Chapter 3

"As for me," he said, "I am in favour of further search."

"Further search for what--for the thirty-ninth skull?" I asked.

Le Bihan nodded. Durand frowned at the sunlit sea, rocking like a bowl
of molten gold from the cliffs to the horizon. I followed his eyes. On
the dark glistening cliffs, silhouetted against the glare of the sea,
sat a cormorant, black, motionless, its horrible head raised toward
heaven.

"Where is that list, Durand?" I asked.

The gendarme rummaged in his despatch pouch and produced a brass
cylinder about a foot long. Very gravely he unscrewed the head and
dumped out a scroll of thick yellow paper closely covered with writing
on both sides. At a nod from Le Bihan he handed me the scroll. But I
could make nothing of the coarse writing, now faded to a dull brown.

"Come, come, Le Bihan," I said impatiently, "translate it, won't you?
You and Max Fortin make a lot of mystery out of nothing, it seems."

Le Bihan went to the edge of the pit where the three Bannalec men were
digging, gave an order or two in Breton, and turned to me.

As I came to the edge of the pit the Bannalec men were removing
a square piece of sail-cloth from what appeared to be a pile of
cobblestones.

"Look!" said Le Bihan shrilly. I looked. The pile below was a heap of
skulls. After a moment I clambered down the gravel sides of the pit and
walked over to the men of Bannalec. They saluted me gravely, leaning on
their picks and shovels, and wiping their sweating faces with sunburned
hands.

"How many?" said I in Breton.

"Thirty-eight," they replied.

I glanced around. Beyond the heap of skulls lay two piles of human
bones. Beside these was a mound of broken, rusted bits of iron and
steel. Looking closer, I saw that this mound was composed of rusty
bayonets, sabre blades, scythe blades, with here and there a tarnished
buckle attached to a bit of leather hard as iron.

I picked up a couple of buttons and a belt plate. The buttons bore the
royal arms of England; the belt plate was emblazoned with the English
arms, and also with the number "27."

"I have heard my grandfather speak of the terrible English regiment,
the 27th Foot, which landed and stormed the fort up there," said one of
the Bannalec men.

"Oh!" said I; "then these are the bones of English soldiers?"

"Yes," said the men of Bannalec.

Le Bihan was calling to me from the edge of the pit above, and I handed
the belt plate and buttons to the men and climbed the side of the
excavation.

"Well," said I, trying to prevent Môme from leaping up and licking my
face as I emerged from the pit, "I suppose you know what these bones
are. What are you going to do with them?"

"There was a man," said Le Bihan angrily, "an Englishman, who passed
here in a dog-cart on his way to Quimper about an hour ago, and what do
you suppose he wished to do?"

"Buy the relics?" I asked, smiling.

"Exactly--the pig!" piped the mayor of St. Gildas. "Jean Marie Tregunc,
who found the bones, was standing there where Max Fortin stands, and do
you know what he answered? He spat upon the ground, and said: 'Pig of
an Englishman, do you take me for a desecrator of graves?'"

I knew Tregunc, a sober, blue-eyed Breton, who lived from one year's
end to the other without being able to afford a single bit of meat for
a meal.

"How much did the Englishman offer Tregunc?" I asked.

"Two hundred francs for the skulls alone."

I thought of the relic hunters and the relic buyers on the battlefields
of our civil war.

"Seventeen hundred and sixty is long ago," I said.

"Respect for the dead can never die," said Fortin.

"And the English soldiers came here to kill your fathers and burn your
homes," I continued.

"They were murderers and thieves, but--they are dead," said Tregunc,
coming up from the beach below, his long sea rake balanced on his
dripping jersey.

"How much do you earn every year, Jean Marie?" I asked, turning to
shake hands with him.

"Two hundred and twenty francs, monsieur."

"Forty-five dollars a year," I said. "Bah! you are worth more, Jean.
Will you take care of my garden for me? My wife wished me to ask you.
I think it would be worth one hundred francs a month to you and to me.
Come on, Le Bihan--come along, Fortin--and you, Durand. I want somebody
to translate that list into French for me."

Tregunc stood gazing at me, his blue eyes dilated.

"You may begin at once," I said, smiling, "if the salary suits you?"

"It suits," said Tregunc, fumbling for his pipe in a silly way that
annoyed Le Bihan.

