little of his French descent or his noble blood. He pronounced his
name Jakes, as all his neighbors did; he lived on his farm, as they
lived on theirs. If it was a better farm, the land in better
condition, the buildings and fences trimmer and better cared for, that
was in the man, not in his circumstances. He was easily leader among
the few men whose scattered dwellings made up the village of Sea
Meadows (commonly pronounced Semedders.) His house did not lie on the
little "street," as that part of the road was called where some
half-dozen houses were clustered together, with their farms spreading
out behind them, and the post-office for the king-pin; yet no important
step would be taken by the villagers without the advice and approval of
Jacques De Arthenay. Briefly, he was a born leader; a masterful man,
with a habit of thinking before he spoke; and when he said a thing must
be done, people were apt to do it. He was now thirty years old,
without kith or kin that any one knew of; living by himself in a good
house, and keeping it clean and decent, almost as a woman might; not
likely ever to change his condition, it was supposed.

This was the man who happened to come into the street on some errand,
that soft summer evening, at the very moment when Marie was feeling
lifted up by the light of joy in the children's faces, and was telling
herself how good it was that she had come this way. Hearing the sound
of the fiddle, De Arthenay stopped for a moment, and his face grew dark
as night. He was a religious man, as sternly so as his Huguenot
ancestor, but wearing his religion with a difference. He knew all
music, except psalm-tunes, to be directly from the devil. Even as to
the psalm-tunes themselves, it seemed to him a dreadful thing that
worship could not be conducted without this compromise with evil, this
snare to catch the ear; and he harboured in the depth of his soul
thoughts about the probable frivolity of David, which he hardly voiced