the river's bank, it was always forest: a dark green background
of cypress against which a lonely birch tree stood out here and there,
its bole naked and white as the column of a ruined temple.

On the other side of the road the strip of cleared land was continuous
and broader; the houses, set closer together, seemed an outpost of the
village; but ever behind the bare fields marched the forest, following
like a shadow, a gloomy frieze without end between white ground and gray
sky.

"Charles Eugene, get on there!"

Chapdelaine woke and made his usual good-humoured feint toward the
whip; but by the time the horse slowed down, after a few livelier
paces, he had dropped off again, his hands lying open upon his knees
showing the worn palms of the horse-hide mittens, his chin resting
upon the coat's thick fur.

After a couple of miles the road climbed a steep hill and entered
the unbroken woods. The houses standing at intervals in the flat
country all the way from the village came abruptly to an end, and
there was no longer anything for the eye to rest upon but a
wilderness of bare trunks rising out of the universal whiteness.
Even the incessant dark green of balsam, spruce and gray pine was
rare; the few young and living trees were lost among the endless
dead, either lying on the ground and buried in snow, or still erect
but stripped and blackened. Twenty years before great forest fires
had swept through, and the new growth was only pushing its way amid
the standing skeletons and the charred down-timber. Little hills
followed one upon the other, and the road was a succession of ups
and downs scarcely more considerable than the slopes of an ocean
swell, from trough to crest, from crest to trough.

Maria Chapdelaine drew the cloak about her, slipped her hands under
the warm robe of gray goat-skin and half closed her eyes. There was
nothing to look at; in the settlements new houses and barns might go
up from year to year, or be deserted and tumble into ruin; but the
life of the woods is so unhurried that one must needs have more than
the patience of a human being to await and mark its advance.

Alone of the three travellers the horse remained fully awake. The
sleigh glided over the hard snow, grazing the stumps on either hand
level with the track. Charles Eugene accurately followed every turn
of the road, took the short pitches at a full trot and climbed the
opposite hills with a leisurely pace, like the capable animal