He had that touch of shrewdness to save him from fatuity where the
Lavilettes were concerned. He was determined to associate with the
ceremony all the primitive customs of the country. He had come of a race
of simple farmers, and he was consistent enough to attempt to live up to
the traditions of his people. He was entirely too good-natured to take
exception to Ferrol's easy-going admiration of Sophie.

Ferrol spoke excellent French, and soon found points of pleasant contact
with Monsieur Lavilette, who, despite the fact that he had coarsened as
the years went on, had still upon him the touch of family tradition,
which may become either offensive pride or defensive self-respect. With
the Cure, Ferrol was not quite so successful. The ascetic, prudent
priest, with that instinctive, long-sighted accuracy which belongs to the
narrow-minded, scented difficulty. He disliked the English exceedingly;
and all Irishmen were English men to him. He resisted Ferrol's blarney.
His thin lips tightened, his narrow forehead seemed to grow narrower, and
his very cassock appeared to contract austerely on his figure as he
talked to the refugee of misfortune.

When the most pardonable of gossips, the Regimental Surgeon, asked him on
his way home what he thought of Ferrol, he shrugged his shoulders,
tightened his lips again, and said:

"A polite, designing heretic."

The Regimental Surgeon, though a Frenchman, had once belonged to a
British battery of artillery stationed at Quebec, and there he had
acquired an admiration for the English, which betrayed itself in his
curious attempts to imitate Anglo-Saxon bluffness and blunt spontaneity.
When the Cure had gone, he flung back his shoulders, with a laugh, as he