“Twenty-six, he should say, father,” a woman near the priest declared. “For the widow of Jean Ba’ti’ Morin has nine.”
“And why should Pierre count as his own the flock of Jean Ba’ti’ Morin’s widow?”
“Because he is to marry her, father, when Antonio Brunette marries his oldest girl.”
“If I come not oftener,” remarked the priest, “you will all be changed about and newly related to each other so that I shall not know how to name ye. I will read the service for the dead over your first wife, Pierre, before I marry you to your second. It is indeed better to be dwelling in love than in discord. Have you had any disagreements?”
“No, father; but Jean Ba’ti’s oldest boy has taken to the woods and is off among the Indians, leaving his mother to farm alone with only six little lads to help her.”
“Another coureur de bois,” said the priest in displeasure.
“Therefore, father,” opportunely put in Jean Ba’ti’s widow, “I having no man at all, and Pierre having no woman at all, we thought to wed.”
“Think now of your sins,” said Father de Casson, “from oldest to youngest. After penance and absolution and examination in the faith ye shall have mass.”
The solemn performance of these religious duties began and proceeded until dusk obliterated all faces in the dimly lighted cabin. Stump roots were piled up in the fire-place, and Pierre’s daughter, between her prayers, put on the evening meal to cook.
If a child tittered at going under the confessional tent, its mother gave it a rear prod with admonishing hand. In that humble darkness Father de Casson’s ear received the whispers of all these plodding souls, and his tongue checked their evil and nourished their good. The cabin became a chapel full of kneeling figures telling beads.