They waited for evening at the farmhouse.  A little before sunset the ship was signaled as in sight; and then Pere Bonan and his wife, followed by Gabriel and Perrine, set forth over the heath to the beach.  With the solitary exception of Francois Sarzeau, the whole population of the neighborhood was already assembled there, Gabriel’s brother and sisters being among the number.

It was the calmest evening that had been known for months.  There was not a cloud in the lustrous sky—­not a ripple on the still surface of the sea.  The smallest children were suffered by their mothers to stray down on the beach as they pleased; for the waves of the great ocean slept as tenderly and noiselessly on their sandy bed as if they had been changed into the waters of an inland lake.  Slow, almost imperceptible, was the approach of the ship—­there was hardly a breath of wind to carry her on—­she was just drifting gently with the landward set of the tide at that hour, while her sails hung idly against the masts.  Long after the sun had gone down, the congregation still waited and watched on the beach.  The moon and stars were arrayed in their glory of the night before the ship dropped anchor.  Then the muffled tolling of a bell came solemnly across the quiet waters; and then, from every creek along the shore, as far as the eye could reach, the black forms of the fishermen’s boats shot out swift and stealthy into the shining sea.

By the time the boats had arrived alongside of the ship, the lamp had been kindled before the altar, and its flame was gleaming red and dull in the radiant moonlight.  Two of the priests on board were clothed in their robes of office, and were waiting in their appointed places to begin the service.  But there was a third, dressed only in the ordinary attire of his calling, who mingled with the congregation, and spoke a few words to each of the persons composing it, as, one by one, they mounted the sides of the ship.  Those who had never seen him before knew by the famous ivory crucifix in his hand that the priest who received them was Father Paul.  Gabriel looked at this man, whom he now beheld for the first time, with a mixture of astonishment and awe; for he saw that the renowned chief of the Christians of Brittany was, to all appearance, but little older than himself.

The expression on the pale, calm face of the priest was so gentle and kind, that children just able to walk tottered up to him, and held familiarly by the skirts of his black gown, whenever his clear blue eyes rested on theirs, while he beckoned them to his side.  No one would ever have guessed from the countenance of Father Paul what deadly perils he had confronted, but for the scar of a saber-wound, as yet hardly healed, which ran across his forehead.  That wound had been dealt while he was kneeling before the altar in the last church in Brittany which had escaped spoliation.  He would have died where he knelt, but for the peasants who were praying with him, and who, unarmed as they were, threw themselves like tigers on the soldiery, and at awful sacrifice of their own lives saved the life of their priest.  There was not a man now on board the ship who would have hesitated, had the occasion called for it again, to have rescued him in the same way.