only stopped long enough
to ask if you were all right--and Carette." If I had told her I had kissed
Aunt Jeanne before herself, I really believe she would have felt hurt,
though I had never thought of it so when I did it.

But her nature was too sweet, and her heart too full of gratitude, to allow
long harbourage to any such thoughts.

"Carette," she said with a smile, "has been much with me. But"--and her
face saddened--"you do not know what has befallen them."

"Helier feared they were wiped out."

"Almost. Monsieur Le Marchant and Martin, the eldest boy, got home sorely
wounded. They a