ourself, Louis? You call yourself a
good Catholic--bah!--when you've got a heretic living with you."

"What's that to you?" growled the tailor, and reached out a nervous hand
towards the iron. "I served at the altar before you were born. Sacre!
I'll make your grave-clothes yet, and be a good Catholic when you're in
the churchyard. Be off with you. Ach," he sharply added, when Filion did
not move, "I'll cut your hair for you!" He scrambled off the bench with
his shears.

Filion Lacasse disappeared with his friends, and the old man settled
back on his bench.

Charley, looking up quietly from his work, said "Thank you, Monsieur."

He did not notice what an evil look was in Louis Trudel's face as it
turned towards him, but Rosalie Evanturel, standing outside, saw it; and
she stole back to the post-office ill at ease and wondering.

All that day she watched the tailor's shop, and even when the door was
shut in the evening, her eyes were fastened on the windows.

CHAPTER XIX. THE SIGN FROM HEAVEN

The agitation and curiosity possessing Rosalie all day held her in the
evening when the wooden shutters of the tailor's shop were closed and
only a flickering light showed through the cracks. She was restless and
uneasy during supper, and gave more than one unmeaning response to
the remarks of her crippled father, who, drawn up for supper in his
wheel-chair, was more than usually inclined to gossip.

Damase Evanturel's mind was stirred concerning the loss of the iron
cross; the threat made by Filion Lacasse and his companions troubled
him. The one person beside the Cure, Jo Portugais, and Louis Trudel, to
whom M'sieu' talked much, was the postmaster, who sometimes met him of
an evening as he was taking the air. More than once he had walked behind
the wheel-chair and pushed it some distance, making the little crippled
man gossip of village matters.

As the two sat at supper the postmaster was inclined to take a serious
view of M'sieu's position. He railed at Filion Lacasse; he called the
suspicious habitants clodhoppers, who didn't know any better--which
was a tribute to his own superior birth; and at last, carried away by a
feverish curiosity, he suggested that Rosalie should go and look through
the cracks in the shutters of the tailor-shop and find out what was
going on within. This was indignantly rejected by Rosalie, but the more
she thought, the more uneasy she became. She ceased to reply to her
father's remarks,