a cloth so that he should not fly
about and hurt himself. Then Nataline went singing up to bed, for she
must rise at two in the morning to take her watch with the light.
Baptiste and I drew our chairs up to the range, and lit our pipes for
a good talk.

"Those small birds, m'sieu'," he began, puffing slowly at his pipe,
"you think, without doubt, that it is all an affair of chance, the way
they come,--that it means nothing,--that it serves no purpose for them
to die?"

Certain words in an old book, about a sparrow falling to the ground,
came into my mind, and I answered him carefully, hoping, perhaps, that
he might be led on into one of those mystical legends which still
linger among the exiled children of Britanny in the new world.

"From our side, my friend, it looks like chance--and from the birds'
side, certainly, like a very bad chance. But we do not know all.
Perhaps there is some meaning or purpose beyond us. Who can tell?"

"I will tell you," he replied gravely, laying down his pipe, and
leaning forward with his knotted hands on his knees. "I will tell you
that those little birds are sometimes the messengers of God. They can
bring a word or a warning from Him. That is what we Bretons have
believed for many centuries at home in France. Why should it not be
true here? Is He not here also? Those birds are God's _coureurs des
bois_. They do His errands. Would you like to hear a thing that
happened in this house?"

This is what he told me.

I

My father, Marcel Thibault, was an honest man, strong in the heart,
strong in the arms, but, in the conscience,--well, he had his little
weaknesses, like the rest of us. You see his father, the old Thibault
lived in the days when there was no lighthouse here, and wrecking was
the chief trade of this coast.

It is a cruel trade, m'sieu'--to live by the misfortune of others. No
one can be really happy who lives by such a trade as that. But my
father--he was born under that influence; and all the time he was a
boy he heard always people talking of what the sea might bring to
them, clothes and furniture, and all kinds of precious things--and
never a thought of what the sea might take away from the other people
who were shipwrecked and drowned. So what wonder is it that my father
grew up with weak places and holes in his conscience?

But my mother, Nataline Fortin--ah, m'sieu', she was a straight soul,
for sure--clean white, like a wild swan! I suppose she was not a
s