ed Jean, shaking his head. "But no! You have
forgotten the storm, Gaston--and, see, she is all wet and tired, and
she has been, I do not know how many hours, exposed out there on that
cursed Perigeau."

A smile, half stubborn, half of pride, struggled through a twist of
pain on the old fisherman's lips.

"And what of that! She has been brought up to it. A dozen times and
more she has been longer in a storm than this. She is not of the
milk-and-water breed is Marie-Louise, she is a Bernier, and, the _bon
Dieu_ be praised, the Berniers do not stop for that! Is it not so,
Marie-Louise?"

"Yes, uncle," she answered softly. "I will go; and I will not be long."

"Go then, Marie-Louise," he said. "I wish it."

She bent and kissed him, and picked up the lantern, and shook her head
in a pretty gesture at Jean, as though half to tease him for the
perturbed look upon his face, and half in grave wistfulness to charge
him with the sick man's care--and then she went from the room, and
presently the front door closed behind her.

The lamp flickered with the inrush of wind from the opening of the
door--flickered over a spotless bare floor, an incongruous high-poster
bed that had been a wedding gift to Marie-Louise's father and mother
from the man who lay upon it now, flickered over the raftered ceiling,
the scant furnishings which were a single chair and a table, flickered
over a crucifix upon the wall--and then burned on once more in a steady
flame. It was like the shrug of Jean's shoulders, the flicker of that
lamp; for, with the shrug, he resumed again his former position over
Gaston--it was true after all, Marie-Louise would come to no harm, they
were used to that, they fisherfolk of Bernay-sur-Mer.

"_Tiens_, Gaston!" he said. "See, we will get off your wet clothes,
and you will tell me how it happened this _misere_, and about the hurt.
But first this--_mon Dieu!_--but I did not guess it was like that--a
clean bandage, eh?--that is first--I will find something"--he had
unbuttoned the other's jacket, disclosing a rent shirt, and, on the
left side, a wad of cloth, blood-soaked now, where Marie-Louise
evidently had made a pad for the wound with her underskirt, and had
tied it in place with long strips torn from the garment. He began to
loosen one of the strips; but Gaston, who until then had lain passive
with eyes closed, caught his hand.

"Let it alone, Jean--you will only make it bleed the more."

"Ay," agreed