Rose that he should be back soon, and that she must watch by the dead in his absence, he left the cottage at once, without waiting to hear her reply, even without looking back as he closed the door behind him.

he knew that his errand must be performed, and he nerved himself to go through with it; for he dared not return to the cottage until the mystery had been cleared up at once and forever.

The Merchant's Table was formed by two huge stones resting horizontally on three others. In the troubled times of more than half a century ago, regular tourists were unknown among the Druid monuments of Brittany; and the entrance to the hollow place under the stones — since often visited by strangers-was at this time nearly choked up by brambles and weeds. Gabriel's first look at this tangled nook of briars convinced him that the place had not been entered — perhaps for years-by any living being. Without allowing himself to hesitate (for he felt that the slightest delay might be fatal to his resolution) he passed as gently as possible through the brambles, and knelt down at the low, dusky, irregular entrance of the hollow place under the stones.

There were two tracks to The Merchant's Table. One, the longer of the two, by the coast cliffs; the other across the heath. But this latter path was also, for some little distance, the path which led to the village and the church. He was afraid of attracting his father's attention here, so he took the direction of the coast. At one spot, the track trended inland, winding round some of the many Druid monuments scattered over the country. This place was on high ground, and commanded a view, at no great distance, of the path leading to the village, just where it branched off from the heathy ridge which ran in the direction of The Merchant's Table. Here Gabriel descried the figure of a man standing with his back towards the coast. This figure was too far off to be identified with absolute certainty; but it looked like, and His heart throbbed violently, his breath might well be, François Sarzeau. Whoever he almost failed him; but he forced himself to was, the man was evidently uncertain which crawl a few feet into the cavity, and then way he should proceed. When he moved for- groped with his hand on the ground about ward it was first to advance several paces to- him. He touched something! Something wards The Merchant's Table then he went which it made his flesh creep to handle; back again towards the distant cottages and something which he would fain have dropped, the church. Twice he hesitated thus; the but which he grasped tight in spite of himsecond time pausing long before he appeared self. He drew back into the outer air and finally to take the way that led to the village. sunshine. Was it a human bone? No! he Leaving the post of observation among the had been the dupe of his own morbid terror stones, at which he had instinctively halted—he had only taken up a fragment of dried for some minutes past, Gabriel now proceeded in his own path. Could this man really be his father? And if it were so, why did François Sarzeau only determine to go to the village where his business lay, after having twice vainly attempted to persevere in taking the exactly opposite direction of The Merchant's Table? Did he really desire to go there? Had he heard the name mentioned, when the old man referred to it in his dying words? And had he failed to summon courage enough to make all safe by removing This last question was too horrible to be pursued: Gabriel stifled it affrightedly in in his own heart, as he went on.

-

He reached the great Druid monument, without meeting a living soul on his way. The sun was rising, and the mighty storm clouds of the night were parting asunder wildly over the whole eastward horizon. The waves still leapt and foamed gloriously; but the gale had sunk to a keen, fresh breeze. As Gabriel looked up, and saw how brightly the promise of a lovely day was written in the heavens, he trembled as he thought of the search which he was now about to make. The sight of the fair fresh sunrise jarred horribly with the suspicions of committed murder that were rankling foully in his heart. But

wood!

-

Feeling shame at such self-deception as this, he was about to throw the wood from him before he reentered the place, when another idea occurred to him. Though it was dimly lighted through one or two chinks in the stones, the far part of the interior of the cayity was still too dusky to admit of perfect examination by the eye, even on a bright sunshiny morning. Observing this, he took out the tinder box and matches, which like the other inhabitants of the district- he always carried about with him for the purpose of lighting his pipe, determining to use the piece of wood as a torch which might illuminate the darkest corner of the place when he next entered it. Fortunately, the wood had remained so long and had been preserved so dry in its sheltered position, that it caught fire almost as easily as a piece of paper. The moment it was fairly aflame Gabriel went into the cavity-penetrating at once, this time, to its farthest extremity.

