“Oh, thou remorseless but most just accuser, no, it is not.  I will put on sackcloth and ashes; there—­are you satisfied?”

Joan’s sobs began to diminish, and she presently looked up at the old man through her tears, and said, in her simple way: 

“Yes, that will do—­if it will clear you.”

Pere Fronte would have been moved to laugh again, perhaps, if he had not remembered in time that he had made a contract, and not a very agreeable one.  It must be fulfilled.  So he got up and went to the fireplace, Joan watching him with deep interest, and took a shovelful of cold ashes, and was going to empty them on his old gray head when a better idea came to him, and he said: 

“Would you mind helping me, dear?”

“How, father?”

He got down on his knees and bent his head low, and said: 

“Take the ashes and put them on my head for me.”

The matter ended there, of course.  The victory was with the priest.  One can imagine how the idea of such a profanation would strike Joan or any other child in the village.  She ran and dropped upon her knees by his side and said: 

“Oh, it is dreadful.  I didn’t know that that was what one meant by sackcloth and ashes—­do please get up, father.”

“But I can’t until I am forgiven.  Do you forgive me?”

“I?  Oh, you have done nothing to me, father; it is yourself that must forgive yourself for wronging those poor things.  Please get up, gather, won’t you?”

“But I am worse off now than I was before.  I thought I was earning your forgiveness, but if it is my own, I can’t be lenient; it would not become me.  Now what can I do?  Find me some way out of this with your wise little head.”

The Pere would not stir, for all Joan’s pleadings.  She was about to cry again; then she had an idea, and seized the shovel and deluged her own head with the ashes, stammering out through her chokings and suffocations: 

“There—­now it is done.  Oh, please get up, father.”

The old man, both touched and amused, gathered her to his breast and said: 

“Oh, you incomparable child!  It’s a humble martyrdom, and not of a sort presentable in a picture, but the right and true spirit is in it; that I testify.”

Then he brushed the ashes out of her hair, and helped her scour her face and neck and properly tidy herself up.  He was in fine spirits now, and ready for further argument, so he took his seat and drew Joan to his side again, and said: 

“Joan, you were used to make wreaths there at the Fairy Tree with the other children; is it not so?”

That was the way he always started out when he was going to corner me up and catch me in something—­just that gentle, indifferent way that fools a person so, and leads him into the trap, he never noticing which way he is traveling until he is in and the door shut on him.  He enjoyed that.  I knew he was going to drop corn along in front of Joan now.  Joan answered: