athering good
momentum. But Claude now stood looking on empty-handed where other men
were busy with agricultural utensils or machines; or now kept his
room, whittling out a toy miniature of some apparatus, which when made
was not like the one he had seen, at last. A great distress began to
fill the father's mind. There had been a time when he could be idle
and whittle, but that time was gone by; that was at Grande Pointe; and
now for his son--for Claude--to become a lounger in tavern
quarters--Claude had not announced himself to Vermilionville as a
surveyor, or as any thing--Claude to be a hater of honest labor--was
this what Bonaventure called civilize-ation? Better, surely better, go
back to the old pastoral life. How yearningly it was calling them to
its fragrant bosom! And almost every thing was answering the call. The
town was tricking out its neglected decay with great trailing robes of
roses. The spade and hoe were busy in front flower-beds and rear
kitchen-gardens. Lanes were green, skies blue, roads good. In the _bas
fonds_ the oaks of many kinds and the tupelo-gums were hiding all
their gray in shimmering green; in these coverts and in the reedy
marshes, all the feathered flocks not gone away north were broken into
nesting pairs; in the fields, crops were springing almost at the
sower's heels; on the prairie pastures, once so vast, now being
narrowed so rapidly by the people's thrift, the flocks and herds ate
eagerly of the bright new grass, and foals, calves, and lambs stood
and staggered on their first legs, while in the door-yards housewives,
hens, and mother-geese warned away the puppies and children from downy
broods under the shade of the China-trees. But Claude? Even his books
lay unstudied, and his instruments gathered dust, while he pottered
over two or three little wooden things that a boy could not play with
without breaking. At last St. Pierre could bear it no longer.

"Well, Claude, dass ten days han'-runnin' now, we ain't do not'in' but
whittlin'."

Claude slowly pushed his model from him, looked, as one in a dream,
into his father's face, and suddenly and for the first time saw what
that father had suffered for a fortnight. But into his own face there
came no distress; only, for a moment, a look of tender protestation,
and then strong hope and confidence.

"Yass," he said, rising, "dass true. But we dawn't got whittle no
mo'." He pointed to the model, then threw his strong arms akimbo and
as