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“Like that, there will need two bags!” he said.

“Imbecile!” she cried, standing angry in the centre of the room.

“Ho, ho, what a big word! See what it is to have the tongue of fashion!”

She looked helplessly round the room. “I will kill you!”

“Let us die together,” answered Parpon; “we are both sad.”

She snatched the poker from the fire, and ran at him. He caught her wrists with his great hands, big enough for tall Medallion, and held her.

“I said ‘together,”‘ he chuckled; “not one before the other. We might jump into the flume at the mill, or go over the dam at the Bois Noir; or, there is Farette’s musket which he is cleaning–gracious, but it will kick when it fires, it is so old!”

She sank to the floor. “Why does he clean the musket?” she asked; fear, and something wicked too, in her eye. Her fingers ran forgetfully through the hair on her forehead, pushing it back, and the marks of small-pox showed. The contrast with her smooth cheeks gave her a weird look. Parpon got quickly on the table again and sat like a Turk, with a furtive eye on her. “Who can tell!” he said at last. “That musket has not been fired for years. It would not kill a bird; the shot would scatter: but it might kill a man–a man is bigger.”

“Kill a man!” She showed her white teeth with a savage little smile.

“Of course it is all guess. I asked Farette what he would shoot, and he said, ‘Nothing good to eat.’ I said I would eat what he killed. Then he got pretty mad, and said I couldn’t eat my own head. Holy! that was funny for Farette. Then I told him there was no good going to the Bois Noir, for there would be nothing to shoot. Well, did I speak true, Madame Julie?”

She was conscious of something new in Parpon. She could not define it. Presently she got to her feet and said: “I don’t believe you–you’re a monkey.”

“A monkey can climb a tree quick; a man has to take the shot as it comes.” He stretched up his powerful arms, with a swift motion as of climbing, laughed, and added: “Madame Julie, Farette has poor eyes; he could not see a hole in a ladder. But he has a kink in his head about the Bois Noir. People have talked–“

“Pshaw!” Julie said, crumpling her apron and throwing it out; “he is a child and a coward. He should not play with a gun; it might go off and hit him.”

Parpon hopped down and trotted to the door. Then he turned and said, with a sly gurgle: “Farette keeps at that gun. What is the good! There will be nobody at the Bois Noir any more. I will go and tell him.”

She rushed at him with fury, but seeing Annette Benoit in the road, she stood still and beat her foot angrily on the doorstep. She was ripe for a quarrel, and she would say something hateful to Annette; for she never forgot that Farette had asked Annette to be his wife before herself was considered. She smoothed out her wrinkled apron and waited.

“Good day, Annette,” she said loftily.

“Good day, Julie,” was the quiet reply.

“Will you come in?”

“I am going to the mill for flax-seed. Benoit has rheumatism.”

“Poor Benoit!” said Julie, with a meaning toss of her head.

“Poor Benoit,” responded Annette gently. Her voice was always sweet. One would never have known that Benoit was a drunken idler.

“Come in. I will give you the meal from my own. Then it will cost you nothing,” said Julie, with an air.

“Thank you, Julie, but I would rather pay.”

“I do not sell my meal,” answered Julie. “What’s a few pounds of meal to the wife of Farette? I will get it for you. Come in, Annette.”

She turned towards the door, then stopped all at once. There was the oatmeal which she had thrown at Parpon, the basin, and the poker. She wished she had not asked Annette in. But in some things she had a quick wit, and she hurried to say: “It was that yellow cat of Parpon’s. It spilt the meal, and I went at it with the poker.”