"Then go and begin your work," cried the mayor impatiently; and
Tregunc started across the moors toward St. Gildas, taking off his
velvet-ribboned cap to me and gripping his sea rake very hard.

"You offer him more than my salary," said the mayor, after a moment's
contemplation of his silver buttons.

"Pooh!" said I, "what do you do for your salary except play dominoes
with Max Fortin at the Groix Inn?"

Le Bihan turned red, but Durand rattled his sabre and winked at Max
Fortin, and I slipped my arm through the arm of the sulky magistrate,
laughing.

"There's a shady spot under the cliff," I said; "come on, Le Bihan, and
read me what is in the scroll."

In a few moments we reached the shadow of the cliff, and I threw myself
upon the turf, chin on hand, to listen.

The gendarme, Durand, also sat down, twisting his mustache into
needlelike points. Fortin leaned against the cliff, polishing his
glasses and examining us with vague, near-sighted eyes; and Le Bihan,
the mayor, planted himself in our midst, rolling up the scroll and
tucking it under his arm.

"First of all," he began in a shrill voice, "I am going to light my
pipe, and while lighting it I shall tell you what I have heard about
the attack on the fort yonder. My father told me; his father told him."

He jerked his head in the direction of the ruined fort, a small, square
stone structure on the sea cliff, now nothing but crumbling walls. Then
he slowly produced a tobacco pouch, a bit of flint and tinder, and a
long-stemmed pipe fitted with a microscopical bowl of baked clay. To
fill such a pipe requires ten minutes' close attention. To smoke it to
a finish takes but four puffs. It is very Breton, this Breton pipe. It
is the crystallization of everything Breton.

"Go on," said I, lighting a cigarette.

"The fort," said the mayor, "was built by Louis XIV, and was dismantled
twice by the English. Louis XV restored it in 1739. In 1760 it was
carried by assault by the English. They came across from the island
of Groix--three shiploads--and they stormed the fort and sacked St.
Julien yonder, and they started to burn St. Gildas--you can see the
marks of their bullets on my house yet; but the men of Bannalec and the
men of Lorient fell upon them with pike and scythe and blunderbuss,
and those who did not run away lie there below in the gravel pit
now--thirty-eight of them."

"And the thirty-ninth skull?" I asked, finishing my cigarette.

The mayor had succeeded in filling his pipe, and now he began to put
his tobacco pouch away.

"The thirty-ninth skull," he mumbled, holding the pipestem between his
defective teeth--"the thirty-ninth skull is no business of mine. I have
told the Bannalec men to cease digging."

"But what is--whose is the missing skull?" I persisted curiously.

The mayor was busy trying to strike a spark to his tinder. Presently he
set it aglow, applied it to his pipe, took the prescribed four puffs,
knocked the ashes out of the bowl, and gravely replaced the pipe in his
pocket.

"The missing skull?" he asked.

"Yes," said I impatiently.

The mayor slowly unrolled the scroll and began to read, translating
from the Breton into French. And this is what he read:

"ON THE CLIFFS OF ST. GILDAS,

"_April 13, 1760_.

"On this day, by order of the Count of Soisic, general in
chief of the Breton forces now lying in Kerselec Forest, the
bodies of thirty-eight English soldiers of the 27th, 50th,
and 72d regiments of Foot were buried in this spot, together
with their arms and equipments."

The mayor paused and glanced at me reflectively.

"Go on, Le Bihan," I said.

"With them," continued the mayor, turning the scroll and reading on the
other side, "was buried the body of that vile traitor who betrayed the
fort to the English. The manner of his death was as follows: By order
of the most noble Count of Soisic, the traitor was first branded upon
the forehead with the brand of an arrowhead. The iron burned through
the flesh, and was pressed heavily so that the brand should even burn
into the bone of the skull. The traitor was then led out and bidden to
kneel. He admitted having guided the English from the island of Groix.
Although a priest and a Frenchman, he had violated his priestly office
to aid him in discovering the password to the fort. This password he
extorted during confession from a young Breton girl who was in the
habit of rowing across from the island of Groix to visit her husband
in the fort. When the fort fell, this young girl, crazed by the death
of her husband, sought the Count of Soisic and told how the priest had
forced her to confess to him all she knew about the fort. The priest
was arrested at St. Gildas as he was about to cross the river to
Lorient. When arrested he cursed the girl, Marie Trevec----"

"What!" I exclaimed, "Marie Trevec!"

