noon
Beside one of the doors , in deep hickory baskets , were the parcels of cured tobacco swaddled in cotton cloths and ready for the torture of ropes and windlass . From the joists overhead hung the pods of tobacco-seed for next year 's planting . There was news in Grande Pointe . The fair noon sky above , with its peaceful flocks of clouds ; the solemn , wet forest round about ; the harvested fields ; the dishevelled , fragrant fallows ; the reclining , ruminating cattle ; the little chapel of St. Vincent de Paul in the midst , open for mass once a fortnight , for a sermon in French four times a year , -- these were not more tranquil in the face of the fact that a schoolmaster had come to Grande Pointe to _ stay _ than outwardly appeared the peaceful-minded villagers . Yet as the tidings floated among the people , touching and drifting on like thistle-down , they were stirred within , and came by ones , by twos , slow-stepping , diffidently smiling , to shake hands with the young great man . They wiped their own before offering them -- the men on their strong thighs , the women on their aprons . Children came , whose courage would carry them no nearer than the galérie 's end or front edge , where they lurked and hovered , or gazed through the balustrade , or leaned against a galérie post and rubbed one brown bare foot upon another and crowded each other 's shoulders without assignable cause , or lopped down upon the grass and gazed from a distance .