nyone but
Eutrope Gagnon from year's end to year's end. But that is what comes
of living so far away in the woods ... Now, when I was a girl at
St. Gedeon, the house was full of visitors nearly every Saturday
evening and all Sunday: Adelard Saint-Onge who courted me for such a
long time; Wilfrid Tremblay, the merchant, who had nice manners and
was always trying to speak as the French do; many others as well--not
counting your father who came to see us almost every night for three
years, while I was making up my mind..."

Three years! Maria thought to herself that she had only seen
Francois Paradis twice since she was a child, and she felt ashamed
at the beating of her heart.

CHAPTER IV

WILD LAND

AFTER a few chilly days, June suddenly brought veritable spring
weather. A blazing sun warmed field and forest, the lingering
patches of snow vanished even in the deep shade of the woods; the
Peribonka rose and rose between its rocky banks until the alders and
the roots of the nearer spruces were drowned; in the roads the mud
was incredibly deep. The Canadian soil rid itself of the last traces
of winter with a semblance of mad haste, as though in dread of
another winter already on the way.

Esdras and Da'Be returned from the shanties where they had worked
all the winter. Esdras was the eldest of the family, a tall fellow
with a huge frame, his face bronzed, his hair black; the low
forehead and prominent chin gave him a Neronian profile,
domineering, not without a suggestion of brutality; but he spoke
softly, measuring his words, and was endlessly patient. In face
alone had he anything of the tyrant; it was as though the long
rigours of the climate and the fine sense and good humour of the
race had refined his heart to a simplicity and kindliness that his
formidable aspect seemed to deny.

Da'Be, also tall, was less heavily built and more lively and merry.
He was like his father.

The married couple had given their first children, Esdras and Maria,
fine, high-sounding, sonorous names; but they had apparently wearied
of these solemnities, for the next two children never beard their
real names pronounced; always had they been called by the
affectionate diminutives of childhood, Da'Be and Tit'Be. With the
last pair, however, there had been a return to the earlier
ceremonious manner-Telesphore ... Alma Rose. "When the boys get
back we are going to make land," the father had promised. And, with
the help of Edwige Le