"Marie Trevec," repeated Le Bihan; "the priest cursed Marie Trevec, and
all her family and descendants. He was shot as he knelt, having a mask
of leather over his face, because the Bretons who composed the squad of
execution refused to fire at a priest unless his face was concealed.
The priest was l'Abbé Sorgue, commonly known as the Black Priest on
account of his dark face and swarthy eyebrows. He was buried with a
stake through his heart."

Le Bihan paused, hesitated, looked at me, and handed the manuscript
back to Durand. The gendarme took it and slipped it into the brass
cylinder.

"So," said I, "the thirty-ninth skull is the skull of the Black Priest."

"Yes," said Fortin. "I hope they won't find it."

"I have forbidden them to proceed," said the mayor querulously. "You
heard me, Max Fortin."

I rose and picked up my gun. Môme came and pushed his head into my hand.

"That's a fine dog," observed Durand, also rising.

"Why don't you wish to find his skull?" I asked Le Bihan. "It would be
curious to see whether the arrow brand really burned into the bone."

"There is something in that scroll that I didn't read to you," said the
mayor grimly. "Do you wish to know what it is?"

"Of course," I replied in surprise.

"Give me the scroll again, Durand," he said; then he read from
the bottom: "I, l'Abbé Sorgue, forced to write the above by my
executioners, have written it in my own blood; and with it I leave my
curse. My curse on St. Gildas, on Marie Trevec, and on her descendants.
I will come back to St. Gildas when my remains are disturbed. Woe to
that Englishman whom my branded skull shall touch!"

"What rot!" I said. "Do you believe it was really written in his own
blood?"

"I am going to test it," said Fortin, "at the request of Monsieur le
Maire. I am not anxious for the job, however."

"See," said Le Bihan, holding out the scroll to me, "it is signed,
'l'Abbé Sorgue.'"

I glanced curiously over the paper.

"It must be the Black Priest," I said. "He was the only man who wrote
in the Breton language. This is a wonderfully interesting discovery,
for now, at last, the mystery of the Black Priest's disappearance is
cleared up. You will, of course, send this scroll to Paris, Le Bihan?"

"No," said the mayor obstinately, "it shall be buried in the pit below
where the rest of the Black Priest lies."

I looked at him and recognised that argument would be useless. But
still I said, "It will be a loss to history, Monsieur Le Bihan."

"All the worse for history, then," said the enlightened Mayor of St.
Gildas.

We had sauntered back to the gravel pit while speaking. The men of
Bannalec were carrying the bones of the English soldiers toward the
St. Gildas cemetery, on the cliffs to the east, where already a knot of
white-coiffed women stood in attitudes of prayer; and I saw the sombre
robe of a priest among the crosses of the little graveyard.

"They were thieves and assassins; they are dead now," muttered Max
Fortin.

"Respect the dead," repeated the Mayor of St. Gildas, looking after the
Bannalec men.

"It was written in that scroll that Marie Trevec, of Groix Island, was
cursed by the priest--she and her descendants," I said, touching Le
Bihan on the arm. "There was a Marie Trevec who married an Yves Trevec
of St. Gildas----"

"It is the same," said Le Bihan, looking at me obliquely.

"Oh!" said I; "then they were ancestors of my wife."

"Do you fear the curse?" asked Le Bihan.

"What?" I laughed.

"There was the case of the Purple Emperor," said Max Fortin timidly.

Startled for a moment, I faced him, then shrugged my shoulders and
kicked at a smooth bit of rock which lay near the edge of the pit,
almost embedded in gravel.

"Do you suppose the Purple Emperor drank himself crazy because he was
descended from Marie Trevec?" I asked contemptuously.

"Of course not," said Max Fortin hastily.

"Of course not," piped the mayor. "I only---- Hello! what's that you're
kicking?"

"What?" said I, glancing down, at the same time involuntarily giving
another kick. The smooth bit of rock dislodged itself and rolled out of
the loosened gravel at my feet.

"The thirty-ninth skull!" I exclaimed. "By jingo, its the noddle of the
Black Priest! See! there is the arrowhead branded on the front!"

The mayor stepped back. Max Fortin also retreated. There was a pause,
during which I looked at them, and they looked anywhere but at me.

