ew that she was pleased
with it to the bottom of her heart because it was beginning to look
like the old parish where she had grown up, and where she would so
gladly have spent her days. But instead of telling me that I was no
better than a silly old fool for wishing to leave--as most women
would have done-and finding hard things to say about my folly, she
only sighed a little as she thought of the drudgery that was to
begin all over again somewhere back in the woods, and kindly and
softly she would say to me:--'Well, Samuel! Are we soon to be on the
move once more?' When she said that I could not answer, for I was
speechless with very shame at thinking of the wretched life I had
given her; but I knew well enough that it would end in our moving
again and pushing on to the north, deeper into the woods, and that
she would be with me and take her share in this hard business of
beginning anew--as cheerful and capable and good-humoured as ever,
without one single word of reproach or spitefulness."

He was silent after that, and seemed to ponder long his sorrow and
the things which might have been. Maria, sighing, passed a hand
across her face as though she would brush away a disquieting vision;
but in very truth there was nothing she wished to forget. What she
heard had moved her profoundly, and she felt in a dim and troubled
way that this story of a hard life so bravely lived had for her a
deep and timely significance and held some lesson if only she might
understand it.

"How little do we know people!" was the thought that filled her
mind. Since her mother had crossed the threshold of death she seemed
to wear a new aspect, not of this world; and now all the homely and
familiar traits endearing her to them were being overshadowed by
other virtues well-nigh heroic in their quality.

To pass her days in these lonely places when she would have dearly
loved the society of other human beings and the unbroken peace of
village life; to strive from dawn till nightfall, spending all her
strength in a thousand heavy tasks, and yet from dawn till nightfall
never losing patience nor her happy tranquillity; continually to see
about her only the wilderness, the great pitiless forest, and to
hold in the midst of it all an ordered way of life, the gentleness
and the joyousness which are the fruits of many a century sheltered
from such rudeness--was it not surely a hard thing and a worthy? And
the recompense? After death, a little word