shop, the blacksmith, the tinsmith and the grocery shops. Just beyond
the mill, upon the banks of the river, was the most notorious, if not the
most celebrated, house in the settlement. Shangois, the travelling
notary, lived in it--when he was not travelling. When he was, he left it
unlocked, all save one room; and people came and went through the house
as they pleased, eyeing with curiosity the dusty, tattered books upon the
shelves, the empty bottles in the corner, the patchwork of cheap prints,
notices of sales, summonses, accounts, certificates of baptism,
memoranda, receipted bills--though they were few--tacked or stuck to the
wall.

No grown-up person of the village meddled with anything, no matter how
curious; for this consistent, if unspoken, trust displayed by Shangois
appealed to their better instincts. Besides, they, like the children,
had a wholesome fear of the disreputable, shrunken, dishevelled little
notary, with the bead-like eyes, yellow stockings, hooked nose and
palsied left hand. Also the knapsack and black bag he carried under his
arms contained more secrets than most people wished to tempt or challenge
forth. Few cared to anger the little man, whose father and grandfather
had been notaries here before him.

Like others in the settlement, Shangois was the last of his race. He
could put his finger upon the secret history and private lives of nearly
every person in a dozen parishes, but most of all in Bonaventure--for
such this long parish was called. He knew to a hair's breadth the social
value of every human being in the parish. He was too cunning and acute
to be a gossip, but by direct and indirect ways he made every person feel
that the Cure and the Lord might forgive their pasts, but he could never
forget them, nor wished to do so. For Monsieur Duhamel, the old
seigneur, for the drunken Philippe Casimbault, for the Cure, and for the