is romances, and his chansons, and his fine, smooth words, and
missed them. Perhaps she was too silent and dull sometimes, when she
walked with Raoul; and sometimes she laughed too loud when he talked,
more at him than with him. Perhaps those St. Raymond fellows still
remembered the way his head stuck out of that cursed snow-drift, and
joked about it, and said how clever and quick the little Prosper was.
Perhaps--ah, MAUDIT! a thousand times perhaps! And only one way to
settle them, the old way, the sure way, and all the better now because
'Toinette must be on his side. She must understand for sure that the
bravest man in the parish had chosen her.

That was the summer of the building of the grand stone tower of the
church. The men of Abbeville did it themselves, with their own hands,
for the glory of God. They were keen about that, and the cure was the
keenest of them all. No sharing of that glory with workmen from Quebec,
if you please! Abbeville was only forty years old, but they already
understood the glory of God quite as well there as at Quebec, without
doubt. They could build their own tower, perfectly, and they would.
Besides, it would cost less.

Vaillantcoeur was the chief carpenter. He attended to the affair of
beams and timbers. Leclere was the chief mason. He directed the affair
of dressing the stones and laying them. That required a very careful
head, you understand, for the tower must be straight. In the floor
a little crookedness did not matter; but in the wall--that might be
serious. People have been killed by a falling tower. Of course, if
they were going into church, they would be sure of heaven. But then
think--what a disgrace for Abbeville!

Every one was glad that Leclere bossed the raising of the tower. They
admitted that he might not be brave, but he was assuredly careful.
Vaillantcoeur alone grumbled, and said the work went too slowly, and
even swore that the sockets for the beams were too shallow, or else too
deep, it made no difference which. That BETE Prosper made trouble always
by his poor work. But the friction never came to a blaze; for the cure
was pottering about the tower every day and all day long, and a few
words from him would make a quarrel go off in smoke.

"Softly, my boys!" he would say; "work smooth and you work fast. The
logs in the river run well when they run all the same way. But when two
logs cross each other, on the same rock--psst! a jam! The whole drive is
hung up! D