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Updated: May 7, 2025
What you know?" he questioned excitedly. "Never mind. I see Miss Cardinal looking at us," she smiled as she arose, "and I think you are in for a lecture." Through all the long day, while she ate and listened to the fun and talked to Father Ponfret about her convent life, she did not let Rafe Gadbeau out of her sight or mind for an instant. She knew that she had alarmed him.
Now Ruth, all zeal and thankfulness, was for leading him forthwith to Father Ponfret, that he might begin at once his course of instructions which she assured him was essential. But Jeffrey demurred. He had been reading books all winter, he said. Though he admitted that until last night he had not understood much of it. Now it was all clear and easy, thank God!
That he should appear out of the fire after the nightmare through which they had passed was not so much incredible as it was a part of the strange things that they had always half believed about him. Then rose the swift, shrill cackle of tongues around the Bishop. Father Ponfret, a quick, eager little man of his people, would drag the Bishop's story from him by very force.
And again to-morrow he was to set those two again upon their way of life, for he was coming up to French Village to the wedding of Ruth Lansing to Jeffrey Whiting. Jeffrey Whiting knelt by Ruth Lansing's side in the little rough-finished sanctuary of the chapel which Father Ponfret had somehow managed to raise during that busy, poverty-burdened summer.
Had he dropped from Heaven? How had he come to be in the hills? Had a miracle saved him from the fire? The Bishop told the tale simply, accenting the folly of his own imprudence, and how he had been saved from the consequences of it by the quickness and wisdom of the young girl. Father Ponfret translated freely and with a fine flourish.
She had been to put the first flowers of the Spring on the grave of Rafe Gadbeau, where Father Ponfret had blessed the ground for him and they had laid him, there under the sunny side of the Gaunt Rocks that had given him his last breathing space that he might die in peace. They had put him here, for there was no way in that time to carry him to the little cemetery in French Village.
Could she not come home, then, to his mother, who was pining for her and and they would have all their lives to finish the instructions. On this, however, Ruth was firm. Here she would stay, among these good people where she had made for herself a place and a home. He must come every week to Father Ponfret for his instructions, like any other convert.
But to the day he died he spoke his French just as it was written in the book, and with an aggressive New England accent. He must speak French to the children in French Village to-morrow, not because the children would understand, but because it would please Father Ponfret and the parents.
And the light spirited, sanguine people raised cheer after cheer as their imagination leaped ahead to the new French Village that would rise glorious out of the ashes of the old. Then Father Ponfret, catching their mood, raised for them the hymn to the Good Saint Anne. They were all men from below Beaupre and from far Chicothomi where the Good Saint holds the hearts of all.
But when Father Ponfret came running forward and knelt at the Bishop's feet, a great glad cry of wondering recognition went up from all the French people. It was their Bishop! He who spoke the French of the most astonishing! His coming was a sign! A deliverance! They had come through horrors. Now all was well! The good God had hidden His face through the long night.
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