IT WAS the feast of the Assumption in Ploumariel, at the hottest part of the afternoon. Benedict Campion, who had just assisted at vespers, in the little dove-cotted church--like everything else in Ploumariel, even vespers were said earlier than is the usage in towns--took up his station in the market-place to watch the procession pass by. The head of it was just then emerging into the Square: a long file of men from the neighbouring villages, bare-headed and chaunting, followed the crucifer. They were all clad in the picturesque garb of the Morbihan peasantry, and were many of them imposing, quite noble figures with their clear-cut Breton features, and their austere type of face. After them a troop of young girls, with white veils over their heads, carrying banners--children from the convent school of the Ursulines; and then, two and two in motley assemblage (peasant women with their white coifs walking with the wives and daughters of prosperous _bourgeois_ in costumes more civilised but far less pictorial) half the inhabitants of Ploumariel--all, indeed, who had not, with Campion, preferred to be spectators, taking refuge from a broiling sun under the grateful shadow of the chestnuts in the market-place. Last of all a muster of clergy, four or five strong, a small choir of bullet-headed boys, and the Curé of the parish himself, Monsieur Letêtre chaunting from his book, who brought up the rear. Campion, leaning against his chestnut tree, watched them defile. Once a smile of recognition flashed across his face, which was answered by a girl in the procession. She just glanced from her book, and the smile with which she let her eyes rest upon him for a moment, before she dropped them, did not seem to detract from her devotional air. She was very young and slight--she might have been sixteen--and she had a singularly pretty face; her white dress was very simple, and her little straw hat, but both of these she wore with an air which at once set her apart from her companions, with their provincial finery and their rather commonplace charms. Campion’s eyes followed the little figure until it was lost in the distance, disappearing with the procession down a by-street on its return journey to the church. And after they had all passed, the singing, the last verse of the “Ave Maris Stella,” was borne across to him, through the still air, the voices of children pleasantly predominating. He put on his hat at last, and moved away; every now and then he exchanged a greeting with somebody--the communal doctor, the mayor; while here and there a woman explained him to her gossip in whispers as he passed, “It is the Englishman of Mademoiselle Marie-Ursule--it is M. le Curé’s guest.” It was to the dwelling of M. le Curé, indeed, that Campion now made his way. Five minutes’ walk brought him to it; an unpretentious white house, lying back in its large garden, away from the dusty road. It was an untidy garden, rather useful than ornamental; a very little shade