ly a seat against the wall at the Saturday-night dance,
and mass _a la chapelle_ once in two or three weeks; these, and infant
baptisms. These showed how fast time and life were hurrying along. The
wedding seemed but yesterday, and yet here was little Sosthene, and
tiny Marguerite, and cooing Zosephine the younger--how fast history
repeats itself!

But one day, one Sunday, it repeated itself in a different way.
'Thanase was in gay humor that morning. He kissed his wife, tossed his
children, played on his fiddle that tune they all liked best, and,
while Zosephine looked after him with young zest in her eye, sprang
into the saddle and galloped across the prairie _a la chapelle_ to
pass a jolly forenoon at _chin-chin_ in the village grocery.

Since the war almost every one went armed--not for attack, of course;
for defence. 'Thanase was an exception.

"My fists," he said, in the good old drawling Acadian dialect and with
his accustomed smile,--"my fists will take care of me."

One of the party that made up the game with 'Thanase was the fellow
whom you may remember as having brought that first news of 'Thanase
from camp to Carancro, and whom Zosephine had discredited. The young
husband had never liked him since.

But, as I say, 'Thanase was in high spirits. His jests came thick and
fast, and some were hard and personal, and some were barbed with
truth, and one, at length, ended in the word "deserter." The victim
grew instantly fierce and red, leaped up crying "Liar," and was
knocked backward to the ground by the long-reaching fist of 'Thanase.
He rose again and dashed at his assailant. The rest of the company
hastily made way to right and left, chairs were overturned, over went
the table, the cards were underfoot. Men ran in from outside and from
over the way. The two foes clash together, 'Thanase smites again with
his fist, and the other grapples. They tug and strain--

"Separate them!" cry two or three of the packed crowd in suppressed
earnestness. "Separate them! Bonaventure is coming! And here from the
other side the cure too! Oh, get them apart!" But the half-hearted
interference is shaken off. 'Thanase sees Bonaventure and the cure
enter; mortification smites him; a smothered cry of rage bursts from
his lips; he tries to hurl his antagonist from him; and just as the
two friends reach out to lay hands upon the wrestling mass, it goes
with a great thud to the ground. The crowd recoils and springs back
again; the