"They were all so excited that I don't know how the affair would have ended, had not an officer of the fort, who knew that the captain of the _Hell-hound_ was at the tavern, come rushing in to tell M. Yvon that a fishing-smack had just come in and reported that a suspicious-looking schooner had been sighted from the cliffs, and that appearances seemed to indicate her intention of making a landing, as had been done at several other points along the coast. There being no war-ship in the harbour the officer came to implore the captain of the _Hell-hound_ to go out and attack the schooner if she made any attempt to land. M. Yvon could not refuse, as it was in defence of his country that he was requested to give his services. We were soon aboard the brig; the wind was favourable, we weighed anchor, and were soon flying along in search of the schooner. Right here, Mlle. Sabine, I must tell you something that M. Yvon dared not confess in his letter. He speaks, you know, of a superstitious idea he had in connection with his never having been wounded. You must understand, Mlle. Sabine, that your poor father's life has been divided as it were into two parts,--one supremely happy, the part spent at home or in talking with me about you; the other desolation itself, the hours spent in thinking of your poor dear mother, whom he loved even more tenderly than he loves you, as Suzanne has told you a hundred times. The night she died, it so happened that he had dressed himself in Breton costume to attend a fancy dress ball. Being very young at the time, you did not recognise him. After this calamity, when we shipped as common sailors on a privateer where every one dressed as he pleased, M. Yvon said to me: 'As I am here to expiate a crime I shall regret all my life, I intend always to wear the costume of my native province at sea. It has become sacred to me, as I wore it on the fatal night when I held my poor dying wife in my arms for the last time.' "M. Yvon has kept his word ever since, in spite of my entreaties, for it having been reported in England that the famous corsair, Captain l'Endurci, wore the Breton costume, it was at M. Yvon that every one aimed. But though your father exposed himself so much more than any of the rest of us, he was never wounded, and as there is a superstitious streak in the composition of every human being, M. Yvon finally began to think that there must be a protecting charm attached to our national costume. The sailors, too, imagined that this costume brought the ship good luck. At least, they would have felt much less confident of success if M. Yvon had commanded them in any other garb, so that is why M. Yvon, when he went aboard to go out and fight the schooner, put on the costume of his native province exactly as he would have put on a uniform, not supposing for an instant that there was any likelihood of his going to his own home.