"Besides the shoelaces, why did you stop by Conroy's?" Elizabeth asked him. He explained. His wife nodded. "That's peculiar, it sure is. Did Conroy say anything about it when you told him?"

"Not a word," Cincinnatus answered. "But he wouldn't. If I don't know it, I can't blab it."

"That's so," Elizabeth said. "What do you suppose is in them crates?"

"No way to know," he replied, "but I expect we'll find out."

Lucien Galtier looked up in the sky with something like approval. Winters were long. Winters were hard. They wore at a man; it seemed he never saw the sun for weeks at a time. But spring, when it finally burgeoned, made up for that… at least until winter came again.

Fluffy white clouds drifted from west to east, their shadows sailing across the farmland like clipper ships across a smooth sea. The weather-he paused to thank God-had been very good this year. True, from time to time, there were Americans on the road, in trucks or on horseback or in long columns afoot, but God didn't take care of all the little details in your life. You had to do some of the work for yourself. If the farm survived the ravages of rabbits and rats and insects, it was likely to survive the ravages of Americans, too.

Here came Georges, running up the path that separated potatoes on the one side from rye on the other. "Papa!" he called, and waved when Lucien straightened up from weeding the potato plot. "Papa, Father Pascal is back at the house with an American officer, and they want to see you."

"Calisse," Galtier said; he'd been so engrossed in his hoeing, he'd paid no attention to traffic on the road for a while. Now he put the hoe up on his shoulder, as if it were a rifle. "Well, if they want to see me, then see me they shall. It is an invitation I cannot refuse, not so?"

His younger son's eyes twinkled. "They want to see you, but they did not bother to ask if you wanted to see them," Georges said with Gallic precision.

"They do not care. They have no reason to care. They are the authorities, and I? I am but a farmer of the humblest sort." Lucien sounded too humble to be quite convincing, but that was what happened when you took on an unfamiliar role. And, as he had said, whether he wanted to see them was an irrelevance. He tramped back toward the farmhouse, Georges running ahead to let the important visitors know he was coming.

Father Pascal and the American officer, whoever he was, had come in the priest's buggy; the horse bent its head down to crop grass by the rail to which it was tethered. Seeing the buggy relieved Galtier's mind. He would have thought senility closing in on him had he missed the noisy arrival of a motorcar.

Inside, Marie and Nicole had already presented the priest and the officer-he was, Lucien saw, the heavyset major with whom Father Pascal had been talking when Galtier first went into Riviere-du-Loup not long after the Americans arrived-with coffee and cakes. He would have been astonished had his wife and eldest daughter done anything less. Even if your guests' going would have been more welcome than their coming, you had duties as a host- or hostess.

"Here he is," Father Pascal said, rising from the sofa with a wide smile on his smooth, plump face. "Allow me to present to you the truly excellent husbandman, Lucien Galtier. Lucien, I have brought here Major Jedediah Quigley."

"Enchante, Monsieur Galtier," Quigley said in the elegant Parisian French Lucien had heard him using up in town. "Father Pascal has been loud in singing your praises."

"He honors me far beyond my poor worth," Galtier replied, wishing the priest had chosen to throw himself into the St. Lawrence rather than praising him to the occupying authorities. The less notice he attracted from them, the happier he was.

"You are a modest man," Father Pascal said. "This is the mark of a godly man, a Christian man of solid virtue. I have also taken the liberty of passing on to Major Quigley your generous willingness to inform me of anyone who misunderstood my role in the situation as it is."

Galtier spread his hands. They were hard and rough, with callused palms and dirt under his nails and ground into the folds of skin at each knuckle. "I am desolate, Father, that I have had nothing of which to inform you. Spring is a busy season for a farmer, and I have had little to do with anyone of late."

"Galtier, Lucien." Major Quigley took a piece of paper from one of the many pockets with which his uniform was adorned. From another pocket he drew a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles, which he set on his nose. He unfolded the paper and studied it for a moment. "Ah, yes. I regret that the requisitions drawn from this farm were so heavy last winter. I should not be surprised if it turned out that the soldiers who carried out the program did so with an excess of zeal. As a result, you must think less than kind thoughts of the American military government for this district."

"Major, in a war, each side does what it can to win," Galtier answered with a shrug. "I am not a soldier now, but you must know I served my time. I know these things." He chose his words with great care. This American major who talked like a Parisian aristocrat was liable to be as dangerous as half a dozen of the likes of Father Pascal.

Quigley folded up the paper and put it in his pocket. He got out a pipe, a pouch of tobacco, and a match safe. After a glance toward Marie for permission, he lit the pipe. Once it was drawing well, he spoke in musing tones: "I am confident that, when requisition time comes round again, it will be easier to restrain the enthusiasm of the soldiers carrying out their duties."

Not, it may be easier to restrain them -if you cooperate. Most men, trying to establish such cooperation, would have spelled out the terms of the bargain to be struck. That was how Father Pascal operated, for instance. Not Major Quigley. He started at the point of assuming cooperation and went on from there. A man to reckon with, indeed.

And, of course, it would be impossible to keep the neighbors from learning he and Father Pascal had been here. Some of them would assume that alone meant Lucien was collaborating with the Americans: why else would the major and the priest have come? Keeping his good name was going to take Galtier some work.

He wanted to glance over at Marie, to see what she was thinking. A winter free of requisitions-or anything close to that-would all but guarantee a successful year. A full belly, peace of mind against what was in essence robbery at gunpoint-those were not small items on the balance sheet… provided he grew a beard so he did not have to look at himself in the mirror when he shaved every morning.

But looking at yourself in the mirror was not a small item, either. "As I say, Major, I am only a farmer, and spend most of my time here on my land. I am not a man who often hears things of any sort-certainly not scandal and slander spoken about the pious father here."

"No, eh? Father Pascal led me to believe it might be otherwise. What a pity," Major Quigley said. He didn't snarl and bluster at Lucien. He didn't turn and glower at Father Pascal, either. He just spread his hands. "Such is life." He got to his feet, which meant the priest also had to rise hastily. Major Quigley bowed to Marie. "Thank you, Madame Galtier, for your generous hospitality. We shall not take up any more of your time, or of your husband's-he is, as he says, a busy man."

He didn't even warn Galtier that the requisitions, instead of being extra gentle when harvest time came around, would be extra harsh. If Lucien couldn't figure that out for himself, he'd learn come fall.

But Lucien knew perfectly well what would happen come fall. He also knew he'd have to spend almost as much time working to make the farm seem poor as he would making sure it really wasn't. As the major with the strange Christian name had said, that was life.