As long as he had sufficient strength he prowled along the forest, entering it here and there, calling, listening, searching the foggy corridors of trees. The rotting brake crackled underfoot; the tree tops clashed and creaked above him. At last, having only enough strength left to take him home, he turned away, limping through the blotched and broken ferns, his crippled leg hanging stiffly in its splints, his gun and the dead ducks bobbing on his back. The trodden way was soggy with little pools full of drenched grasses and dead leaves; but at length came rising ground, and the blue-green, glimmering wastes of gorse stretching away before him through the curtained fog. A sheep path ran through; and after a little while a few trees loomed shadowy in the mist, and a low stone house took shape, whitewashed, flanked by barn, pigpen, and a stack of rotting seaweed. A few wet hens wandered aimlessly by the doorstep; a tiny bed of white clove-pinks and tall white phlox exhaled a homely welcome as the lame man hobbled up the steps, pulled the leather latchstring, and entered. In the kitchen an old Breton woman, chopping herbs, looked up at him out of aged eyes, shaking her head under its white coiffe. "It is nearly noon," she said. "You have been out since dawn. Was it wise, for a convalescent, Monsieur Jacques?" "Very wise, Marie-Josephine. Because the more exercise I take the sooner I shall be able to go back." "It is too soon to go out in such weather." "Ducks fly inland only in such weather," he retorted, smiling. "And we like roast widgeon, you and I, Marie-Josephine." And all the while her aged blue eyes were fixed on him, and over her withered cheeks the soft bloom came and faded--that pretty colour which Breton women usually retain until the end. "Thou knowest, Monsieur Jacques," she said, with a curiously quaint mingling of familiarity and respect, "that I do not counsel caution because I love thee and dread for thee again the trenches. But with thy leg hanging there like the broken wing of a _vanneau_----" He replied good humouredly: "Thou dost not know the Legion, Marie-Josephine. Every day in our trenches we break a comrade into pieces and glue him together again, just to make him tougher. Broken bones, once mended, are stronger than before." He was looking down at her where she sat by the hearth, slicing vegetables and herbs, but watching him all the while out of her lovely, faded eyes. "I understand, Monsieur Jacques, that you are like your father--God knows he was hardy and without fear--to the last"--she dropped her head--"Mary, glorious--intercede--" she muttered over her bowl of herbs. Wayland, resting on his crutches, unslung his ducks, laid them on the table, smoothed their beautiful heads and breasts, then slipped the soaking _bandoulière_ of his gun from his shoulder and placed the dripping piece against the chimney corner.