"Ah!" replied the Superior, in a tone of mock severity, while his
eyes overran with mirthfulness, "you are a crowd of miserable
sinners who will die without benefit of clergy--only you don't know
it! Who was it boiled the Easter eggs hard as agates, which you
gave to my poor brother Recollets for the use of our convent? Tell
me that, pray! All the salts and senna in Quebec have not sufficed
to restore the digestion of my poor monks since you played that
trick upon them down in your misnamed village of Beauport!"

"Pardon, Reverend Father de Berey!" replied a smiling habitan, "it
was not we, but the sacrilegious canaille of St. Anne who boiled the
Easter eggs! If you don't believe us, send some of the good Gray
Friars down to try our love. See if they do not find everything
soft for them at Beauport, from our hearts to our feather beds, to
say nothing of our eggs and bacon. Our good wives are fairly
melting with longing for a sight of the gray gowns of St. Francis
once more in our village."

"Oh! I dare be bound the canaille of St. Anne are lost dogs like
yourselves--catuli catulorum."

The habitans thought this sounded like a doxology, and some crossed
themselves, amid the dubious laughter of others, who suspected
Father de Berey of a clerical jest.

"Oh!" continued he, "if fat Father Ambrose, the cook of the convent,
only had you, one at a time, to turn the spit for him, in place of
the poor dogs of Quebec, which he has to catch as best he can, and
set to work in his kitchen! but, vagabonds that you are, you are
rarely set to work now on the King's corvee--all work, little play,