and essayed a shaky gallop of his
bony knees. Then he looked closely with his misty eyes at the child's
face and deposited him down gently on the floor again. And he sat, his
lean shanks crossed, nodding at the steam escaping from the cooking-pot
with a gaze senile and worried.

Then mute affliction dwelt in Bacadou's farmhouse, sharing the breath
and the bread of its inhabitants; and the priest of the Ploumar parish
had great cause for congratulation. He called upon the rich landowner,
the Marquis de Chavanes, on purpose to deliver himself with joyful
unction of solemn platitudes about the inscrutable ways of Providence.
In the vast dimness of the curtained drawing-room, the little man,
resembling a black bolster, leaned towards a couch, his hat on
his knees, and gesticulated with a fat hand at the elongated,
gracefully-flowing lines of the clear Parisian toilette from which the
half-amused, half-bored marquise listened with gracious languor. He was
exulting and humble, proud and awed. The impossible had come to pass.
Jean-Pierre Bacadou, the enraged republican farmer, had been to mass
last Sunday--had proposed to entertain the visiting priests at the next
festival of Ploumar! It was a triumph for the Church and for the good
cause. "I thought I would come at once to tell Monsieur le Marquis. I
know how anxious he is for the welfare of our country," declared the
priest, wiping his face. He was asked to stay to dinner.

The Chavanes returning that evening, after seeing their guest to the
main gate of the park, discussed the matter while they strolled in
the moonlight, trailing their long shadows up the straight avenue of
chestnuts. The marquise, a royalist of course, had been mayor of the
commune which includes Ploumar, the scattered hamlets of the coast, and
the stony islands that fringe the yellow flatness of the sands. He had
felt his position insecure, for there was a strong republican element in
that part of the country; but now the conversion of Jean-Pierre made
him safe. He was very pleased. "You have no idea how influential
those people are," he explained to his wife. "Now, I am sure, the next
communal election will go all right. I shall be re-elected." "Your
ambition is perfectly insatiable, Charles," exclaimed the marquise,
gaily. "But, ma chere amie," argued the husband, seriously, "it's most
important that the right man should be mayor this year, because of the
elections to the Chamber. If you think it amuse