I sat down on a fallen tree, moist and bleached, that crumbled under
my touch, leaving a stale odour in the air. Overhead a crow rose
heavily and flapped out into the moorland; the wind rattled the stark
blackthorns; a single drop of rain touched my cheek. I looked into the
stream for some sign of life; there was nothing, except a shapeless
creature that might have been a blindworm, lying belly upward on the
mud bottom. I touched it with a stick. It was stiff and dead. The wind among the sham paperlike gorse buds filled the woods with a
silken rustle. I put out my hand and touched a yellow blossom; it felt
like an immortelle on a funeral pillow. The sexton had moved on again; something, perhaps a musty spider's web,
had stuck to one leg, and he dragged it as he laboured on through the
wood. Some little field mouse torn by weasel or kestrel, some crushed
mole, some tiny dead pile of fur or feather, lay not far off, stricken
by God or man or brother creature. And the sexton knew it--how, God
knows! But he knew it, and hurried on to his tryst with the dead. His path now lay along the edge of a tidal inlet from the Groix River. I looked down at the gray water through the leafless branches, and I
saw a small snake, head raised, swim from a submerged clot of weeds
into the shadow of a rock. There was a curlew, too, somewhere in the
black swamp, whose dreary, persistent call cursed the silence. I wondered when the sexton would fly; for he could fly if he chose; it
is only when the dead are near, very near, that he creeps. The soiled
mess of cobweb still stuck to him, and his progress was impeded by
it. Once I saw a small brown and white spider, striped like a zebra,
running swiftly in his tracks, but the sexton turned and raised his
two clubbed forelegs in a horrid imploring attitude that still had
something of menace under it. The spider backed away and sidled under
a stone. When anything that is dying--sick and close to death--falls upon the
face of the earth, something moves in the blue above, floating like
a moat; then another, then others. These specks that grow out of the
fathomless azure vault are jewelled flies. They come to wait for Death. The sexton also arranges rendezvous with Death, but never waits; Death
must arrive the first. When the heavy clover is ablaze with painted wings, when bees hum and
blunder among the white-thorn, or pass by like swift singing bullets,
the sexton snaps open his black and orange wings and hums across the
clover with the bees. Death in a scented garden, the tokens of the
plague on a fair young breast, the gray flag of fear in the face of
one who reels into the arms of Destruction, the sexton scrambling in
the lap of spring, folding his sleek wings, unfolding them to ape the
buzz of bees, passing over sweet clover tops to the putrid flesh that
summons him--these things must be and will be to the end. The sexton was running now--running fast, trailing the cobweb over
twigs and mud. The edge of the wood was near, for I could see the
winter wheat, like green scenery in a theatre, stretching for miles
across the cliffs, crude as painted grass. And as I crept through
the brittle forest fringe, I saw a figure lying face downward in the
wheat--a girl's slender form, limp, motionless. The sexton darted under her breast. Then I threw myself down beside her, crying, "Lys! Lys!" And as I
cried, the icy rain burst out across the moors, and the trees dashed
their stark limbs together till the whole spectral forest tossed and
danced, and the wind roared among the cliffs. And through the Dance of Death Lys trembled in my arms, and sobbed and
clung to me, murmuring that the Purple Emperor was dead; but the wind
tore the words from her white lips, and flung them out across the sea,
where the winter lightning lashed the stark heights of Groix. Then the fear of death was stilled in my soul, and I raised her from
the ground, holding her close. And I saw the sexton, just beyond us, hurry across the ground and seek
shelter under a little dead skylark, stiff-winged, muddy, lying alone
in the rain. *       *       *       *       *

In the storm, above us, a bird hovered singing through the rain. It
passed us twice, still singing, and as it passed again we saw the
shadow it cast upon the world was whiter than snow. THE MESSENGER. Little gray messenger,
  Robed like painted Death,
  Your robe is dust. Whom do you seek
  Among lilies and closed buds
      At dusk? Among lilies and closed buds
      At dusk,
  Whom do you seek,
  Little gray messenger,
  Robed in the awful panoply
  Of painted Death? R. W. C.




THE MESSENGER. All-wise,
  Hast thou seen all there is to see with thy two eyes? Dost thou know all there is to know, and so,
                Omniscient,
  Darest thou still to say thy brother lies? R. W. C.

"The bullet entered here," said Max Fortin, and he placed his middle
finger over a smooth hole exactly in the centre of the forehead. I sat down upon a mound of dry seaweed and unslung my fowling piece. The little chemist cautiously felt the edges of the shot-hole, first
with his middle finger, then with his thumb. "Let me see the skull again," said I.

Max Fortin picked it up from the sod. "It's like all the others," he observed. I nodded, without offering to
take it from him. After a moment he thoughtfully replaced it upon the
grass at my feet. "It's like all the others," he repeated, wiping his glasses on his
handkerchief. "I thought you might care to see one of the skulls, so
I brought this over from the gravel pit. The men from Bannalec are
digging yet. They ought to stop." "How many skulls are there altogether?" I inquired. "They found thirty-eight skulls; there are thirty-nine noted in the
list. They lie piled up in the gravel pit on the edge of Le Bihan's
wheat field. The men are at work yet. Le Bihan is going to stop them." "Let's go over," said I; and I picked up my gun and started across the
cliffs, Fortin on one side, Môme on the other. "Who has the list?" I asked, lighting my pipe. "You say there is a
list?" "The list was found rolled up in a brass cylinder," said the little
chemist. He added: "You should not smoke here. You know that if a
single spark drifted into the wheat----"

"Ah, but I have a cover to my pipe," said I, smiling. Fortin watched me as I closed the pepper-box arrangement over the
glowing bowl of the pipe. Then he continued:

"The list was made out on thick yellow paper; the brass tube has
preserved it. It is as fresh to-day as it was in 1760. You shall see
it." "Is that the date?" "The list is dated 'April, 1760.' The Brigadier Durand has it. It is
not written in French." "Not written in French!" I exclaimed. "No," replied Fortin solemnly, "it is written in Breton." "But," I protested, "the Breton language was never written or printed
in 1760." "Except by priests," said the chemist. "I have heard of but one priest who ever wrote the Breton language," I
began. Fortin stole a glance at my face.