settle over the far-lying fields, and in the little garden of the dead. There is life here, and where there is life there you will find trouble and passion, doubt and despair, and, whirling in and around these, the stinging swarm of worries and vexations that belong to human experience. Is it not so, Caderet? Is it not so, Desmoulins? Where men and women meet and look at each other, and smile and take hold of hands, there is much to be forgotten and forgiven.
There was Euphrasie Charette. Is it true, then, that you have never heard of her? I wonder at that, for it was a fine piece of gossip she set going about here. The men shrugged their shoulders and lifted their eyebrows, and the women put their heads together over the palings and in the chimney corners. Pouah! to hear the chatter was sickening, and it was kept up until, one Sunday, Père Archambault stood up in his pulpit and looked at the people a long time. Then he hung his head and sighed, saying, "My friends, to-day I shall preach you two sermons. My first sermon is this: What is bolder than innocence?" Then he paused again, turned over the leaves of the Book, read from the
