"Tell my Tom I'm filling in the ruts. He won't find it such hard travelling when he comes back."
Anderson Law often kept old Gavot company—for Tom's sake. Even Mam'selle had forgiven him and, quite secretly, helped the priest in his generous support.
The Longvilles, the Captain at least, had forsaken Pierre. Marcel, poor soul, gave what, and when, she could.
As Law bent to his task at the wood pile, the priest hailed him from the road.
"I go now," he explained as he declined the invitation to enter, "to pray for rain. The forest fires are bad, but until the crops were in I would not pray."
So simply did the curé say this that Law refrained from smiling, but he did say, looking afar to where the heavy smoke-cloud hung above the trees:
"Ah! well, Father, now that the harvest is in, you had better give the Lord a free hand or there will be a sad pay-day on ahead."
"I go to pray," Mantelle rejoined and passed on.
Amused and thoughtful, Law looked after the tall, thin, bent figure. He recalled how the patient old soul taught and encouraged the children, held the older ones—children too, in their simplicity and superstition—to the plain, common paths of life with what success he might; remembered how day or night he travelled near and far to watch with the dying or comfort those from whom death had torn their sacredest and best.
"At such," Law thought, "one cannot scoff."