brown of mosses, the changeless green of fir and
cypress, were no more than a background, a setting only for the
ravishing colours of those leaves born with the spring, that perish
with the autumn. The wonder of their dying spread over the hills and
unrolled itself, an endless riband following the river, ever as
beautiful, as rich in shades brilliant and soft, as enrapturing,
when they pawed into the remoteness of far northern regions and were
unseen by human eye.

But ere long there sweeps from out the cold north a mighty wind like
a final sentence of death, the cruel ending to a reprieve, and soon
the poor leaves, brown, red and golden, shaken too unkindly, strow
the ground; the snow covers them, and the white expanse has only for
adornment the sombre green of trees that alter not their
garb-triumphing now, as do those women inspired with bitter wisdom
who barter their right to beauty for life everlasting.

In November Esdras, Da'Be and Edwige Legare went off again to the
shanties. The father and Tit'Be harnessed Charles Eugene to the
wood-sleigh, and laboured at hauling in the trees that had been cut,
and piling them near the house; that done, the two men took the
double-handed saw and sawed, sawed, sawed from morning till night;
it was then the turn of the axes, and the logs were split as their
size required. Nothing remained but to cord the split wood in the
shed beside the house, where it was sheltered from the snow; the
huge piles mingling the resinous cypress which gives a quick hot
flame, spruce and red birch, burning steadily and longer,
close-grained white birch with its marble-like surface, slower yet
to be consumed and leaving red embers in the morning after a long
winter's night.

The moment for laying in wood is also that of the slaughtering.
After entrenching against cold comes the defence against hunger. The
quarters of pork went into the brine-tub; from a beam in the shed
there hung the side of a fat heifer-the other half sold to people in
Honfleur-which the cold would keep fresh till spring; sacks of flour
were piled in a corner of the house, and Tit'Be, provided with a
spool of brass wire, set himself to making nooses for hares.

After the bustle of summer they relapsed into easy-going ways, for
the summer is painfully short and one must:-not lose a single hour
of those precious weeks when it is possible to work on the land,
whereas the winter drags slowly and gives all too much time for the
ta