elf of
little enough use at the moment.

"You were not able to make a decent living out of your trades over
there. That is so, is it not? And therefore you came here?"

The question was put simply, without thought of offence, for he was
amazed that anyone should abandon callings that seemed so easy and
so pleasant for this arduous life on the land.

Why indeed had they come? ... A few months earlier they would have
discovered a thousand reasons and clothed them in words straight
from the heart: weariness of the footway and the pavement, of the
town's sullied air; revolt against the prospect of lifelong slavery;
some chance stirring word of an irresponsible speaker preaching the
gospel of vigour and enterprise, of a free and healthy life upon a
fruitful soil. But a few months ago they could have found glowing
sentences to tell it all ... Now their best was a sorry effort to
evade the question, as they groped for any of the illusions that
remained to them.

"People are not always happy in the cities," said the father.
"Everything is dear, and one is confined."

In their narrow Parisian lodging it had seemed so wonderful a thing
to them, the notion that in Canada they would spend their days out
of doors, breathing the taintless air of a new country, close beside
the mighty forest. The black-flies they had not foreseen, nor
comprehended the depth of the winter's cold; the countless ill turns
of a land that has no pity were undivined.

"Did you picture it to yourselves as you have found it," Chapdelaine
persisted, "the country here, the life?"

"Not exactly," replied the Frenchman in a low voice. "No, not
exactly ..." And a shadow crossed his face which brought from
Ephrem. Surprenant:--"It is rough here, rough and hard!"

Their heads assented, and their eyes fell: three narrow-shouldered
men, their faces with the pallor of the town still upon them after
six months on the land; three men whom a fancy had torn from
counter, office, piano-stool-from the only lives for which they were
bred. For it is not the peasant alone who suffers by uprooting from
his native soil. They were seeing their mistake, and knew they were
too unlike in grain to copy those about them; lacking the strength,
the rude health, the toughened fibre, that training for every task
which fits the Canadian to be farmer, woodsman or carpenter,
according to season and need.

The father was dreamily shaking his head, lost in thought; one of
the sons,