brought in its train the sweet
intimacies of a house shut fast, and beyond the door, with the
sameness and the soundlessness of deep-drifted snow, peace, a great
peace . .

In the cities were the strange and wonderful things whereof Lorenzo
Surprenant had told, with others that she pictured to herself
confusedly: wide streets suffused with light, gorgeous shops, an
easy fife of little toil with a round of small pleasures and
distractions. Perhaps, though, one would come to tire of this
restlessness, and, yearning some evening only for repose and quiet,
where would one discover the tranquillity of field and wood, the
soft touch of that cooler air that draws from the north-west after
set of sun, the wide-spreading peacefulness that settles on the
earth sinking to untroubled sleep.

"And yet they must be beautiful!" thought she, still dreaming of
those vast American cities ... As though in answer, a second voice
was raised.

--Over there was it not a stranger land where people of an alien
race spoke of unfamiliar things in another tongue, sang other songs?
Here ...

--The very names of this her country, those she listened to every
day, those heard but once, came crowding to memory: a thousand names
piously best owed by peasants from France on lakes, on rivers, on
the settlements of the new country they were discovering and
peopling as they went--lac a l'Eau-Claire--la
Famine--Saint-Coeur--de-Marie--Trois-Pistoles--Sainte
Rose-du-Degel--Pointe-aux-Outardes--Saint-Andre-de-l' Epouvante ...
An uncle of Eutrope Gagnon's lived at Saint-Andre-de-l'Epouvante;
Racicot of Honfleur spoke often of his son who was a stoker on a
Gulf coaster, and every time new names were added to the old;
names of fishing villages and little harbours on the St. Lawrence,
scattered here and there along those shores between which the ships
of the old days had boldly sailed toward an unknown
land--Pointe-Mille-Vaches--les Escoumins--Notre-Dame-du-Portage--les
Grandes-Bergeronnes--Gaspe.

--How sweet to hear these names where one was talking of distant
acquaintance and kinsfolk, or telling of far journeys! How dear and
neighbourly was the sound of them, with a heart-warming friendly
ring that made one feel as he spoke them:--"Throughout all this
land we are at home ... at home ..."

--Westward, beyond the borders of the Province; southward, across
the line were everywhere none but English names. In time one might
learn to speak them, even migh