that they would ever be foolish
enough to put up with such a way of living."

He spoke with heat and volubly--a man of the town who talks every
day with his equals, reads the papers, hears public speakers. The
listeners, of a race easily moved by words, were carried away by his
plaints and criticisms; the very real harshness of their lives was
presented in such a new and startling light as to surprise even
themselves.

However Madame Chapdelaine again shook her head. "Do not say such
things as that; there is no happier life in the world than the life
of a farmer who owns good land."

"Not in these parts, Madame Chapdelaine. You are too far north; the
summer is too short; the grain is hardly up before the frosts come.
Each time that I return from the States, and see the tiny wooden
houses lost in this wilderness-so far from one another that they
seem frightened at being alone-and the woods hemming you in on every
side ... By Heaven! I lose heart for you, I who live here no
longer, and I ask myself how it comes about that all you folk did
not long ago seek a kinder climate where you would find everything
that makes for comfort, where you could go out for a walk in the
winter-time without being in fear of death ..."

Without being in fear of death! Maria shuddered as the thought
swiftly awoke of those dark secrets hidden beneath the ever-lasting
green and white of the forest. Lorenzo Surprenant was right in what
he had been saying; it was a pitiless ungentle land. The menace
lurking just outside the door-the cold-the shrouding snows-the blank
solitude-forced a sudden entrance and crowded about the stove, an
evil swarm sneering presages of ill or hovering in a yet more
dreadful silence:--"Do you remember, my sister, the men, brave and
well-beloved, whom we have stain and hidden in the woods? Their
souls have known how to escape us; but their bodies, their-bodies,
their bodies, none shall ever snatch them from our hands ..."

The voice of the wind at the comers of the house was loud with
hollow laughter, and to Maria it seemed that all gathered within the
wooden walls huddled and spoke low, like men whose lives are under a
threat and who go in dread.

A burden of sadness was upon the rest of the evening, at least for
her. Racicot told stories of the chase: of trapped bears struggling
and growling so fiercely at the sight of the trapper that he loses
courage and falls a-trembling; and then, giving up suddenly when th