It was some illness he did not know that killed her.  Yes, he had been there when she died, and had paid money to a doctor and to the priest.  Perhaps she just died of not having enough to eat, he didn’t know.  She had asked him to kiss her before she died, and it was the only time since he had left Brittany.  Then Jeanne-Marie’s husband had come into the house, and borrowed five francs from him and was very maudlin, and asked what the devil he was going to do with that brat, which cried all the time.  But the little one was quiet when Yves took it in his arms, so poor Frenchy asked if he might take it, because he knew it would die if left there.  The man had laughed, so he had taken it on his arm and wandered out in the street with it, and a quarter-master asked him what he was doing with a baby.  He answered that he didn’t know, for one can’t take little ones away on warships.  He had met a man from the French shore, who told him there was a schooner from Newfoundland which had lost two men in a blow, and needed a hand or two.  Then he had gone and offered to ship for nothing, if they would let him take the baby.  Yes, they had laughed at him, but the skipper was drunk and good-natured, and told him to come aboard.  He had done so at night, when no one was looking, and had with him some milk that comes in cans.  So they had sailed away for Newfoundland, and he supposed it was as good a place as any for a man who was now a deserter.  Very likely they had looked for him a long time, and had been surprised, for he was accounted a good man.  Anyway it was Jeanne-Marie’s baby, and one could not leave it to be neglected and to die, because Jeanne-Marie had loved it very much.

Of course he would never see France again, unless the boy died.  If this happened he would go and give himself up, because nothing would matter any more.  So many of his shipmates had gone to lands of black and yellow people, and had never returned.  They were dead, and some day he also would be dead, and it made no difference.

I really think, Auntie dear, that he had quite forgotten me as he spoke, low, haltingly, in mingled French and English words.  He was just rehearsing to himself something that had been all of his life, because everything that had happened before, and the struggle for a living afterwards, were of no moment.  Through the poor man’s ignorance, through his wondrous folly, I could discern an immense love that had overpowered him and broken him forever.  He was an exile from his beloved land of Brittany, and would never see its heather and gorse again, or the flaming foxgloves that redden some of its fields.

And all this because of a little child that was the only thing left that had belonged to the woman he had loved so greatly!  He said that perhaps that Virgin on the hills might still be looking far out over the waters, and he knelt before a little crucifix which hung from a nail in the rough boards of the walls.  I heard him repeating, in a low voice, in soft quick words, the prayers his faith led him to hope might be hearkened to by the Lady of Sorrows, as she watched from that little hill on the other side of the great sea.