ain was not
Chaouache's _ile_; and Bonaventure, dumb in the sight of his prayer's
answer, nodded.

"And how do you get there?" the man asks, still in Acadian French; for
he is well enough acquainted with prairies to be aware that one needs
to know the road even to a place in full view across the plain.
Bonaventure, with riot in his heart, and feeling himself drifting over
the cataract of the sinfullest thing that ever in his young life he
has had the chance to do, softly lays down his wood, and comes to the
corner of the galerie.

It is awful to him, even while he is doing it, the ease with which he
does it. If, he says, they find it troublesome crossing the marshy
place by Numa's farm,--_le platin a cote d' l'habitation a
Numa_,--then it will be well to _virer de bord_--go about, _et
naviguer au large_--sail across the open prairie. "Adjieu." He takes
up his fagots again, and watches the spattering squad trot away in the
storm, wondering why there is no storm in his own heart.

They are gone. Sosthene, inside the house, has heard nothing. The
tempest suffocates all sounds not its own, and the wind is the wrong
way anyhow. Now they are far out in the open. Chaouache's _ile_ still
glimmers to them far ahead in the distance, but if some one should
only look from the front window of its dwelling, he could see them
coming. And that would spoil the fun. So they get it into line with
another man's grove nearer by, and under that cover quicken to a
gallop. Away, away; splash, splash, through the _coolees_, around the
_maraises_, clouds of wild fowl that there is no time to shoot into
rising now on this side, now on that; snipe without number, gray as
the sky, with flashes of white, trilling petulantly as they flee;
giant snowy cranes lifting and floating away on waving pinions, and
myriads of ducks in great eruptions of hurtling, whistling wings. On
they gallop; on they splash; heads down; water pouring from soaked
hats and caps; cold hands beating upon wet breasts; horses throwing
steaming muzzles down to their muddy knees, and shaking the rain from
their worried ears; so on and on and on.

The horse-hair halter was nearly done. The breakfast was smoking on
the board. The eyes of the family group were just turning toward it
with glances of placid content, when a knock sounded on the door, and
almost before father or son could rise or astonishment dart from eye
to eye, the door swung open, and a man stood on the threshold