“Well, then, if thou wouldst know, I can sail a boat, and withal skilfully. In the olden days, Laure—’twas Gerault’s sister—and I have gone out in secret an hundred times in a fisherman’s boat anchored a mile down the shore, in front of some of the peasants’ huts. Laure and I paid the fisherman money to let us take the boat; for she loved it as well as I. Indeed, I have been lonely for it since her going.” “Ah! Since her going thou’st not known the sea?” “Not often. Alone, with a heavy boat, there is danger.” “Alixe, take me with thee sometime! Soon! To-day! My soul is athirst to feel the tremor of the boiling waves!” “Madame!” murmured Alixe, not relishing what she considered an ill-advised jest. “Nay! Look not like that upon me! I would truly go. Can we not set forth? There is yet time ere dark.” From sheer nervousness Alixe laughed. Then she said solemnly: “Madame Lenore, right willingly, hadst thou need of it, I would yield up my life to you; but venture forth with you upon those waters will I not; nor thou nor any other that were not mad, would ask it.” Lenore frowned at these words, but she said nothing more, either on that subject or another; and presently the two went back into the Castle. But a strange desire had been born in Lenore, and she brooded upon it continually. Day by day she hungered for the sea; and, though she did not again suggest her wish, there were times when the roar of the waves on the cliffs, and the cold puffs of air strong with the odor of the salt tide, came near unbalancing her mind, and drove uncanny thoughts of watery deaths through her heart. But through that long winter she betrayed only occasional evidences of the effect that illness, loneliness, and long brooding were having upon her mind; and perhaps it was only the dread of betrayal that in the end saved her from actual insanity. December came in and advanced in the midst of arctic gales and continually swirling snow, till Brittany was wrapped deep under a pure, fleecy blanket. It was the season of warmth and idleness indoors, when the poorest peasant got out his chestnut-bag, and merrily roasted this staple article of his diet before the fire by night. The Christmas spirit was on all men; and this in Brittany was tempered and tinctured with the quaintest fairy-lore relating to the season, and as real to every Breton as the story of their Christ. The Christmas mass was no more devoutly enjoyed than was the great feast, held a week later, on the night known throughout Brittany not as the New Year, but as St. Sylvester’s Eve, when all elfdom was abroad to guard the treasures left uncovered by the thirsty dolmens. And this, and an infinite number of other tales, of witch and gnome, sprite and fay, sleeping princess and hero-king, of Viviane and her wondrous forest of Broecilande, were told anew, each year, behind locked doors, before the crackling fires that burned from dusk to enchanted midnight.