Part 39 (1/2)

He turned on his heel, kicking off his sabots on the doorsill. ”Break bread with me; I ask it,” he said, gruffly, and stalked before me into the house.

The room was ma.s.sive and of n.o.ble proportion, but there was scarcely anything in it--a stained table, a settle, a little pile of rags on the stone floor--no, not rags, but Jacqueline's clothes!--and there at the end of the great chamber, built into the wall, was the ancient Breton bed with its Gothic carving and sliding panels of black oak, carved like the lattice-work in a chapel screen.

Outside dawn was breaking through a silver shoal of clouds; already its slender tentacles of light were probing the shadows behind the lattice where Jacqueline lay sleeping.

From the ashes on the hearth a spiral of smoke curled. The yellow cat walked in and sat down, contemplating the ashes.

Slowly a saffron light filled the room; Jacqueline awoke in the dim bed.

She pushed the panels aside and peered out, her sea-blue eyes heavy with slumber.

”Ma doue!” she murmured; ”it is M'sieu Scarlett! Aie! Aie! Am I a countess to sleep so late? Bonjour, m'sieu! Bonjour, pa-pa!” She caught sight of the yellow cat, ”Et bien le bonjour, Ange Pitou!”

She swathed herself in a blanket and sat up, looking at me sleepily.

”You came to see me swim,” she said.

”And I've brought you a fish's silver skin to swim in,” I replied, pointing at the satchel.

She cast a swift glance at her father, who, with the gun on his knees, sat as though hypnotized by the beauty of its workmans.h.i.+p. Her bright eyes fell on the gun; she understood in a flash.

”Then you'll take me?”

”If you swim as well as I hope you can.”

”Turn your back!” she cried.

I wheeled about and sat down on the settle beside the poacher. There came a light thud of small, bare feet on the stone floor, then silence. The poacher looked up.

”She's gone to the ocean,” he said; ”she has the mania for baths--like you English.” And he fell to rubbing the gunstock with dirty thumb.

The saffron light in the room was turning pink when Jacqueline reappeared on the threshold in her ragged skirt and stained velvet bodice half laced, with the broken points hanging, carrying an armful of driftwood.

Without a word she went to work; the driftwood caught fire from the ashes, flaming up in exquisite colors, now rosy, now delicate green, now violet; the copper pot, swinging from the crane, began to steam, then to simmer.

”Papa!”

”De quoi!” growled the poacher.

”Were you out last night?”

”Dame, I've just come in.”

”Is there anything?”

The poacher gave me an oblique and evil glance, then coolly answered: ”Three pheasant, two partridges, and a sea-trout in the net-shed. All are drawn.”

So swiftly she worked that the pink light had scarcely deepened to crimson when the poacher, laying the gun tenderly in the blankets of Jacqueline's tumbled bed, came striding back to the table where a sea-trout smoked on a cracked platter, and a bowl of bread and milk stood before each place.

We ate silently. Ange Pitou, the yellow cat, came around with tail inflated. There were fishbones enough to gratify any cat, and Ange Pitou made short work of them.