Cape Breton Tales

by Harry James Smith

"'I have a fear, me, that I shall not be long for this world, my mother. Last week I saw a little blue fire on the barrens one night, and again one night I heard hoofs going claquin-claquant down there on the beach, much like the horse without head. And that is why I am getting my provisions so early, and making everything ready for the winter. See,' he said, 'here is the thirteen dollars I have saved this year. I am going to buy things with it in Port l'Évêque.'

"Now you may depend that when he showed them all that money, their eyes stuck out like the eyes of crabs; but of course they did not say anything only some words of the most comforting. And finally he said, getting ready to go:

"'If anything should happen,' he said, 'will you promise me to be good to that poor Noémi and those two poor little innocent lambs?'—and those serpents said, certainly, they would do all that was possible; and with that Benoît gets into his cart, and starts down the hill; and suddenly the horse takes a fright of something and runs away, and the cart tips over, and Benoît is thrown out; and when his brothers get to him he is quite quite dead—and that shows what it means to see one of those little blue fires at night in the woods.

"Well, you can believe that Noémi was not very happy when they brought back that poor Benoît to Pig Cove. Her eyes were like two brooks, and for a long time she could not say anything, and then finally, summoning a little voice of courage:

"'I am glad of one thing,' she said, 'which is that he had saved all that money, for without it I would never know how to live through the winter.'

"And one of those brothers said, with an innocent voice of a dove, 'what money then?'—and she said, 'He had it with him.' And so they look for it; but no, there is not any.

"'You must have deceived yourself,' said that brother. 'I am sure he would have spoken of it if he had had any money with him; but he said never a word of such a thing.'

"Now was not that a wicked lie for him to tell? It is hard to understand how abominable can be some of those men! But you may be sure they will be punished for it in the end; and that is what happened to those four serpents, the Bucherons.

"For listen. The old mother had taken the money and had put it inside a sort of covered bowl, like a sugar bowl, but there was no sugar in it; and then she had set this bowl away on a shelf in the cupboard where they kept the dishes and such things; and the Bucherons thought it would be safe until the time when they had something to spend it for in Port l'Évêque; and they were telling themselves how no one would ever know what they had done; and they were glad that the promise they had made to Benoît had not been heard by anyone but themselves. And so that poor Noémi was left all alone without man or money; but sometimes the neighbors would give her a little food; but for all that those two lambs were often hungry, and their mother too, when it came bedtime.

"But do you think the Bucherons cared—those four hearts of stone? They would not even give her so much as a crust of dry, mouldy bread; and Noémi was too proud to go and beg; and beside something seemed to tell her that there had been a wickedness somewhere, and that the Bucherons perhaps knew more than they had told her about that money. So she waited to see if anything would happen.