into the wall. "As I was telling these ladies"--he resumed here his
boot work, clamping the last between his great knees--"as I was saying,
we have not been fortunate in cures, we of our parish. There are cures
and cures, as there are fagots and fagots--and ours is a bad lot. We've
had nothing but trouble since he came to rule over us. We get poorer
day by day, and he richer. There he is now, feeding his hens and his
doves--look, over there--with the ladies of his household gathered
about him--his mother, his aunt, and his niece--a perfect harem. Oh, he
keeps them all fat and sleek, like himself! Bah!"

The grunt of disgust the cobbler gave filled the room like a
thunder-clap. He was peering over his last, across the open counter, at
a little house adjoining the church green, with a great hatred in his
face. From one of the windows of the house there was leaning forth a
group of three heads; there was the tonsured head of a priest, round,
pink-tinted, and the figures of two women, one youthful, with a long,
sad-featured face, and the other ruddy and vigorous in outline. They
were watching the priest as he scattered corn to the hens and geese in
the garden below the window.

The cobbler was still eying them fiercely, as he continued to give vent
to his disgust.

"_Mechant homme--lui_," he here whipped his thread, venomously, through
the leather he was sewing. "Figure to yourselves, mesdames, that
besides being wicked, our cure is a very shrewd man; it is not for the
pure good of the parish he works, not he."

"Not he," the echo repeated, coming forth again from the wall. This
time the whisper passed unnoticed; her master's hatred of the cure was