Then she started to retrace her steps through the
covert As she passed me I raised my cap and she acknowledged my presence
with a scarcely perceptible inclination. I had been so astonished, so
lost in admiration of the scene before my eyes, that it had not occurred
to me that here was my salvation. But as she moved away I recollected
that unless I wanted to sleep on a windy moor that night I had better
recover my speech without delay. At my first word she hesitated, and as I
stepped before her I thought a look of fear came into her beautiful eyes. But as I humbly explained my unpleasant plight, her face flushed and she
looked at me in wonder. "Surely you did not come from Kerselec!" she repeated. Her sweet voice had no trace of the Breton accent nor of any accent which
I knew, and yet there was something in it I seemed to have heard before,
something quaint and indefinable, like the theme of an old song. I explained that I was an American, unacquainted with Finistère, shooting
there for my own amusement. "An American," she repeated in the same quaint musical tones. "I have
never before seen an American." For a moment she stood silent, then looking at me she said. "If you
should walk all night you could not reach Kerselec now, even if you had a
guide." This was pleasant news. "But," I began, "if I could only find a peasant's hut where I might get
something to eat, and shelter." The falcon on her wrist fluttered and shook its head. The girl smoothed
its glossy back and glanced at me. "Look around," she said gently. "Can you see the end of these moors? Look, north, south, east, west. Can you see anything but moorland and
bracken?" "No," I said. "The moor is wild and desolate. It is easy to enter, but sometimes they
who enter never leave it. There are no peasants' huts here." "Well," I said, "if you will tell me in which direction Kerselec lies,
to-morrow it will take me no longer to go back than it has to come." She looked at me again with an expression almost like pity. "Ah," she said, "to come is easy and takes hours; to go is different--and
may take centuries." I stared at her in amazement but decided that I had misunderstood her. Then before I had time to speak she drew a whistle from her belt and
sounded it. "Sit down and rest," she said to me; "you have come a long distance and
are tired." She gathered up her pleated skirts and motioning me to follow picked her
dainty way through the gorse to a flat rock among the ferns. "They will be here directly," she said, and taking a seat at one end of
the rock invited me to sit down on the other edge. The after-glow was
beginning to fade in the sky and a single star twinkled faintly through
the rosy haze. A long wavering triangle of water-fowl drifted southward
over our heads, and from the swamps around plover were calling. "They are very beautiful--these moors," she said quietly. "Beautiful, but cruel to strangers," I answered. "Beautiful and cruel," she repeated dreamily, "beautiful and cruel." "Like a woman," I said stupidly. "Oh," she cried with a little catch in her breath, and looked at me. Her
dark eyes met mine, and I thought she seemed angry or frightened. "Like a woman," she repeated under her breath, "How cruel to say so!" Then after a pause, as though speaking aloud to herself, "How cruel for
him to say that!" I don't know what sort of an apology I offered for my inane, though
harmless speech, but I know that she seemed so troubled about it that I
began to think I had said something very dreadful without knowing it, and
remembered with horror the pitfalls and snares which the French language
sets for foreigners. While I was trying to imagine what I might have
said, a sound of voices came across the moor, and the girl rose to her
feet. "No," she said, with a trace of a smile on her pale face, "I will not
accept your apologies, monsieur, but I must prove you wrong, and that
shall be my revenge. Look. Here come Hastur and Raoul." Two men loomed up in the twilight. One had a sack across his shoulders
and the other carried a hoop before him as a waiter carries a tray. The
hoop was fastened with straps to his shoulders, and around the edge of
the circlet sat three hooded falcons fitted with tinkling bells. The girl
stepped up to the falconer, and with a quick turn of her wrist
transferred her falcon to the hoop, where it quickly sidled off and
nestled among its mates, who shook their hooded heads and ruffled their
feathers till the belled jesses tinkled again. The other man stepped
forward and bowing respectfully took up the hare and dropped it into the
game-sack. "These are my piqueurs," said the girl, turning to me with a gentle
dignity. "Raoul is a good fauconnier, and I shall some day make him grand
veneur. Hastur is incomparable." The two silent men saluted me respectfully. "Did I not tell you, monsieur, that I should prove you wrong?" she
continued. "This, then, is my revenge, that you do me the courtesy of
accepting food and shelter at my own house." Before I could answer she spoke to the falconers, who started instantly
across the heath, and with a gracious gesture to me she followed. I don't
know whether I made her understand how profoundly grateful I felt, but
she seemed pleased to listen, as we walked over the dewy heather. "Are you not very tired?" she asked. I had clean forgotten my fatigue in her presence, and I told her so. "Don't you think your gallantry is a little old-fashioned?" she said; and
when I looked confused and humbled, she added quietly, "Oh, I like it, I
like everything old-fashioned, and it is delightful to hear you say such
pretty things." The moorland around us was very still now under its ghostly sheet of
mist. The plovers had ceased their calling; the crickets and all the
little creatures of the fields were silent as we passed, yet it seemed to
me as if I could hear them beginning again far behind us. Well in
advance, the two tall falconers strode across the heather, and the faint
jingling of the hawks' bells came to our ears in distant murmuring
chimes. Suddenly a splendid hound dashed out of the mist in front, followed by
another and another until half-a-dozen or more were bounding and leaping
around the girl beside me. She caressed and quieted them with her gloved
hand, speaking to them in quaint terms which I remembered to have seen in
old French manuscripts. Then the falcons on the circlet borne by the falconer ahead began to beat
their wings and scream, and from somewhere out of sight the notes of a
hunting-horn floated across the moor. The hounds sprang away before us
and vanished in the twilight, the falcons flapped and squealed upon their
perch, and the girl, taking up the song of the horn, began to hum. Clear
and mellow her voice sounded in the night air. "Chasseur, chasseur, chassez encore,
  Quittez Rosette et Jeanneton,
  Tonton, tonton, tontaine, tonton,
  Ou, pour, rabattre, dès l'aurore,
  Que les Amours soient de planton,
  Tonton, tontaine, tonton."