Guenn Author:Blanche Willis Howard Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV HE cure" of the Lanmons stood at the half-open door of Rodellec's cottage and knocked. Hearing no sound but the rustling of the foliage on the dwar... more »fed oaks, a lizard darting along the sunny wall, and the long plaintive note of a curlew far up in the hazy sky, he bent his head and entered the dark little house. It was as Guenn had left it hours before. The little pot of porridge stood untouched on the cold hearth, by a heap of ashes, and the man still slept in his tomb-like bed. The cure sat down on the bench by the table, leaned his head on his hand, looked scrutinizingly about the room, and sighed heavily. Thymert had the face of a man of the people, ? dark, strongly moulded, weather- beaten, indicative of a nature more used to impulsive action, than to the contemplation of intellectual subtleties. With the dignity of his priestly office he combined the carelessness of the sailor; while the consciousness of power, which his unlimited authority in his island-realm lent to his manner, was accompanied by a simplicity as perceptible in the strong man of twentyfive, as long before in the round-faced peasant-boy of eight, whom the good priest of Beuzec employed as acolyte,?teaching him with much pains his genuflections, patient with his blunders and rude ministrations in the ancient little church, and finally leading him to study for the priesthood. Ordered to the Lanniona, his first living, he had remained there because his superiors discreetly concluded it would be impossible to supply his place. An ambitious man could not have contented himself with this humble post, ? cure- of a hundred souls: poor fishermen, whose rude houses were scattered here and there on nine bleak islands ; who knew birth and life and death, sickness and health, with the roar of the mighty At...« less