opped at the cabin of the
habitant who was to keep him over night. The open doorway was filled
with children; the wild-looking dogs leaping at his horse's nose were in
a frenzy of curiosity and suspicion.

Northwick rose from his nap refreshed physically, but with a desolate
and sinking heart. The vision of his home had taken all his strength
away with it; but from his surface consciousness he returned the
greeting of the man with a pipe in his mouth and what looked like a blue
stocking on his head, who welcomed him. It was a poor place within, but
it had a comfort and kindliness of its own, and it was well warmed from
the great oblong stove of cast-iron set in the partition of the two
rooms. The meal that the housewife got him was good and savory, but he
had no relish for it, and he went early to bed. He did not understand
much French, and he could not talk with the people, but he heard them
speak of him as an old man, with a sort of surprise and pity at his
being there. He felt this surprise and pity, too; it seemed such a wild
and wicked thing that he should be driven away from his home and
children at his age. He tried to realize what had done it.

The habitant had given Northwick his best bed, in his large room; he
went with his wife into the other, and they took two or three of the
younger children; the rest all scattered up into the loft; each bade the
guest a well-mannered good-night. Before Northwick slept he heard his
host get up and open the outer door. Some Indians came in and lay down
before the fire with the carriole driver.

IV.

In the morning, Northwick did not want to rise; but he forced himself;
and that day he made the rest of the stage to Baie St. Paul. It snowed,
but he got through without much interruption. The following day,
however, the drifts had blocked the roads so that he did not make the
twenty miles to Malbaie till after dark. He found himself bearing the
journey better than he expected. He was never so tired again as that
first day after St. Anne. He did not eat much or sleep much, but he felt
well. The worst was that the breach between his will and his mind seemed
to grow continually wider: he had a sense of the rift being like a chasm
stretching farther and farther, the one side from the other. At first
his mind worked clearly but disobediently; then he began to be aware of
a dimness in its record of purposes and motives. At times he could not
tell where he was going, or why