Oh, there, Marie said, it was different.  There the drink did not make men crazy.  This was a country where the devil had so much power, you see, that it made it hard for poor folks like Old Billy, who would do well enough in her country, and at the worst take a little too much at a feast or a wedding.  But in those cases, the saints took very good care that nothing should happen to them.  She did not know what the saints did in this country, or indeed, if there were any.

“Oh, Maree!” cried Abby, scandalised.  “I guess I wouldn’t talk like that, if I was you.  You—­you, ain’t a papist, are you,—­a Catholic?”

Oh, no!  Mere Jeanne was of the Reformed religion, and had brought Marie up so.  It was a misfortune, Madame the Countess always said; but Marie preferred to be as Mere Jeanne had been.  The Catholic girls in the village said that Mere Jeanne had gone straight to the pit, but that proved that they were ignorant entirely of the things of religion.  Why, Le Boss was a Catholic, he; and everybody knew that he had the evil eye, and that it was not safe to come near him without making the horns.

“For the land’s sake!” cried Abby Rock, dropping her dish-cloth into the sink, “what are you talking about, child?”

“But, the horns!” Marie answered innocently.  “When a person has the evil eye, you not make at him the horns, so way?” and she held out the index and little finger of her right hand, bending the other fingers down.  “So!” she said; “when they so are held, the evil eye has no power.  What you do here to stop him?”

“We don’t believe in any such a thing!” Abby replied, with, some severity.  “Why, Maree, them’s all the same as heathen notions, like witchcraft and such.  We don’t hold by none of those things in this country at all, and I guess you’d better not talk about ’em.”

Marie’s eyes opened wide.  “But,” she said, “c’est une chose,—­it is a thing that all know.  As for Le Boss, you know—­listen!” she came nearer to Abby, and lowered her voice.  “One night Old Billy forgot to do, I know not what, but somesing.  So when Le Boss found it out, he look at him, so,”—­drawing her brows down and frowning horribly, with the effect of looking like an enraged kitten,—­“and say noasing at all.  You see?”

“Well,” replied Abby.  “I suppose mebbe he thought it was an accident, and might have happened to any one.”

“Not—­at—­all!” cried Marie, with dramatic emphasis, throwing out her hand with a solemn gesture.  “What happen that same night?  Old Billy fall down the bank and break his leg!” She paused, and nodded like a little mandarin, to point the moral of her tale.

“Maree!” remonstrated Abby Rock, “don’t tell me you believe such foolishness as that!  He’d have fallen down all the same if nobody had looked anigh him.  Why, good land!  I never heard of such notions.”

“So it is!” Marie insisted.  “Le Boss look at him, and he break his leg.  I see the break!  Anozer day,” she continued, “Coco, he is a boy that makes tumble, and he was hungry, and he took a don’t from the table to eat it—­”