them, whom they obeyed as well as they could, for
they were but frail humanity, after all--crude, simple folk, touched
with imagination.

"Luc Pomfrette, why have you done this? What provocation had you?"

The Cure's voice was stern and cold, his usually gentle face had become
severe, his soft eyes were piercing and determined.

The foot of the man still beat the ground angrily, and the little bell
kept tinkling. He was gasping with passion, and he did not answer yet.

"Luc Pomfrette, what have you to say?" asked the Cure again. He motioned
back Lacasse, the constable of the parish, who had suddenly appeared
with a rusty gun and a more rusty pair of handcuffs.

Still the voyageur did not answer.

The Cure glanced at Lajeunesse the blacksmith, who stood near.

"There was no cause--no," sagely shaking his head said Lajeunesse, "Here
stand we at the door of the Louis Quinze in very good humour. Up come
the voyageurs, all laughing, and ahead of them is Luc Pomfrette, with
the little bell at his knee. Luc, he laugh the same as the rest, and
they stand in the door, and the garcon bring out the brandy--just a
little, but just enough too. I am talking to Henri Beauvin. I am telling
him Junie Gauloir have run away with Dicey the Protestant, when all very
quick Luc push between me and Henri, jump into the street, and speak
like that!"

Lajeunesse looked around, as if for corroboration; Henri and others
nodded, and some one said:

"That's true; that's true. There was no cause."

"Maybe it was the drink," said a little hunchbacked man, pushing his
way in beside the Cure. "It must have been the drink; there was nothing
else--no."

The speaker was Parpon the dwarf, the oddest, in some ways the most
foolish, in others the wisest man in Pontiac.

"That is no excuse," said the Cure.

"It is the only one he has, eh?" answered Parpon. His eyes were fixed
meaningly on those of Pomfrette.

"It is no excuse," repeated the Cure sternly. "The blasphemy is
horrible, a shame and stigma upon Pontiac for ever." He looked Pomfrette
in the face. "Foul-mouthed and wicked man, it is two years since you
took the Blessed Sacrament. Last Easter day you were in a drunken sleep
while Mass was being said; after the funeral of your own father you were
drunk again. When you went away to the woods you never left a penny for
candles, nor for Masses to be said for your father's soul; yet you sold
his horse and his little house, and spent the mon