ives just measure and honest weight, speaks
truth and harms nobody, is Christian enough for me. A bishop could not
trade more honestly; and the word of the Bourgeois is as reliable as a
king's."

"The Cure may call the Bourgeois what he likes," replied Babet, "but
there is not another Christian in the city if the good Bourgeois be not
one; and next the Church there is not a house in Quebec better known or
better liked by all the habitans, than the Golden Dog; and such bargains
too, as one gets there!"

"Ay, Babet! a good bargain settles many a knotty point with a woman."

"And with a man too, if he is wise enough to let his wife do his
marketing, as you do, Jean! But whom have we here?" Babet set her arms
akimbo and gazed.

A number of hardy fellows came down towards the ferry to seek a passage.

"They are honest habitans of St. Anne," replied Jean. "I know them; they
too are on the King's corvee, and travel free, every man of them! So
I must cry Vive le Roi! and pass them over to the city. It is like a
holiday when one works for nothing!"

Jean stepped nimbly into his boat, followed by the rough country
fellows, who amused themselves by joking at Jean Le Nocher's increasing
trade and the need of putting on an extra boat these stirring times.
Jean put a good face upon it, laughed, and retorted their quips, and
plying his oars, stoutly performed his part in the King's corvee by
safely landing them on the other shore.

Meantime the officer who had lately crossed the ferry rode rapidly up
the long, straight highway that led up on the side of the mountain to
a cluster of white cottages and an old church, surmounted by a belfry
whose sweet bells were ringing melodiously in the fresh air of the
morning.

The sun was pouring a flood of golden light over the landscape. The
still glittering dewdrops hung upon the trees, shrubs, and long points
of grass by the wayside. All were dressed with jewels to greet the
rising king of day.

The wide, open fields of meadow, and corn-fields, ripening for harvest,
stretched far away, unbroken by hedge or fence. Slight ditches or banks
of turf, covered with nests of violets, ferns, and wild flowers of every
hue, separated contiguous fields. No other division seemed necessary in
the mutual good neighborhood that prevailed among the colonists, whose
fashion of agriculture had been brought, with many hardy virtues, from
the old plains of Normandy.

White-walled, red-roofed cottages,