e Chapdelaine home had never seen before, while
for holding the other Maria had found nothing better than a glass
bowl used in the summer time for blueberries and wild raspberries,
on days of ceremony.

The candlestick shone, the bowl sparkled in the flames which lighted
but feebly the face of the dead. The days of suffering through which
she had passed, or death's final chill had given the features a
strange pallor and delicacy, the refinement of a woman bred in the
city. Father and children were at first amazed, and then perceived
in this the tremendous consequence of her translation beyond and far
above them.

Ephrem. Surprenant bent his eyes upon the face for a little, and
then kneeled. The prayers he began to murmur were inaudible, but
when Maria and Tit'Be came and knelt beside him he drew from a
pocket his string of large heads and began to tell them in a low
voice. The chaplet ended, he sat himself in silence by the table,
shaking his head sadly from time to time as is seemly in the house
of mourning, and because his own grief was deep and sincere.

At last he discovered speech. "It is a heavy loss. You were
fortunate in your wife, Samuel; no one may question that. Truly you
were fortunate in your wife."

This said, he could go no further; he sought in vain for some words
of sympathy, and at the end stumbled into other talk. "The weather
is quite mild this evening; we soon shall have rain. Everyone is
saying that it is to be an early spring."

To the countryman, all things touching the soil which gives him
bread, and the alternate seasons which lull the earth to sleep and
awaken it to life, are of such moment that one may speak of them
even in the presence of death with no disrespect. Their eyes turned
quite naturally to the square of the little window, but the night
was black and they could discern nothing.

Ephrem Surprenant began anew to praise her who was departed. "In
all the parish there was not a braver-spirited woman than she, nor a
cleverer housewife. How friendly too, and what a kind welcome she
always gave a visitor! In the old parishes--yes! and even in the
towns on the railway, not many would be found to match her. It is
only the truth to say that you were rarely suited in your wife ...
Soon afterwards he rose, and, leaving the house, his face was dark
with sorrow.

A long silence followed, in which Samuel Chapdelaine's head nodded
slowly towards his breast and it seemed as though he were