When he returned with half a dozen blank canvases the flight-lieutenant, at table, was eating pork and black bread and drinking Breton cider. Wayland seated himself, laid both crutches across his knees, picked up one of the chassis, and began to rip from it the dusty canvas. It was like tearing muscles from his own bones. But he smiled and chatted on, casually, with the air-officer, who ate as though half starved. "I suppose," said Wayland, "you’ll start back across the Channel as soon as you secure petrol enough?" "Yes, of course." "You could go by way of Quimper or by Lorient. There’s petrol to be had at both places for military purposes"--leisurely continuing to rip the big squares of canvas from the frames. The airman, still eating, watched him askance at intervals. "I’ve brought what’s left of the shellac; it isn’t much use, I fear. But here is his hammer and canvas stretcher, and the remainder of the nails he used for stretching his canvases," said Wayland, with an effort to speak carelessly. "Many thanks. You also are a painter, I take it." Wayland laid one hand on the sleeve of his uniform and laughed. "I _was_ a writer. But there are only soldiers in the world now." "Quite so ... This is an odd place for an American to live in." "My father bought it years ago. He was a painter of peasant life." He added, lowering his voice, although Marie-Josephine understood no English: "This old peasant woman was his model many years ago. She also kept house for him. He lived here; I was born here." "Really?" "Yes, but my father desired that I grow up a good Yankee. I was at school in America when he--died." The airman continued to eat very busily. "He died--out there"--Wayland looked through the window, musingly. "There was an Iceland schooner wrecked off the Isle des Chouans. And no life-saving crew short of Ylva Light. So my father went out in his little American catboat, all alone.... Marie-Josephine saw his sail off Eryx Rocks ... for a few moments ... and saw it no more." The airman, still devouring his bread and meat, nodded in silence. "That is how it happened," said Wayland. "The French authorities notified me. There was a little money and this hut, and--Marie-Josephine. So I came here; and I write children’s stories--that sort of thing.... It goes well enough. I sell a few to American publishers. Otherwise I shoot and fish and read ... when war does not preoccupy me...." He smiled, experiencing the vague relief of talking to somebody in his native tongue. Quesnel Moors were sometimes very lonely. "It’s been a long convalescence," he continued, smilingly. "One of their ’coal-boxes’ did this"--touching his leg. "When I was able to move I went to America. But the sea off the Eryx called me back; and the authorities permitted me to come down here. I’m getting well very fast now." He had stripped every chassis of its canvas, and had made a roll of the material.