irl, Ephraim, and he is a fine man, for all that
their ways are not the same as ours. They don't seem to take life so
hard as we, and maybe they get more pleasure out of it."

"I never heard tell that we were put here to get pleasure out of it,"
said the old Puritan, shaking his head. "The valley of the shadow of
death don't seem to me to be the kind o' name one would give to a
play-ground. It is a trial and a chastening, that's what it is, the
gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity. We're bad from the
beginning, like a stream that runs from a tamarack swamp, and we've
enough to do to get ourselves to rights without any fool's talk about
pleasure."

"It seems to me to be all mixed up," said Amos. "like the fat and the
lean in a bag of pemmican. Look at that sun just pushing its edge over
the trees, and see the pink flush on the clouds and the river like a
rosy ribbon behind us. It's mighty pretty to our eyes, and very
pleasing to us, and it wouldn't be so to my mind if the Creator hadn't
wanted it to be. Many a time when I have lain in the woods in the fall
and smoked my pipe, and felt how good the tobacco was, and how bright
the yellow maples were, and the purple ash, and the red tupelo blazing
among the bushwood, I've felt that the real fool's talk was with the man
who could doubt that all this was meant to make the world happier for
us."

"You've been thinking too much in them woods," said Ephraim Savage,
gazing at him uneasily. "Don't let your sail be too great for your
boat, lad, nor trust to your own wisdom. Your father was from the Bay,
and you were raised from a stock that cast the dust of England from
their feet rather than bow down to Baal. Keep a grip on the word and
don't think beyond it. But what is the matter with the old man?
He don't seem easy in his mind."

The old merchant had been leaning over the bulwarks, looking back with a
drawn face and weary eyes at the red curving track behind them which
marked the path to Paris. Adele had come up now, with not a thought to
spare upon the dangers and troubles which lay in front of her as she
chafed the old man's thin cold hands, and whispered words of love and
comfort into his ears. But they had come to the point where the gentle
still-flowing river began for the first time to throb to the beat of the
sea. The old man gazed forward with horror at the bowsprit as he saw it
rise slowly upwards into the air, and clung frantically at the ra