He remained among the stones long enough for the wood to burn down nearly to his hand. When he came out, and flung the burning fragment from him, his face was flushed deeply, his eyes sparkled. He leapt carelessly on to the heath, over the bushes through

assumed ease in his manner and with real despair in his heart. Whatever the poor girl might think of it, he felt, at that moment, that he had not courage to face her father, and hear him talk happily and pleasantly, as his custom was, of Rose's approaching marriage.

now met, except when absolutely obliged to speak, he preserved total silence in his intercourse with Gabriel. He would never take Gabriel out with him in the boat; he would never sit alone with Gabriel in the house; he would never eat a meal with Gabriel; he would never let the other children talk to him about Gabriel; and he would never hear a word in expostulation, a word in reference to anything his dead father had said or done on the night of the storm, from Gabriel himself.

Left to himself, Gabriel wandered hither and thither over the open heath, neither knowing nor caring in what direction he turned his steps. The doubts about his father's innocence, which had been dissipated by his visit to The Merchant's Table, that The young man pined and changed so that father's own language and manner had now even Rose hardly knew him again, under revived-had even confirmed, though he dared this cruel system of domestic excommuninot yet acknowledge so much to himself. It cation; under the wearing influence of the was terrible enough to be obliged to admit one unchanging doubt which never left him that the result of his morning's search was, and, more than all, under the incessant reafter all, not conclusive-that the mystery proaches of his own conscience, aroused by was in very truth not yet cleared up. The the sense that he was evading a responsibility violence of his father's last words of distrust; which it was his solemn, his immediate duty the extraordinary and indescribable changes in to undertake. But no sting of conscience, his father's manner while uttering them no ill-treatment at home, and no self-rewhat did these things mean? Guilt or inno-proaches for failing in his duty of confession, cence? Again, was it any longer reasonable as a good Catholic, were powerful enough in to doubt the death-bed confession made by his their influence over Gabriel to make him grandfather? Was it not, on the contrary, disclose the secret, under the oppression of far more probable that the old man's denial which his very life was wasting away. He in the morning of his own words at night, had knew that if he once revealed it, whether been made under the influence of a panic his father was ultimately proved to be guilty terror, when his moral consciousness was be- or innocent, there would remain a slur and a wildered, and his intellectual faculties were suspicion on the family, and on Rose besides, sinking? The longer Gabriel thought of from her approaching connection with it, these questions, the less competent-possibly which in their time and in their generation also the less willing- he felt to answer them. could never be removed. The reproach of Should he seek advice from others wiser than the world is terrible even in the crowded he? No not while the thousandth part of city, where many of the dwellers in our a chance remained that his father was inno- abiding-place are strangers to us - but it cent. This thought was still in his mind, is far more terrible in the country, where when he found himself once more in sight of none near us are strangers, where all talk of his home. He was still hesitating near the us and know of us, where nothing intervenes door, when he saw it opened cautiously. His between us and the tyranny of the evil tongue. brother Pierre looked out, and then came Gabriel had not courage to face this, and dare running towards him. "Come in, Gabriel; the fearful chance of life-long ignominy-no, oh, do come in!" said the boy earnestly. not even to serve the sacred interests of "We are afraid to be alone with father. justice, of atonement, and of truth. He's been beating us for talking of you."

Gabriel went in. His father looked up from the hearth where he was sitting, muttered the word "Spy!" and made a gesture of contempt-but did not address a word directly to his son. The hours passed on in silence; afternoon waned into evening, and evening into night; and still he never spoke to any of his children. Soon after it was dark, he went out, and took his net with him saying that it was better to be alone on the sea than in the house with a spy. When he returned the next morning, there was no change in him. Days passed-weeks, months even elapsed and still, though his manner insensibly became what it used to be towards his other children, it never altered towards his eldest son. At the rare periods when they

While he still remained prostrated under the affliction that was wasting his energies of body and mind, Brittany was visited by a great public calamity, in which all private misfortunes were overwhelmed for a while. It was now the time when the ever-gathering storm of the French Revolution had risen to its hurricane climax. Those chiefs of the new republic were now in power, whose last, worst madness it was to decree the extinction of religion and the overthrow of everything that outwardly symbolized it, throughout the whole of the country that they governed. Already this decree had been executed to the letter in and around Paris; and now the soldiers of the republic were on their way to Brittany, headed by commanders whose commission was to root out the Christian religion

in the last and the surest of the strongholds this," concluded the old man. still left to it in France.

