lked over the affairs of the
Fabrique--the value of tithes for the year, the abundance of Easter
eggs, and the weight of the first salmon of the season, which was always
presented to the Cure with the first-fruits of the field, to ensure the
blessing of plenty for the rest of the year.

The Reverend Cure frequently mingled in these discussions. Seated in
his accustomed armchair, under the shade of the maple in summer, and in
winter by the warm fireside, he defended, ex cathedra, the rights of
the Church, and good-humoredly decided all controversies. He found his
parishioners more amenable to good advice over a mug of Norman cider and
a pipe of native tobacco, under the sign of the Crown of France, than
when he lectured them in his best and most learned style from the
pulpit.

This morning, however, all was very quiet round the old inn. The birds
were singing, and the bees humming in the pleasant sunshine. The house
looked clean and tidy, and no one was to be seen except three persons
bending over a table, with their heads close together, deeply absorbed
in whatever business they were engaged in. Two of these persons were
Dame Bedard, the sharp landlady of the Crown of France, and her no less
sharp and pretty daughter, Zoe. The third person of the trio was an old,
alert-looking little man, writing at the table as if for very life.
He wore a tattered black robe, shortened at the knees to facilitate
walking, a frizzled wig, looking as if it had been dressed with a
currycomb, a pair of black breeches, well-patched with various colors;
and gamaches of brown leather, such as the habitans wore, completed his
odd attire, and formed the professional costume of Master Pothier
dit Robin, the travelling notary, one of that not unuseful order of
itinerants of the law which flourished under the old regime in New
France.

Upon the table near him stood a black bottle, an empty trencher, and a
thick scatter of crumbs, showing that the old notary had despatched a
hearty breakfast before commencing his present work of the pen.

A hairy knapsack lay open upon the table near his elbow, disclosing some
bundles of dirty papers tied up with red tape, a tattered volume or two
of the "Coutume de Paris," and little more than the covers of an odd
tome of Pothier, his great namesake and prime authority in the law. Some
linen, dirty and ragged as his law papers, was crammed into his knapsack
with them. But that was neither here nor there in the