The Secret Tomb Maurice Leblanc (best love story novels in english .TXT) 📖

the caravan. He was a wretched old man, worn out by poverty, whose rags were only held together by pieces of string. In the middle of his bushy hair and unkempt beard his eyes, however, still had a certain glow, and when Dorothy questioned him about the life he led, he confounded her by saying:

“One mustn’t complain. My father, who was a traveling knife-grinder always said to me: ‘Hyacinth⁠—that’s my name⁠—Hyacinth, one isn’t miserable while one’s brave: Fortune is in the firm heart.’ ”

Dorothy concealed her amazement and said:

“That’s not a weighty legacy. Did he only leave you this secret?”

“Yes,” said the tramp quite simply. “That and a piece of advice: to go on the 12th of July every year, and wait in front of the church of Roche-Périac for somebody who will give me hundreds and thousands. I go there every year. I’ve never received anything but pennies. All the same, it keeps one going, that idea does. I shall be there tomorrow, as I was last year⁠ ⁠… and as I shall be next.”

The old man fell back upon his own thoughts. Dorothy said no more. But an hour later she offered the shelter of the box to the woman and the clubfooted child, whom they had at last overtaken. And questioning this woman, she learnt that she was a factory hand from Paris who was going to the church of Roche-Périac that her child’s foot might be healed.

“In my family,” said the woman, “in my father’s time and my grandfather’s too, one always did the same thing when a child was ill, one took it on the 12th of July into the chapel of Saint Fortunat at Roche-Périac. It’s a certain cure.”

So, by these two other channels, the legend had passed to this woman of the people and this tramp, but a deformed legend, of which there only remained a few shreds of the truth: the church took the place of the château, Saint Fortunat of the fortune. Only the day of the month mattered; there was no question of the year. There was no mention at all of the medal. And each was making a pilgrimage towards the place from which so many families had looked for miraculous aid.

That evening the caravan reached the village, and at once Dorothy obtained information about the Château de la Roche-Périac. The only château of that name that was known was some ruins six miles further on situated on the shore of the ocean on a small peninsula.

“We’ll sleep here,” said Dorothy, “and we’ll start early in the morning.”

They did not start early in the morning. The caravan was drawn into a barn for the night; and soon after midnight Saint-Quentin was awakened by the pungent fumes of smoke and a crackling. He jumped up. The barn was on fire. He shouted and called for help. Some peasants, passing along the high road by a happy chance, ran to his assistance.

It was quite time. They had barely dragged the caravan out of the barn when the roof fell in. Dorothy and her comrades were uninjured. But One-eyed Magpie half roasted, refused firmly to let himself be harnessed; the shafts chafed her burns. It was not till seven o’clock that the caravan tottered off, drawn by a wretched horse they had hired, and followed by One-eyed Magpie. As they crossed the square in front of the church, they saw the woman and her child kneeling at the end of the porch, and the tramp on his quest. For them the adventure would go no further.

There were no further incidents. Except Saint-Quentin on the box, they went to sleep in the caravan, leaning against one another. At half-past nine they stopped. They had come to a cottage dignified with the name of an inn, on the door of which they read “Widow Amoureux. Lodging for man and beast.” A few hundred yards away, at the bottom of a slope which ended in a low cliff, the little peninsula of Périac stretched out into the ocean five promontories which looked like the five fingers of a hand. On their left was the mouth of the Vilaine.

For the children it was the end of the expedition. They made a meal in a dimly lighted room, furnished with a zinc counter, in which coffee was served. Then while Castor and Pollux fed One-eyed Magpie, Dorothy questioned the widow Amoureux, a big, cheerful, talkative countrywoman about the ruins of Roche-Périac.

“Ah, you’re going there too, are you, my dear?” the widow exclaimed.

“I’m not the first then?” said Dorothy.

“Goodness, no. There’s already an old gentleman and his wife. I’ve seen the old gentleman before at this time of year. Once he slept here. He’s one of those who seek.”

“Who seek what?”

“Who can tell? A treasure, according to what they say. The people about here don’t believe in it. But people come from a long way off who hunt in the woods and turn over the stones.”

“It’s allowed then, is it?”

“Why not? The island of Périac⁠—I call it an island because at high tide the road to it is covered⁠—belongs to the monks of the monastery of Sarzeau, a couple of leagues further on. It seems, indeed, that they’re ready to sell the ruins and all the land. But who’d buy them? There’s none of it cultivated; it’s all wild.”

“Is there any other road to it but this?”

“Yes, a stony road which starts at the cliff and runs into the road to Vannes. But I tell you, my dear, it’s a lost land⁠—deserted. I don’t see ten travelers a year⁠—some shepherds, that’s all.”

At last at ten o’clock, the caravan was properly installed, and in spite of the entreaties of Saint-Quentin who would have liked to go with her and to whom she entrusted the children, Dorothy, dressed in her prettiest frock and adorned with her most striking fichu, started on her campaign.

The great day had begun⁠—the day of triumph or disappointment, of darkness or light. Whichever it might be, for a