n handled the
stumping-machine with the aid of Charles Eugene. The pyramidal
scaffolding was put in place above a large stump and lowered, the
chains which were then attached to the root passed over a pulley,
and the horse at the other end started away quickly, flinging
himself against the traces and showering earth with his hoofs. A
short and desperate charge, a mad leap often arrested after a few
feet as by the stroke of fist; then the heavy steel blades a giant
would swing up anew, gleaming in the sun, and fall with a dull sound
upon the stubborn wood, while the horse took breath for a moment,
awaiting with excited eye the word that would launch him forward
again. And afterwards there was still the labour of hauling or
rolling the big stumps to the pile-at fresh effort of back, of
soil-stained hands with swollen veins, and stiffened arms that
seemed grotesquely striving with the heavy trunk and the huge
twisted roots.

The sun dipped toward the horizon, disappeared; the sky took on
softer hues above the forest's dark edge, and the hour of supper
brought to the house five men the of the colour of the soil.

While waiting Upon them Madame Chapdelaine asked a hundred questions
about the day's work, and when the vision arose before her of this
patch of land they had cleared, superbly bare, lying ready for the
Plough, her spirit was possessed with something of a mystic's
rapture.

With hands upon her hips, refusing to seat herself at table, she
extolled the beauty Of the world as it existed for her: not the
beauty wherein human beings have no hand, which the townsman makes
such an ado about with his unreal ecstasies.-mountains, lofty and
bare, wild seas-but the quiet unaffected loveliness of the level
champaign, finding its charm in the regularity of the long furrow
and the sweetly-flowing stream--the naked champaign courting with
willing abandon the fervent embraces of the sun.

She sang the great deeds of the four Chapdelaines and Edwige Legare,
their struggle against the savagery of nature, their triumph of the
day. She awarded praises and displayed her own proper pride, albeit
the five men smoked their wooden or clay pipes in silence,
motionless as images after their long task; images of earthy hue,
hollow-eyed with fatigue.

"The stumps are hard to get out." at length said the elder
Chapdelaine, "the roots have not rotted in the earth so much as I
should have imagined. I calculate that we shall not be through