The last was the subject Cécile lingered over longest. It was necessary that the English cousin should understand the meaning of his Breton birthright.
"If you were a sailor, Monsieur," she was saying now, pointing across the bay, "you might see strange things."
"Strange things?" he echoed. "Nay, cousin, what kind of things mean you?"
"One does not speak of them, but they are there--the spirits of those whom the sea has taken. On winter nights we may hear them wailing and imploring for Christian burial; but only a sailor may see their forms."
"Then I am glad to be no sailor. I confess the sea has no attractions for me."
"It is cruel, cruel," she answered, gazing wistfully out over the grey waste of waters. "Sometimes it makes me afraid, when I see the great waves dashing and roaring over the rocks. Jéhan laughs at me and says I am no Bretonne to feel so, for we are a people of the sea. Yet I cannot help it, sometimes, when I think of those poor women and children who have waited and waited in vain for the husbands who never came back."
"And yet you come here to watch the waves you fear?"
"Oh yes," she replied naïvely, "I come here often to make my dreams. I like to picture what it must have been like long, long ago before the cruel sea swallowed up so much of our Brittany."
"But certainly. Yonder, do you not see in the sand, those ruins? Ah! there is not much left to-day, but many, many years ago those were happy villages, with green fields stretching beyond, and the oak-trees of Scissy sheltering the valleys."
"Is it a fairy story you are telling me, Mademoiselle Cécile?"
She did not heed his raillery, but replied with sober earnestness:
"No, no; it is quite true. That was before the Deluge."
"It is so called in Armorica, Monsieur. It was a terrible flood. There is a legend about it which some say is quite true."
He was not greatly interested--this trifler who was in danger of being in such deadly earnest himself; but he liked to see the animation on the pretty, childish face and the quaint seriousness with which she told her story.
"It is the tale of Amel and Penhor," she said gravely. "They lived at Sant Vinol, and Amel was a shepherd. He was also a brave man. In the forest near, wandered the striped wolf of Cheza. It was a fearful animal, and the terror of the whole land. It was bigger than a six-weeks' foal, and no arrow could pierce its hide. As for fear of man, it had none. It was Amel who vowed to kill this creature, which had devoured his nephew.