"_A ou-ce-tu va Bonaventure?_"--"Whereabouts are you going?" "_Va crier les vaches._"--"Going to call the cows." "At this time of day?" demanded _la vieille_, still in the same tongue. "Are you crazy?" "Oh!--no!" the boy replied, looking dazed. "No," he said; "I was going for some more wood." He went out, passed the woodpile by, got round behind a corn-crib, and stood in the cold, wet gale watching the distant company lessening on the view. It was but a short, dim, dark streak, creeping across the field of vision like some slow insect on a window-glass. A spot just beyond it was a grove that would presently shut the creeping line finally from sight. They reached it, passed beyond, and disappeared; and then Bonaventure took off the small, soft-brimmed hat that hung about his eyes, and, safe from the sight and hearing of all his tiny world, lifted his voice, and with face kindling with delight swung the sorry covering about his head and cried three times: "Ora! Or-r-ra! Ora-a-a-a!" But away in the night Madame Sosthene, hearing an unwonted noise, went to Bonaventure's bedside and found him sobbing as if his heart had broken. "He has had a bad dream," she said; for he would not say a word. The cure of Vermilionville and Carancro was a Creole gentleman who looked burly and hard when in meditation; but all that vanished when he spoke and smiled. In the pocket of his cassock there was always a deck of cards, but that was only for the game of solitaire. You have your pipe or cigar, your flute or violoncello; he had his little table under the orange-tree and his game of solitaire. He was much loved. To see him beyond earshot talking to other men you would say he was by nature a man of affairs, whereas, when you came to hear him speak you find him quite another sort: one of the Elisha kind, as against the Elijahs; a man of the domestic sympathies, whose influence on man was personal and familiar; one of the sort that heal bitter waters with a handful of salt, make poisonous pottage wholesome with a little meal, and find easy, quiet ways to deliver poor widows from their creditors with no loss to either; a man whom men reverenced, while women loved and children trusted him. The ex-governor was fond of his company, although the cure only smiled at politics and turned the conversation back to family matters. He had a natural gift for divining men's, women's, children's personal wants, and every one's distinctively from every other one's. So that to everybody he was an actual personal friend. He had been a long time in this region. It was he who buried Bonaventure's mother. He was the connecting link between Bonaventure and the ex-governor. Whenever the cure met this man of worldly power, there were questions asked and answered about the lad.