On her arm she carried a little basket of cakes and confitures, and these she dreamed she sold, for they were few who bought of Crazy Joan.

The stout stick she carried was as compelling as her tongue, so that when the river-men surrounded her in amiable derision, it was used freely and with a heart all kindness: "For the good of their souls," she said, "since the Cure was too mild, Mary in heaven bless him high and low!" She was the Cure's champion everywhere, and he in turn was tender towards the homeless body, whose history even to him was obscure, save in the few particulars that he had given to Valmond the last time they had met.
In her youth Madame Degardy was pretty and much admired.

Her lover had deserted her, and in a fit of mad indignation and despair she had fled from the village, and vanished no one knew where, though it had been declared by a wandering hunter that she had been seen in the far-off hills that march into the south, and that she lived there with a barbarous mountaineer, who had himself long been an outlaw from his kind.
But this had been mere gossip, and after twenty-five years she came back to Pontiac, a half-mad creature, and took up the thread of her life alone; and Parpon and the Cure saw that she suffered nothing in the hard winters.
Valmond left the river-men to the tyranny of her tongue and stick, and came on to where the red light of the forge showed through the smithy window.

As he neared the door, he heard a voice singularly sweet, and another of commoner calibre was joining in the refrain of a song: "'Oh, traveller, see where the red sparks rise,' (Fly away, my heart, fly away!) But dark is the mist in the traveller's eyes.
(Fly away, my heart, fly away!) 'Oh, traveller, see far down the gorge, The crimson light from my father's forge.
(Fly away, my heart, fly away!) "'Oh, traveller, hear how the anvils ring.' (Fly away, my heart, fly away!) But the traveller heard, ah, never a thing.
(Fly away, my heart, fly away!) 'Oh, traveller, loud do the bellows roar, And my father waits by the smithy door.
(Fly away, my heart, fly away!) "'Oh, traveller, see you thy true love's grace.' (Fly away, my heart, fly away!) And now there is joy in the traveller's face.
(Fly away, my heart, fly away!) Oh, wild does he ride through the rain and mire, To greet his love by the smithy fire.
(Fly away, my heart, fly away!)" In accompaniment, some one was beating softly on the anvil, and the bellows were blowing rhythmically.
He lingered for a moment, loath to interrupt the song, and then softly opened the upper half of the door, for it was divided horizontally, and leaned over the lower part.
Beside the bellows, her sleeves rolled up, her glowing face cowled in her black hair, comely and strong, stood Elise Malboir, pushing a rod of steel into the sputtering coals.

Over the anvil, with a small bar caught in a pair of tongs, hovered Madelinette Lajeunesse, beating, almost tenderly, the red-hot point of the steel.