uttering frightful threats against the Michaud family and Les Aigues.

"The harvest's coming; well, I vow I'll not go before I've lighted my
pipe at their wheat-stacks," he cried, striking his fist on the table
as he sat down.

"Mustn't yelp like that before people," said Godain, showing him Pere
Niseron.

"If the old fellow tells, I'll wring his neck," said Catherine. "He's
had his day, that old peddler of foolish reasons! They call him
virtuous; it's his temperament that keeps him so, that's all."

Strange and noteworthy sight!--that of those lifted heads, that group
of persons gathered in the reeking hovel, while old Mother Tonsard
stood sentinel at the door as security for the secret words of the
drinkers.

Of all those faces, that of Godain, Catherine's suitor, was perhaps
the most alarming, though the least pronounced. Godain,--a miser
without money,--the cruelest of misers, for he who seeks money surely
takes precedence of him who hoards it, one turning his eagerness
within himself, the other looking outside with terrible intentness,
--Godain represented the type of the majority of peasant faces.

He was a journeyman, small in frame, and saved from the draft by not
attaining the required military height; naturally lean and made more
so by hard work and the enforced sobriety under which reluctant
workers like Courtecuisse succumb. His face was no bigger than a man's
fist, and was lighted by a pair of yellow eyes with greenish strips