mple-mindedly as she would have fought the
temptation of a dance, of a doubtful amusement or anything that was
plainly wrong and hence forbidden.

They reached home as night was falling. The coming of evening was
only a slow fading of the light, for, since morning, the heavens had
been overcast, the sun obscured. A sadness rested upon the pallid
earth; the firs and cypresses did not wear the aspect of living
trees and the naked birches seemed to doubt of the springtime. Maria
shivered as she left the sleigh, and hardly noticed Chien, barking
and gambolling a welcome, or the children who called to her from the
door-step. The world seemed strangely empty, for this evening at
least. Love was snatched away, and they forbade remembrance. She
went swiftly into the house without looking about her, conscious of
a new dread and hatred for the bleak land, the forest's eternal
shade, the snow and the cold,--for all those things she had lived her
life amongst, which now had wounded her.

CHAPTER XII

LOVE BEARING GIFTS

MARCH came, and one day Tit'Be brought the news from Honfleur that
there would be a large gathering in the evening at Ephrem
Surprenant's to which everyone was invited.

But someone must stay to look after the house, and as Madame
Chapdelaine had set her heart on this little diversion after being
cooped up for all these months, it was Tit'Be himself who was left
at home. Honfleur, the nearest village to their house, was eight
miles away; but what were eight miles over the snow and through the
woods compared with the delight of hearing songs and stories, and of
talk with people from afar?

A numerous company was assembled under the Surprenant roof: several
of the villagers, the three Frenchmen who had bought his nephew
Lorenzo's farm, and also, to the Chapdelaines' great surprise,
Lorenzo himself, back once more from the States upon business that
related to the sale and the settling of his father's affairs. He
greeted Maria very warmly, and seated himself beside her.

The men lit their pipes; they chatted about the weather, the
condition of the roads, the country news; but the conversation
lagged, as though all were looking for it to take some unusual turn.
Their glances sought Lorenzo and the three Frenchmen, expecting
strange and marvellous tales of distant lands and unfamiliar manners
from an assembly so far out of the common. The Frenchmen, only a few
months in the country, apparently felt a like cu