ogs, announced with a smile of content:

"Marianne is out of jail."

"_Sacristi!_" I exclaimed, "and in mid-winter! It must be cold enough in
that hut of hers by the marsh--poor old girl."

"And not a sou to be earned fishing," added the cure.

"Tell me about this last crime of hers," I asked.

Monsieur le Cure's face grew serious, then again the smile of content
spread to the corners of his firm mouth.

"Oh! Nothing very gruesome," he confessed, then after a moment's silence
he continued slowly: "Her children needed shoes and warm things for the
winter. Marianne stole sixty _metres_ of nets from the fishing crew at
'The Three Wolves'--she is hopeless, my friend." With a vibrant gesture
he straightened up in his chair and flashed his keen eyes to mine. "For
ten years I have tried to reform her," he declared. "Bah!"--and he
tossed the stump of his cigarette into the blaze.

"You nursed her once through the smallpox," said I, "when no one dared
go near her. The mayor told me so. I should think _that_ would have long
ago persuaded her to do something for you in return."

"We go where we are needed," he replied simply. "She will promise me
nothing. One might as well try to make a faithful parishioner of a gipsy
as to change Marianne for the better." He brought his fist down sharply
on the broad arm of his chair. "I tell you," he went on tensely,
"Marianne is a woman of no morals and no religion--a woman who allows no
one to dictate to her save a gendarme with a warrant of arrest. Hardly
a winter passes but she goes to jail. She is a confirmed thief, a bad
subject," he went on vibrantly. "She can drink as no three sailors can
drink--and yet you know as well as I do," he added, lowering his voice,
"that there is not a mother in Pont du Sable who is as good to her
children as Marianne."

"They are a brave little brood," I replied. "I have heard that the
eldest boy and girl Marianne adopted, yet they resemble their mother,
with their fair curly hair and blue eyes, as much as do the youngest
boys and the little girl."

"Marianne has had many lovers," returned the cure gravely. "There is not
one of that brood of hers that has yet been baptized." An expression of
pain crossed his face. "I have tried hard; Marianne is impossible."

"Yet you admit she has her qualities."

"Yes, good qualities," he confessed, filling a fresh cigarette paper
full of tobacco. "Good qualities," he reiterated. "She has brought up
her childr