oked on, very attentive. Then, in the midst
of this unaccustomed silence, rose the slender pipe of Simon:

"Say, Philip, the Michaude boy told me just now that you were not
altogether my papa."

"Why not?" asked the blacksmith,

The child replied with all innocence:

"Because you are not my mamma's husband."

No one laughed. Philip remained standing, leaning his forehead upon the
back of his great hands, which supported the handle of his hammer
standing upright upon the anvil. He mused. His four companions watched
him, and Simon, a tiny mite among these giants, anxiously waited.
Suddenly, one of the smiths, answering to the sentiment of all, said to
Philip:

"La Blanchotte is a good, honest girl, and upright and steady in spite of
her misfortune, and would make a worthy wife for an honest man."

"That is true," remarked the three others.

The smith continued:

"Is it the girl's fault if she went wrong? She had been promised
marriage; and I know more than one who is much respected to-day, and who
sinned every bit as much."

"That is true," responded the three men in chorus.

He resumed:

"How hard she has toiled, poor thing, to bring up her child all alone,
and how she has wept all these years she has never gone out except to
church, God only knows."

"This is also true," said the others.

Then nothing was heard but the bellows which fanned the fire of the
furnace. Philip hastily bent himself down to Simon:

"Go and tell your mother that I am coming to speak to her this evening."
Then he pushed the child out by the shoulders. He returned to his work,
and with a single blow the five hammers again fell upon their anvils.
Thus they wrought the iron until nightfall, strong, powerful, happy, like
contented hammers. But just as the great bell of a cathedral resounds
upon feast days above the jingling of the other bells, so Philip's
hammer, sounding above the rest, clanged second after second with a
deafening uproar. And he stood amid the flying sparks plying his trade
vigorously.

The sky was full of stars as he knocked at La Blanchotte's door. He had
on his Sunday blouse, a clean shirt, and his beard was trimmed. The young
woman showed herself upon the threshold, and said in a grieved tone:

"It is ill to come thus when night has fallen, Mr. Philip."

He wished to answer, but stammered and stood confused before her.

She resumed:

"You understand, do you not, that it will not do for me to be talked