e isn't a house but has two or three boarders. I've got three,"
said Filion Lacasse. "They come tomorrow."

"We'll have ten at the Manor. But no good will come of it," said the
groom.

"No good! Look at the infidel tailor!" said Madame Dauphin. "He
translated all the writing. He drew all the dresses, and made a hundred
pictures--there they are at the Cure's house."

"He should have played Judas," said the groom malevolently. "That'd be
right for him."

"Perhaps you don't like the Passion Play," said Madame Dauphin
disdainfully.

"We ain't through with it yet," said the death's-head groom.

"It is a pious and holy mission," said Madame Dauphin. "Even that Jo
Portugais worked night and day till he went away to Montreal, and he
always goes to Mass now. He's to take Pontius Pilate when he comes
back. Then look at Virginie Morrissette, that put her brother's eyes out
quarrelling--she's to play Mary Magdalene."

"I could fit the parts better," said the groom.

"Of course. You'd have played St. John," said the saddler--"or, maybe,
Christus himself!"

"I'd have Paulette Dubois play Mary the sinner."

"Magdalene repented, and knelt at the foot of the cross. She was sorry
and sinned no more," said the Notary's wife in querulous reprimand.

"Well, Paulette does all that," said the stolid, dark-visaged groom.

Filion Lacasse's ears pricked up. "How do you know--she hasn't come
back?"

"Hasn't she, though! And with her child too--last night."

"Her child!" Madame Dauphin was scandalised and amazed.

The groom nodded. "And doesn't care who knows it. Seven years old, and
as fine a child as ever was!"

"Narcisse--Narcisse!" called Madame Dauphin to her husband, who was
coming up the street. She hastily repeated the groom's news to him.

The Notary stuck his hand between the buttons of his waistcoat. "Well,
well, my dear Madame," he said consequentially, "it is quite true."

"What do you know about it--whose child is it?" she asked, with curdling
scorn.

"'Sh-'sh!" said the Notary. Then, with an oratorical wave of his free
hand: "The Church opens her arms to all--even to her who sinned much
because she loved much, who, through woful years, searched the world for
her child and found it not--hidden away, as it was, by the duplicity
of sinful man"--and so on through tangled sentences, setting forth in
broken terms Paulette Dubois's life.

"How do you know all about it?" asked the saddler. "I've known it for
years,