"I don't like it," said the mayor at last, in a husky, high voice. "I
don't like it! The scroll says he will come back to St. Gildas when his
remains are disturbed. I--I don't like it, Monsieur Darrel----"

"Bosh!" said I; "the poor wicked devil is where he can't get out. For
Heaven's sake, Le Bihan, what is this stuff you are talking in the year
of grace 1896?"

The mayor gave me a look.

"And he says 'Englishman.' You are an Englishman, Monsieur Darrel," he
announced.

"You know better. You know I'm an American."

"It's all the same," said the Mayor of St. Gildas, obstinately.

"No, it isn't!" I answered, much exasperated, and deliberately pushed
the skull till it rolled into the bottom of the gravel pit below.

"Cover it up," said I; "bury the scroll with it too, if you insist, but
I think you ought to send it to Paris. Don't look so gloomy, Fortin,
unless you believe in were-wolves and ghosts. Hey! what the--what
the devil's the matter with you, anyway? What are you staring at, Le
Bihan?"

"Come, come," muttered the mayor in a low, tremulous voice, "it's time
we got out of this. Did you see? Did you see, Fortin?"

"I saw," whispered Max Fortin, pallid with fright.

The two men were almost running across the sunny pasture now, and I
hastened after them, demanding to know what was the matter.

"Matter!" chattered the mayor, gasping with exasperation and terror.
"The skull is rolling uphill again!" and he burst into a terrified
gallop. Max Fortin followed close behind.

I watched them stampeding across the pasture, then turned toward the
gravel pit, mystified, incredulous. The skull was lying on the edge
of the pit, exactly where it had been before I pushed it over the
edge. For a second I stared at it; a singular chilly feeling crept up
my spinal column, and I turned and walked away, sweat starting from
the root of every hair on my head. Before I had gone twenty paces the
absurdity of the whole thing struck me. I halted, hot with shame and
annoyance, and retraced my steps.

There lay the skull.

"I rolled a stone down instead of the skull," I muttered to myself.
Then with the butt of my gun I pushed the skull over the edge of the
pit and watched it roll to the bottom; and as it struck the bottom
of the pit, Môme, my dog, suddenly whipped his tail between his legs,
whimpered, and made off across the moor.

"Môme!" I shouted, angry and astonished; but the dog only fled the
faster, and I ceased calling from sheer surprise.

"What the mischief is the matter with that dog!" I thought. He had
never before played me such a trick.

Mechanically I glanced into the pit, but I could not see the skull. I
looked down. The skull lay at my feet again, touching them.

"Good heavens!" I stammered, and struck at it blindly with my gunstock.
The ghastly thing flew into the air, whirling over and over, and rolled
again down the sides of the pit to the bottom. Breathlessly I stared at
it, then, confused and scarcely comprehending, I stepped back from the
pit, still facing it, one, ten, twenty paces, my eyes almost starting
from my head, as though I expected to see the thing roll up from the
bottom of the pit under my very gaze. At last I turned my back to the
pit and strode out across the gorse-covered moorland toward my home. As
I reached the road that winds from St. Gildas to St. Julien I gave one
hasty glance at the pit over my shoulder. The sun shone hot on the sod
about the excavation. There was something white and bare and round on
the turf at the edge of the pit. It might have been a stone; there were
plenty of them lying about.

II.

When I entered my garden I saw Môme sprawling on the stone doorstep. He
eyed me sideways and flopped his tail.

"Are you not mortified, you idiot dog?" I said, looking about the upper
windows for Lys.

Môme rolled over on his back and raised one deprecating forepaw, as
though to ward off calamity.

"Don't act as though I was in the habit of beating you to death," I
said, disgusted. I had never in my life raised whip to the brute. "But
you are a fool dog," I continued. "No, you needn't come to be babied
and wept over; Lys can do that, if she insists, but I am ashamed of
you, and you can go to the devil."

Môme slunk off into the house, and I followed, mounting directly to my
wife's boudoir. It was empty.

"Where has she gone?" I said, looking hard at Môme, who had followed
me. "Oh! I see you don't know. Don't pretend you do. Come off that
lounge! Do you think Lys wants tan-coloured hairs all over her lounge?"

I rang the bell for Catherine and 'Fine, but they didn't know where
"madame" had gone; so I went into my room, bathed, exchanged my
somewhat grimy shooting clothes for a suit of warm, soft knickerbockers,
and, after lingering some extra moments over my toilet--for I was
particular, now that I had married Lys--I went down to the garden and
took a chair out under the fig-trees.

