een or so, whose big freckled, good face was now bent over the
cradle where _la petite_ Seraphine lay smiling in her sleep, with soft
little fingers clutched round his rough one.

"For sure," said Delima, observing the baby's smile, "the good angels
are very near. I wonder what they are telling her?"

"Something about her father, of course; for so I have always heard it
is when the infants smile in sleep," answered the old woman.

Little Baptiste rose impatiently and went into the sleeping-room.
Often the simplicity and sentimentality of his mother and grandmother
gave him strange pangs at heart; they seemed to be the children, while
he felt very old. They were always looking for wonderful things to
happen, and expecting the saints and _le bon Dieu_ to help the family
out of difficulties that little Baptiste saw no way of overcoming
without the work which was then so hard to get. His mother's remark
about the angels talking to little Seraphine pained him so much that
he would have cried had he not felt compelled to be very much of a man
during his father's absence.

If he had been asked to name the spirit hovering about, he would have
mentioned a very wicked one as personified in John Conolly, the
village storekeeper, the vampire of the little hamlet a quarter of a
mile distant. Conolly owned the tavern too, and a sawmill up river,
and altogether was a very rich, powerful, and dreadful person in
little Baptiste's view. Worst of all, he practically owned the cabin
and lot of the Larocques, for he had made big Baptiste give him a bill
of sale of the place as security for groceries to be advanced to the
family while its head was away in the shanty; and that afternoon
Conolly had said to little Baptiste that the credit had been
exhausted, and more.

"No; you can't get any pork," said the storekeeper. "Don't your mother
know that, after me sending her away when she wanted corn-meal
yesterday? Tell her she don't get another cent's worth here."

"For why not? My fader always he pay," said the indignant boy, trying
to talk English.

"Yes, indeed! Well, he ain't paid this time. How do I know what's
happened to him, as he ain't back from the shanty? Tell you what: I'm
going to turn you all out if your mother don't pay rent in advance for
the shanty to-morrow,--four dollars a month."

"What you talkin' so for? We doan' goin pay no rent for our own
house!"

"You doan' goin' to own no house," answered Conolly, mimicking t