mmer garments, and sported an American coat with
broad padded shoulders; though on this cold Sunday he had not
ventured to discard his winter cap of black cloth with harelined
ear-laps for the hard felt hat he would have preferred to wear.
Beside him Egide Simard, and others who had come a long road by
sleigh, fastened their long fur coats as they left the church,
drawing them in at the waist with scarlet sashes. The young folk of
the village, very smart in coats with otter collars, gave
deferential greeting to old Nazaire Larouche; a tall man with gray
hair and huge bony shoulders who had in no wise altered for the mass
his everyday garb: short jacket of brown cloth lined with sheepskin,
patched trousers, and thick woollen socks under moose-hide
moccasins.

"Well, Mr. Larouche, do things go pretty well across the water?"

"Not badly, my lads, not so badly."

Everyone drew his pipe from his pocket, and the pig's bladder filled
with tobacco leaves cut by hand, and, after the hour and a half of
restraint, began to smoke with evident satisfaction. The first puffs
brought talk of the weather, the coming spring, the state of the ice
on Lake St. John and the rivers, of their several doings and the
parish gossip; after the manner of men who, living far apart on the
worst of roads, see one another but once a week.

"The lake is solid yet," said Cleophas Pesant, "but the rivers are
no longer safe. The ice went this week beside the sand-bank opposite
the island, where there have been warm spring-holes all winter."
Others began to discuss the chances of the crops, before the ground
was even showing.

"I tell you that we shall have a lean year," asserted one old
fellow, "the frost got in before the last snows fell."

At length the talk slackened and all faced the top step, where
Napoleon Laliberte was making ready, in accord with his weekly
custom, to announce the parish news. He stood there motionless for a
little while, awaiting quiet,--hands deep in the pockets of the
heavy lynx coat, knitting his forehead and half closing his keen
eyes under the fur cap pulled well over his ears; and when silence
fell he began to give the news at the full pitch of his voice, in
the manner of a carter who encourages his horses on a hill.

"The work on the wharf will go forward at once ... I have been sent
money by the Government, and those looking for a job should see me
before vespers. If you want this money to stay in the parish inste