"Yes, monsieur; but I knew well what you wanted with me, and I was finishing the doors for Gros-Léon's new house;" saying which, he drew back, and indicated by a motion and look that some one was present who had a prior claim upon Père Antoine's attention.-- "Ah, Lalie!" the priest exclaimed, when he had mounted to the porch, and saw her there behind the vines. "Have you been waiting here since you confessed? Surely an hour ago!" "Yes, monsieur." "You should rather have made some visits in the village, child." "I am not acquainted with any one in the village," she returned. The priest, as he spoke, had drawn a chair, and seated himself beside her, with his hands comfortably clasping his knees. He wanted to know how things were out on the bayou. "And how is the grandmother?" he asked. "As cross and crabbed as ever? And with that"--he added reflectively--"good for ten years yet! I said only yesterday to Butrand--you know Butrand, he works on Le Blôt's Bon-Dieu place--'And that Madame Zidore: how is it with her, Butrand? I believe God has forgotten her here on earth.' 'It is n't that, your reverence,' said Butrand, 'but it's neither God nor the Devil that wants her!'" And Père Antoine laughed with a jovial frankness that took all sting of ill-nature from his very pointed remarks. Lalie did not reply when he spoke of her grandmother; she only pressed her lips firmly together, and picked nervously at the red bandana. "I have come to ask, Monsieur Antoine," she began, lower than she needed to speak--for Azenor had withdrawn at once to the far end of the porch--"to ask if you will give me a little scrap of paper--a piece of writing for Monsieur Chartrand at the store over there. I want new shoes and stockings for Easter, and I have brought eggs to trade for them. He says he is willing, yes, if he was sure I would bring more every week till the shoes are paid for." With good-natured indifference, Père Antoine wrote the order that the girl desired. He was too familiar with distress to feel keenly for a girl who was able to buy Easter shoes and pay for them with eggs. She went immediately away then, after shaking hands with the priest, and sending a quick glance of her pathetic eyes towards Azenor, who had turned when he heard her rise, and nodded when he caught the look. Through the vines he watched her cross the village street. "How is it that you do not know Lalie, Azenor? You surely must have seen her pass your house often. It lies on her way to the Bon-Dieu." "No, I don't know her; I have never seen her,", the young man replied, as he seated himself--after the priest--and kept his eyes absently fixed on the store across the road, where he had seen her enter. "She is the granddaughter of that Madame Izidore"-- "What! Ma'ame Zidore whom they drove off the island last winter?" "Yes, yes. Well, you know, they say the old woman stole wood and things,--I don't know how true it is,--and destroyed people's property out of pure malice."