"A dollar!"

"Don't play the fool, Jean. Your wife will never let you pay a
dollar for such a pig as that."

Jean stood his ground:--"A dollar, I won't go back on it."

Hormidas Berube with a disgusted look on his face awaited another
bid, but only got jokes and laughter.

Meantime the women in their turn had begun to leave the church.
Young or old, pretty or ugly, nearly all were well clad in fur
cloaks, or in coats of heavy cloth; for, honouring the Sunday mass,
sole festival of their lives, they had doffed coarse blouses and
homespun petticoats, and a stranger might well have stood amazed to
find them habited almost with elegance in this remote spot; still
French to their finger-tips in the midst of the vast lonely forest
and the snow, and as tastefully dressed, these peasant women, as
most of the middle-class folk in provincial France.

Cleophas Pesant waited for Louisa Tremblay who was alone, and they
went off together along the wooden sidewalk in the direction of the
house. Others were satisfied to exchange jocular remarks with the
young girls as they passed, in the easy and familiar fashion of the
country,-natural enough too where the children have grown up
together from infancy.

Pite Gaudreau, looking toward the door of the church, remarked:--
"Maria Chapdelaine is back from her visit to St. Prime, and there is
her father come to fetch her." Many in the village scarcely knew the