ack and dull. His steamer did not sail until daybreak, and since he
had gone up the mountain and seen the cathedral and Notre Dame, he did
not know what to do. The bench he occupied was in the shade, and he
smoked and looked about.

Cabs rolled up the street to the big hotel across the square, and behind
the trees the huge block of the C.P.R. station cut the sky. One heard
whistles, the rumble of heavy wheels, and the tolling of locomotive
bells. Pigeons flew down from the cathedral dome and searched the damp
gravel.

A group of foreign emigrants picnicked in the shade. Their clothes were
old and greasy; they carried big shapeless bundles and looked tired and
worn. Lister could not guess their nationality, but imagined they had
known poverty and oppression in Eastern Europe. It was obvious they had
recently disembarked from a crowded steerage and waited for an emigrant
train. They were going West, to the land of promise, and Lister wished
them luck. He and they were birds of passage and, with all old landmarks
left behind, rested for a few hours on their journey.

He studied the group. The men looked dull and beaten; the women had no
beauty and had grown coarse with toil. Their faces were pinched and
their shoulders bent. Only the children, in spite of rags and dirt,
struck a hopeful note. Yet the forlorn strangers had pluck; they had
made a great adventure and might get their reward. Lister had seen
others in the West, who had made good, breaking soil they owned and
walking with the confident step of self-respecting men. On the plains,
stubborn labor was rewarded, but one needed pluck to leave all one knew
and break custom's familiar but heavy yoke.

By and by Lister remembered he wanted to take his relations a few
typically Canadian presents. He had seen nothing that satisfied him at
Winnipeg, and had better look about the shops at Montreal. Anyhow, it
would amuse him for an hour or two. He got up, went along the path for a
few yards, and then stopped.

Across the clanging of the locomotive bells and the roll of trolley cars
at the bottom of the hill he heard sweet voices. The music was faint and
somehow ethereal, as if it fell from a height. One lost it now and then.
It came from the cathedral and Lister stopped and listened. He did not
know what office was being sung, but the jaded emigrants knew, for a
child got up and stood with bent head, holding a greasy cap, and a
ragged woman's face got gentle as she sign