"Ah!" he says, suddenly putting on his blue collar again. "I am going to continue the journey! In the first place, you understand, I should not be able to sleep. It's true, I shall get home very late, I shall awaken them after midnight, and that will startle them a little--I did that in the year when I returned from the war. But I am so anxious to see them, I cannot wait here." And I, too, decided that I would follow his example. Paimpol is asleep when we leave in the pale moonlight. I am accompanying him for a part of his way, to help to pass the hours of the night. We are now in the fields. Yves walks very quickly; he is very excited, and goes over in his mind the memories of his earlier returns. "Yes," he said. "After the war I returned like this, about two o'clock in the morning, and woke them up. I had walked from Saint Brieuc; I was returning, very weary, from the siege of Paris. You will realize I was quite young then. I had just become able seaman. "And, I remember, I got a great fright that night: by the cross of Kergrist, which we shall see in a minute at the turning of this road, I came upon a little old man, very ugly, who stared at me with outstretched arms, but without moving. And I am sure he was a ghost; for he disappeared almost at once, beckoning with his finger as if he wanted me to follow him." Presently we reached this cross of Kergrist. We saw it rise up before us as if it were someone approaching in the darkness. But there was no ghost at its foot. It was there I said good-bye to Yves and retraced my steps, for I, for my part, was not going to Plouherzel. When we no longer heard the sound of each other's footsteps in the silence of the winter's night, the ghost of the little old man came back into our minds, and in spite of ourselves we took to peering into the darkness of the undergrowth. CHAPTER XVI On the following morning I opened my eyes in the large room of the good dame Le Pendreff. The Breton sun filtered gently through the windows. The day, apparently, was very fine. After the first few moments which I always spend in asking myself in what corner of the world I am, I remembered Yves and I heard outside the tramping of a crowd in sabots. There was a great fair that day in Paimpol, and I dressed myself up in ordinary sailor's clothes in order that I might not intimidate the many friends to whom I was going to be presented as a south-country sailor. This had been arranged with Yves, both the dressing up and the story attached to it. I descended the steps of the hotel. The sun was shining and the square was full of people: sailors, peasants, fishermen. Yves, too, was there; he had returned in the early morning for the fête with all his relations from Plouherzel; and he was waiting outside to conduct me to his mother.