the festal dish, he started up, crying
out that the devil was tempting him, and that he and his house should
be lost through the wiles of the flesh; and so caught up the dish and
flung it on the fire, and bade his trembling wife bring him a crust of
dry bread. Poor Marie! she was too frightened to cry, though all her
woman's soul was in arms at the destruction of good food, to say
nothing of the wound to her house-wifely pride. She sat silent, eating
nothing, only making believe, when her husband looked her way, to
crumble a bit of bread. And when that wretched meal was over, Jacques
called her to his side, and took out the great black Bible, and read
three chapters of denunciation from Jeremiah, that made Marie's blood
chill in her veins, and sent her shivering to her bed. The next day he
would eat nothing but Indian meal porridge, and the next; and it was a
week before Marie ventured to try any more experiments in cookery.

Marie had a great dread of the black Bible. She was sure it was a
different Bible from the one which Mere Jeanne used to read at home,
for that was full of lovely things, while this was terrible. Sometimes
Jacques would call her to him and question her, and that was really too
frightful for anything. Perhaps he had been reading aloud, as he was
fond of doing in the evenings, some denunciatory passage from the
psalms or the prophets. "Mary," he would say, turning to her, as she
sat with her knitting in the corner, "what do you think of that
passage?"

"I think him horreebl'," Marie would answer. "Why do you read of such
things, Jacques! Why you not have the good Bible, as we have him in
France, why?"

"There is but one Bible, Mary, but one in the world; and it is all good
and beautiful, only our sinful eyes cannot always see the glory of it."

"Ah, but no!" Marie would persist, shaking her head gravely. "Mere
Jeanne's Bible was all ozer, so I tell you. Not black and horreebl',
no! but red, all red, wiz gold on him, and in his side pictures, all
bright and preetty, and good words, good ones, what make the good feel
in my side. Yes, that is the Bible I have liked."

"Mary, I tell you it was no Bible, unless it was this very one. They
bind it in any colour they like, don't you see, child? It isn't the
cover that makes the book. I fear you weren't brought up a Christian,
Mary. It is a terrible thing to think of, my poor little wife. You
must let me teach you; you must talk with El