"Where can she be?" I wondered. Môme came sneaking out to be comforted,
and I forgave him for Lys's sake, whereupon he frisked.

"You bounding cur," said I, "now what on earth started you off across
the moor? If you do it again I'll push you along with a charge of dust
shot."

As yet I had scarcely dared think about the ghastly hallucination of
which I had been a victim, but now I faced it squarely, flushing a
little with mortification at the thought of my hasty retreat from the
gravel pit.

"To think," I said aloud, "that those old woman's tales of Max Fortin
and Le Bihan should have actually made me see what didn't exist at all!
I lost my nerve like a schoolboy in a dark bedroom." For I knew now
that I had mistaken a round stone for a skull each time, and had pushed
a couple of big pebbles into the pit instead of the skull itself.

"By jingo!" said I, "I'm nervous; my liver must be in a devil of a
condition if I see such things when I'm awake! Lys will know what to
give me."

I felt mortified and irritated and sulky, and thought disgustedly of Le
Bihan and Max Fortin.

But after a while I ceased speculating, dismissed the mayor, the
chemist, and the skull from my mind, and smoked pensively, watching the
sun low dipping in the western ocean. As the twilight fell for a moment
over ocean and moorland, a wistful, restless happiness filled my heart,
the happiness that all men know--all men who have loved.

Slowly the purple mist crept out over the sea; the cliffs darkened; the
forest was shrouded.

Suddenly the sky above burned with the afterglow, and the world was
alight again.

Cloud after cloud caught the rose dye; the cliffs were tinted with
it; moor and pasture, heather and forest burned and pulsated with the
gentle flush. I saw the gulls turning and tossing above the sand bar,
their snowy wings tipped with pink; I saw the sea swallows sheering
the surface of the still river, stained to its placid depths with warm
reflections of the clouds. The twitter of drowsy hedge birds broke out
in the stillness; a salmon rolled its shining side above tide-water.

The interminable monotone of the ocean intensified the silence. I
sat motionless, holding my breath as one who listens to the first low
rumour of an organ. All at once the pure whistle of a nightingale cut
the silence, and the first moonbeam silvered the wastes of mist-hung
waters.

I raised my head.

Lys stood before me in the garden.

When we had kissed each other, we linked arms and moved up and down
the gravel walks, watching the moonbeams sparkle on the sand bar as
the tide ebbed and ebbed. The broad beds of white pinks about us were
atremble with hovering white moths; the October roses hung all abloom,
perfuming the salt wind.

"Sweetheart," I said, "where is Yvonne? Has she promised to spend
Christmas with us?"

"Yes, Dick; she drove me down from Plougat this afternoon. She sent her
love to you. I am not jealous. What did you shoot?"

"A hare and four partridges. They are in the gun room. I told Catherine
not to touch them until you had seen them."

Now I suppose I knew that Lys could not be particularly enthusiastic
over game or guns; but she pretended she was, and always scornfully
denied that it was for my sake and not for the pure love of sport. So
she dragged me off to inspect the rather meagre game bag, and she paid
me pretty compliments and gave a little cry of delight and pity as I
lifted the enormous hare out of the sack by his ears.

"He'll eat no more of our lettuce," I said, attempting to justify the
assassination.

"Unhappy little bunny--and what a beauty! O Dick, you are a splendid
shot, are you not?"

I evaded the question and hauled out a partridge.

"Poor little dead things!" said Lys in a whisper; "it seems a
pity--doesn't it, Dick? But then you are so clever----"

"We'll have them broiled," I said guardedly; "tell Catherine."

Catherine came in to take away the game, and presently 'Fine Lelocard,
Lys's maid, announced dinner, and Lys tripped away to her boudoir.

I stood an instant contemplating her blissfully, thinking, "My boy,
you're the happiest fellow in the world--you're in love with your
wife!"

I walked into the dining room, beamed at the plates, walked out again;
met Tregunc in the hallway, beamed on him; glanced into the kitchen,
beamed at Catherine, and went up stairs, still beaming.

Before I could knock at Lys's door it opened, and Lys came hastily out.
When she saw me she gave a little cry of relief, and nestled close to
my breast.

"There is something peering in at my window," she said.

"What!" I cried angrily.

