“Pierre, Pierre, my son!” he muttered brokenly, “better that you had never been born, than after reaching manhood’s estate to have forgotten all our teachings and become a drunkard and an outcast from the Church.”  A stifled sob from his wife again changed his rambling thoughts, and painfully rising he walked over to her side.  Gently he laid his hand on the hair that he so dearly loved, although so much changed, and bending tenderly down said, bravely, trying to check the tremor in his voice, “There, wife, don’t fret.”  And then he drew her head to his shoulder in a way he used to do when they were both in the noonday of life.  She remembered, and her grief grew less.  “The Virgin is good, wife, and we have prayed so much to Her about him.  Surely She will hear us, and not let what you fear fall upon our Pierre.  Father Benoit has been praying to Her all these years, and we are told that the Virgin sooner or later answers the prayers of the priests of our Church.  Then special prayers will be offered for our son to-night by the priest, for he knows how you feared for him because this was the last night of the seventh year.”

A shudder ran through her frame as the anxious mother started to her feet and said fearfully: 

“Yes, in another hour a new day will dawn, and then seven years will have passed since our son went to confession, and then the curse may fall at any time.”

Dropping his voice almost to a whisper, and looking with superstitious dread out of the window into the moonlight, which made the newly fallen snow glisten on the road with almost supernatural whiteness, and trying to speak in a tone of conviction, her husband said: 

“Perhaps the priest may be right, wife, and this about loup-garou may not be true.  He told us that he did not believe in it, and that the Church had uttered no such curse against those who for seven years did not confess; although if they died in that sinful state there was no hope of salvation for them.  As for the devil, you remember the priest said that he had not the power to change a man into a wolf or an animal of any kind, and—­”

“Speak not like that, Baptiste,” broke in his wife with fear in her eyes; “the evil one may hear what you say, and out of mockery to the Church, cause the evil to fall upon him.”  With piteous haste she made the sign of the cross on her bosom, and instinctively her husband did the same.

Although it was near midnight they had not lit the lamp, for the moon that poured in at the window made the cottage almost as light as noonday.

“Husband,” she went on in a tone of conviction, “why should we try to deceive ourselves? for we know that it is true.  Father Benoit is sorry for us and would give us comfort.  It may be that the curse is not from the Church, but the devil knows when human beings are forsaken by the blessed Church, and if he can change them into animals and keep them so till death, then he is sure of their souls; even the blessed Mother then can do nothing for them.”