CHAPTER XLIX

In the evening after supper, we went for a walk, Anne, Yves and I, a walk much more peaceful than that of the day.

And, at nine o'clock, we sat down by the side of a wide road which traversed the woods.

It was not yet dark, so prolonged in Brittany are the evenings in the beautiful month of June; but we began, nevertheless, to talk of phantoms and the dead.

Anne said:

"In winter when the wolves come we can hear them from our home; but sometimes ghosts, too, utter cries like theirs."

On this particular evening, however, we only heard the passing of cockchafers and stagbeetles which flew through the warm air in eccentric curves, and the small buzzings of summer. And, also, from a distant part of the wood: "Hoot! . . . Hoot . . ." a mournful call, given out very softly in the voice of an owl.

And Yves said:

"Do you hear, brother? The parakeets of France are singing." (This was an allusion to the _parakeet_ he had on the _Sibylle._)

The slender grasses, with their flowers of grey dust, spread over the ground a deep, scarcely palpable covering into which the feet sank, and the last moths, at the end of their evening's exercise, plunged one after another into the thickness of this herbage, to take their sleeping posts on the slender stems.

And darkness came, slow and tranquil, with an air of mystery.

Passed a young Breton lad who carried a knapsack on his shoulder. He was returning rather tipsy from Lannildu, a peacock's feather in his hat. (I do not know what this has to do with the story of Yves: I relate at hazard things which have remained in my memory.) He stopped and began to address us. Finally, by way of peroration, he showed us his knapsack, saying:

"Look here! I have two cats in this." (This had no sort of relation to what he had been saying to us before.)

He placed his burden on the ground and threw his hat upon it. Thereupon the knapsack began to _swear_, with the strong voices of angry tom-cats, and to move in somersaults along the road.

When he had convinced us in this way that they were indeed cats, he put the whole on his shoulder again, saluted, and went his way.