simply; "one has not much chance when
one is an orphan. Listen, Jean."

"What?"

"Listen--is it true that thou dost love me?"

"Surely," he replied with an easy laugh.

"Listen," she repeated timidly; "if thou shouldst get steady work--I
should be content ... to be..." But her voice became inaudible.

"_Allons!_... what?" he demanded irritably.

"To ... to be married," she whispered.

He started. "_Eh ben! en voila_ an idea!" he exclaimed.

"Forgive me, Jean, I have always had that idea----" She dried her eyes
on the back of her hand and tried hard to smile. "It is foolish, eh? The
marriage costs so dear ... but if thou shouldst get steady work..."

"_Eh ben!_" he answered slowly with his Normand shrewdness, "I don't say
no."

"I'll help thee, Jean; I can work hard when I am free. One wins forty
sous a day by washing, and then there is the harvest."

There was a certain stubborn conviction in her words which worried him.

"_Eh ben!_" he said at length, "we might get married--that's so."

She caught her breath.

"Swear it, Jean, that thou wilt marry me, swear it upon Sainte Marie."

"_Eh voila_, it's done. _Oui_, by Sainte Marie!"

She threw her arms about him, crushing him against her breast.

"_Dieu!_ but thou art strong," he whispered.

"Did I hurt thee?"

"No--thou art content now?"

"Yes--I am content," she sobbed, "I am content, I am content."

He had slipped to the ground beside her. She drew his head back in her
lap, her hand pressed hard against his forehead.

"_Dieu!_ but I am content," she breathed in his ear.

He felt her warm tears dropping fast upon his cheek.

* * * * *

All night she lay in the straw wide awake, flushed, in a sort of fever.
At daylight she drove her cows back to the marsh without having barely
touched her soup.

Far across the bay glistened the roof of a barn under construction. An
object the size of a beetle was crawling over the new boards.

It was Jean.

"I'm a fool," he thought, as he drove in a nail. Then he fell to
thinking of a girl in his own village whose father was as rich as the
Pere Bourron.

"_Sacre Diable!_" he laughed at length, "if every one got married who
had sworn by Sainte Marie, Monsieur le Cure would do a good business."

* * * * *

A month later Pere Bourron sold out a cartful of calves at the market at
Bonville. It was late at night when he closed his last bargain