oden crucifix stood by the roadside near the
entrance of the village, with a small space around it enclosed by a
wooden railing. Young girls in wide-brimmed straw hats were kneeling at
the foot of it, and I noticed that they had left their clogs outside the
railing. Presently an old woman came along, and she too deposited her
dug-outs reverently outside the little sanctuary before she entered.
These roadside crosses are to be met with everywhere in the French
Canadian settlements, many of them curiously fitted up as shrines, and
decorated with votive offerings. The valley in which this little village
stood had a pastoral appearance, but the hills to the north of it were
of a wild and dreary character, suggesting endless tracts of wilderness
beyond their dark ridges.

At this place, near the margin of the little bay, there stood a frame
house of better appearance than the ordinary dwellings of the village.
It had a weird and weather-stained look, nevertheless, which was in
keeping with the clump of stunted and sea-blighted pines by which it was
partially sheltered. The garden belonging to it appeared to have been
once well stocked, but it had run much to weeds and tangle now, and the
fence had rotted away in places, and left it open to the road. From this
house there came, as I strolled past, an old man, whose appearance was
at once so singular, and so different from, that of the ordinary
inhabitants of the place, that my curiosity impelled me to stop and
speak to him as he saluted me in passing. He was tall and very thin,
and, though apparently between seventy and eighty years of age, walked
with an erect carriage, leaning but slightly upon the cane he carried.
His face, which was remarkably small, looked like shrivelled parchment,
and his iron-gray hair hung straight down to his shoulders, like that of
an Indian. He was dressed, not in the gray cloth of the country, but in
an old-fashioned suit, which might once have been black, but was now
faded to a dingy greenish hue, and there was about him a decided air of
tarnished gentility very much out of character with the place and its
inhabitants. Speaking excellent English, he invited me to accompany him
to his house; and as dinner was nearly ready when we entered, he pressed
me to remain and partake of it. The table was spread by an old lady
quite as faded and decayed as himself. She was his sister, he told me;
adding that she was very deaf, and so nervous that he hoped I