"A man, I think, disguised as a priest, and he has a mask on. He must
have climbed up by the bay tree."

I was down the stairs and out of doors in no time. The moonlit garden
was absolutely deserted. Tregunc came up, and together we searched the
hedge and shrubbery around the house and out to the road.

"Jean Marie," said I at length, "loose my bulldog--he knows you--and
take your supper on the porch where you can watch. My wife says the
fellow is disguised as a priest, and wears a mask."

Tregunc showed his white teeth in a smile. "He will not care to venture
in here again, I think, Monsieur Darrel."

I went back and found Lys seated quietly at the table.

"The soup is ready, dear," she said. "Don't worry; it was only some
foolish lout from Bannalec. No one in St. Gildas or St. Julien would do
such a thing."

I was too much exasperated to reply at first, but Lys treated it as a
stupid joke, and after a while I began to look at it in that light.

Lys told me about Yvonne, and reminded me of my promise to have Herbert
Stuart down to meet her.

"You wicked diplomat!" I protested. "Herbert is in Paris, and hard at
work for the Salon."

"Don't you think he might spare a week to flirt with the prettiest girl
in Finistère?" inquired Lys innocently.

"Prettiest girl! Not much!" I said.

"Who is, then?" urged Lys.

I laughed a trifle sheepishly.

"I suppose you mean me, Dick," said Lys, colouring up.

"Now I bore you, don't I?"

"Bore me? Ah, no, Dick."

After coffee and cigarettes were served I spoke about Tregunc, and Lys
approved.

"Poor Jean! he will be glad, won't he? What a dear fellow you are!"

"Nonsense," said I; "we need a gardener; you said so yourself, Lys."

But Lys leaned over and kissed me, and then bent down and hugged Môme,
who whistled through his nose in sentimental appreciation.

"I am a very happy woman," said Lys.

"Môme was a very bad dog to-day," I observed.

"Poor Môme!" said Lys, smiling.

When dinner was over and Môme lay snoring before the blaze--for the
October nights are often chilly in Finistère--Lys curled up in the
chimney corner with her embroidery, and gave me a swift glance from
under her drooping lashes.

"You look like a schoolgirl, Lys," I said teasingly. "I don't believe
you are sixteen yet."

She pushed back her heavy burnished hair thoughtfully. Her wrist was as
white as surf foam.

"Have we been married four years? I don't believe it," I said.

She gave me another swift glance and touched the embroidery on her
knee, smiling faintly.

"I see," said I, also smiling at the embroidered garment. "Do you think
it will fit?"

"Fit?" repeated Lys. Then she laughed.

"And," I persisted, "are you perfectly sure that you--er--we shall need
it?"

"Perfectly," said Lys. A delicate colour touched her cheeks and neck.
She held up the little garment, all fluffy with misty lace and wrought
with quaint embroidery.

"It is very gorgeous," said I; "don't use your eyes too much, dearest.
May I smoke a pipe?"

"Of course," she said, selecting a skein of pale blue silk.

For a while I sat and smoked in silence, watching her slender fingers
among the tinted silks and thread of gold.

Presently she spoke: "What did you say your crest is, Dick?"

"My crest? Oh, something or other rampant on a something or other----"

"Dick!"

"Dearest?"

"Don't be flippant."

"But I really forget. It's an ordinary crest; everybody in New York has
them. No family should be without 'em."

"You are disagreeable, Dick. Send Josephine upstairs for my album."

"Are you going to put that crest on the--the--whatever it is?"

"I am; and my own crest, too."

I thought of the Purple Emperor and wondered a little.

"You didn't know I had one, did you?" she smiled.

"What is it?" I replied evasively.

"You shall see. Ring for Josephine."

I rang, and, when 'Fine appeared, Lys gave her some orders in a low
voice, and Josephine trotted away, bobbing her white-coiffed head with
a "Bien, madame!"

After a few minutes she returned, bearing a tattered, musty volume,
from which the gold and blue had mostly disappeared.

I took the book in my hands and examined the ancient emblazoned covers.

"Lilies!" I exclaimed.

"Fleur-de-lis," said my wife demurely.

"Oh!" said I, astonished, and opened the book.

"You have never before seen this book?" asked Lys, with a touch of
malice in her eyes.

"You know I haven't. Hello! what's this? Oho! So there should be a
_de_ before Trevec?