Page:Stories by Foreign Authors (French II).djvu/110

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THE VIRGIN'S GOD-CHILD.
105

rather, I should say, no saint at all, but a regular limb of Satan, with whose sins and crimes one could fill up the whole way between Camaret and Crozon. For twenty years he lit false lights from Loquirnk to Trevignon, and has had more to do with shipwrecks upon this coast than the southwest wind itself."

I asked whether this creditable occupation enriched its pursuer.

"One cannot exactly tell," rejoined Guiller; "he lives in his den yonder as poor as a Klasker-bara—a bread-seeker, as we call beggars about here. But the question is, whether his miserliness be not greater than all his other vices. Many believe that he has tons of buried gold. And besides, he gains something every now and then as a flayer and rope-maker; and on that account, too, the people look askance at him as anything but a Christian, and aver that he is a Kakous."

After an hour's good walk, as we followed a bend of the down, we came in sight of Judock's hut. It was built into a small and narrow fissure in the rocks, and stood close to the shore. The natural walls thus afforded, the moss-grown flagstones that formed its roof, and whose broad crevices were stuffed up with sea-tang, held together by strong fir-branches, rendered it difficult to distinguish the dwelling from the rocks around, and the sea-produce strewn upon them.