The New Year had come: a time of highest festival in Brittany, when the land was alive with merriment and gifts and legends and grewsome tales. It was St. Sylvester’s Eve, when, as all men knew, the waves of the Atlantic for once defied their barriers and struggled up the towering cliffs, eager to meet, halfway, the descending dolmens, permitted once in the year to leave unguarded the deep earth-treasures, that they might quench their furious thirst in the sea. And on that night half the peasants of Brittany lay awake, speculating on the vast wealth that might be theirs if they were but to arise and seek out some monster dolmen and wait beside it till the immense rock rolled away from its hole, leaving a pit of gold and gems open to the clutching hands of the world-man. But fear of the demoniac return of these same rolling rocks kept most of the dreamers safe within their beds during the fateful midnight hour, though of the luck of the few daring ones, there were, nay, still are, many veracious tales. Le Crépuscule, no less than the surrounding countryside, participated in the interest of these supernatural matters; but the old Chateau had real affairs of feast and frolic to occupy it also. The great New Year’s dinner was the most lavish that the Castle gave in the twelve-month, and this year, in spite of its depleted household, there was no exception made to the general rule. The great tables were set in the central hall and loaded with every sort of food and drink, while kitchen fires roared about their juicy meats, and in the chimney-piece of the hall an ox was roasted whole before the flames. Ordinarily the dinner hour at the Castle was half-past eleven in the morning; but on feast days it was changed to four in the afternoon, and the merriment was then kept up till the last woman had retired, and the last man found a pillow on the rushes that strewed the floor. On this New Year’s eve there were, as usual, two great tables set; for to-night not only all the retainers of the Castle, but also half a hundred of the tenantry from the estates, claimed the privilege of their fealty and came to eat at the house of their lord, sitting below his salt, breaking his bread, supping his beer, and talking and laughing and drinking each till he could no more. Madame Eleanore was always present at this feast, as a matter of duty and of graciousness. She sat to-night at the head of the board, with an empty place beside her for Gerault. Alixe was upon her right hand, and one of the young squires-at-arms upon her left; and in the general hubbub of the feast none of the peasant boors noticed how persistent a silence reigned at that end of the table, nor how wearily sad was the expression of their lady’s face.