These men began their work in a spirit worthy of the worst of their superiors, who had sent them to do it. They gutted churches, they demolished chapels, they overthrew roadside crosses wherever they found them. The terrible guillotine devoured human lives in the villages of Brittany, as it had devoured them in the streets of Paris; the musket and the sword, in highway and byway, wreaked havoc on the people-even on women and children kneeling in the act of prayer; the priests were tracked night and day from one hiding-place where they still offered up worship to another, and were killed as soon as overtaken every atrocity was committed in every district; but the Christian religion still spread wider than the widest bloodshed; still sprang up with ever-renewed vitality from under the very feet of the men whose vain fury was powerless to trample it down. Everywhere the people remained true to their Faith; everywhere the priests stood firm by them in their sorest need. The executioners of the republic had been sent to make Brittany a country of apostates; they did their worst, and left it a country of martyrs.

One evening, while this frightful persecution was still raging, Gabriel happened to be detained unusually late at the cottage of Rose's father. He had lately spent much of his time at the farm-house; it was his only refuge now from that place of suffering, of silence, and of secret shame, which he had once called home! Just as he had taken leave of Rose for the night, and was about to open the farm-house door, her father stopped him, and pointed to a chair in the chimney corner. "Leave us alone, my dear," said the old man to his daughter; "I want to speak to Gabriel. You can go to your mother in the next room."

The words which Père Bonan-as he was called by the neighbors - had now to say in private, were destined to lead to very unexpected events. After referring to the alteration which had appeared of late in Gabriel's manner, the old man began by asking him, sorrowfully but not suspiciously, whether he still preserved his old affection for Rose. On receiving an eager answer in the affirmative, Père Bonan then referred to the persecution still raging through the country, and to the consequent possibility that he, like others of his countrymen, might yet be called to suffer and perhaps to die for the cause of his religion. If this last act of self-sacrifice were required of him, Rose would be left unprotected, unless her affianced husband performed his promise to her, and assumed, without delay, the position of her lawful guardian. "Let me know that you will do

"I shall be

resigned to all that may be required of me, if I can only know that I shall not die leaving Rose unprotected." Gabriel gave the promise-gave it with his whole heart. As he took leave of Père Bonan, the old man said to him:

"Come here to-morrow; I shall know more then, than I know now-I shall be able to fix with certainty the day for the fulfilment of your engagement with Rose."

Why did Gabriel hesitate at the farm-house door, looking back on Père Bonan as though he would fain say something, and yet not speaking a word? Why, after he had gone out and walked onward several paces, did he suddenly stop, return quickly to the farmhouse, stand irresolute before the gate, and then retrace his steps, sighing heavily as he went, but never pausing again on his homeward way? Because the torment of his horrible secret had grown harder to bear than ever, since he had given the promise that had been required of him. Because, while a strong impulse moved him frankly to lay bare his hidden dread and doubt to the father whose beloved daughter was soon to be his wife, there was a yet stronger passive influence which paralyzed on his lips the terrible confession that he knew not whether he was the son of an honest man, or the son of an assassin and a robber. Made desperate by his situation, he determined, while he hastened homeward, to risk the worst and ask that fatal question of his father in plain words. But this supreme trial for parent and child was not to be. When he entered the cottage, François was absent. He had told the younger children that he should not be home again before noon on the next day.

Early in the morning Gabriel repaired to the farm-house, as he had been bidden. Influenced by his love for Rose, blindly confiding in the faint hope (which in despite of heart and conscience he still forced himself to cherish) that his father might be innocent, he now preserved the appearance at least of perfect calmness. "If I tell my secret to Rose's father, I risk disturbing in him that confidence in the future safety of his child, for which I am his present and only warrant" something like this thought was in Gabriel's mind, as he took the hand of Père Bonan, and waited anxiously to hear what was required of him on that day.

"We have a short respite from danger, Gabriel," said the old man. "News has come to me that the spoilers of our churches and the murderers of our congregations have been stopped on their way hitherward by tidings which have reached them from another district. This interval of peace and safety will be a short one - we must take advantage of it while it is yet ours. My name is among