ally only.

The late afternoon of the day in which Rosalie decided to nail the cross
on the church door again, Paulette arrived to ask for letters at the
moment that the office wicket was closed, and Rosalie had answered that
it was after office hours, and had almost closed the door in her face.
As she turned away Jo Portugais came out of the tailor-shop opposite.
He saw Paulette, and stood still an instant. She did the same. A strange
look passed across the face of each, then they turned and went in
opposite directions.

Never in her life had time gone so slowly with Rosalie. She watched
the clock. A dozen times she went to the front door and looked out. She
tried to read--it was no use; she tried to spin-her fingers trembled;
she sorted the letters in the office again, and rearranged every letter
and parcel and paper in its little pigeonhole--then did it all over
again. She took out again the letter Paulette had dropped in the
letter-box; it was addressed in the name of the man at Montreal. She
looked at it in a kind of awe, as she had ever done the letters of this
woman who was without the pale. They had a sense of mystery, an air of
forbidden imagination.

She put the letter back, went to the door again, and looked out. It was
now time to go. Drawing a hood over her head, she stepped out into the
night. There was a little frost, though spring was well forward, and the
smell of the rich earth and the budding trees was sweet to the sense.
The moon had just set, but the stars were shining, and here and there
patches of snow on the hillside and in the fields added to the light.
Yet it was not bright enough to see far, and as Rosalie moved down the
street she did not notice a figure at a little distance behind, walking
on the new-springing grass by the roadside. All was quiet at the tavern;
there was no light in the Notary's house--as a rule, he sat up late,
reading; and even the fiddle of Maximilian Cour, the baker, was silent.
The Cure's windows were dark, and the church with its white tin spire
stood up sentinel-like above the village.

Rosalie had the fateful cross in her hand as she softly opened the
gate of the churchyard and approached the great oak doors. Taking a
screw-driver and some screws from her pocket, she felt with a finger
for the old screw-holes in the door. Then she began her work, looking
fearfully round once or twice at first. Presently, however, because the
screws were larger than the old ones,