"It is done!" said Nominoë to himself while his father was calling to the Baz-valan. "Adieu, insane hopes! Adieu, deceitful, senseless visions, yet so dear to my heart! Adieu, gilded dream, a dream as distant from reality as heaven is from the pit! This morning, when I learned of the arrival of Mademoiselle Plouernel at Mezlean, I intended to break off this match. Poor fool! Return to your senses, to earth! Your marriage will put an end to the visions that led your mind astray!" "Let us depart, my son! Make haste! Poor Tina must have begun to feel uneasy," observed Salaun to his son. "All our relatives and friends are waiting for us. Quick, to horse!" A moment later the nuptial procession, headed by the Baz-valan and Nominoë, left the burg of Mezlean and took the road to the house of Tankeru the blacksmith, the father of Tina, the bride. CHAPTER II. A BRETON WEDDING. Tankeru was both blacksmith and wheelwright. After having long resided at Vannes with his mother and daughter, he moved with them and settled down in an isolated house situated about a league outside of Mezlean in a hollow, at the crossing of two roads one of which skirted the forest of Mezlean. Several reasons had combined to determine Tankeru's choice of the lonesome locality. The first was that the house stood at the foot of two bluffs which rose over a granite soil, rough, rocky and uneven, where the horses and oxen that drew the heavy wagons over the road could not choose but lose some nails of their shoes as they climbed the steep ascent; the blacksmith would be on the spot ready to repair the damage. In the second place, Tankeru counted upon indulging in the hunt in the forest of Mezlean, a sport to which he was passionately addicted. In the teeth of all the punishments decreed against illegal hunting--the prison, the whipping post, the galley, even the gallows--Tankeru gave a loose to his controlling passion in full security of conscience, claiming that the wandering beasts of the forests belonged to the best marksman, and that, moreover, it was a good office to keep down the number of wild beasts. Game belongs to all--to the villein as to the nobleman.