very first persecutions the name of Father Paul was a rallying-cry of the hunted peasantry; he was their great encouragement under oppression, their example in danger, their last and only consoler in the hour of death.  Wherever havoc and ruin raged most fiercely, wherever the pursuit was hottest and the slaughter most cruel, there the intrepid priest was sure to be seen pursuing his sacred duties in defiance of every peril.  His hair-breadth escapes from death; his extraordinary re-appearances in parts of the country where no one ever expected to see him again, were regarded by the poorer classes with superstitious awe.  Wherever Father Paul appeared, with his black dress, his calm face, and the ivory crucifix which he always carried in his hand, the people reverenced him as more than mortal; and grew at last to believe, that, single-handed, he would successfully defend his religion against the armies of the Republic.  But their simple confidence in his powers of resistance was soon destined to be shaken.  Fresh re-enforcements arrived in Brittany, and overran the whole province from one end to the other.  One morning, after celebrating service in a dismantled church, and after narrowly escaping with his life from those who pursued him, the priest disappeared.  Secret inquiries were made after him in all directions; but he was heard of no more.

Many weary days had passed, and the dispirited peasantry had already mourned him as dead, when some fishermen on the northern coast observed a ship of light burden in the offing, making signals to the shore.  They put off to her in their boats; and on reaching the deck saw standing before them the well-remembered figure of Father Paul.

The priest had returned to his congregations, and had founded the new altar that they were to worship at on the deck of the ship!  Razed from the face of the earth, their church had not been destroyed—­for Father Paul and the priests who acted with him had given that church a refuge on the sea.  Henceforth, their children could still be baptized, their sons and daughters could still be married, the burial of their dead could still be solemnized, under the sanction of the old religion for which, not vainly, they had suffered so patiently and so long.

Throughout the remaining time of trouble the services were uninterrupted on board the ship.  A code of signals was established by which those on shore were always enabled to direct their brethren at sea toward such parts of the coast as happened to be uninfested by the enemies of their worship.  On the morning of Gabriel’s visit to the farmhouse these signals had shaped the course of the ship toward the extremity of the peninsula of Quiberon.  The people of the district were all prepared to expect the appearance of the vessel some time in the evening, and had their boats ready at a moment’s notice to put off, and attend the service.  At the conclusion of this service Pere Bonan had arranged that the marriage of his daughter and Gabriel was to take place.