with handsome
straight fences and heavy soil. Only two hours' drive to the railway
... Perhaps it is wicked of me to say so; but all my married life
I have felt sorry that your father's taste was for moving, and
pushing on and on into the woods, and not for living on a farm in
one of the old parishes."

Through the little square window she threw a melancholy glance over
the scanty cleared fields behind the house, the barn built of
ill-joined planks that showed marks of fire, and the land beyond
still covered with stumps and encompassed by the forest, whence any
return of hay or grain could only be looked for at the end of long
and patient waiting.

"O look," said Alma Rose, "here is Chien come for his share of
petting." The dog laid his long head with the sad eyes upon her
knee; uttering little friendly words, Maria bent and caressed him.

"He has been lonely without you like the rest of us," came from Alma
Rose. "Every morning he used to look at your bed to see if you were
not back." She called him to her. "Come, Chien; come and let me pet
you too."

Chien went obediently from one to the other, half closing his eyes
at each pat. Maria looked about her to see if some change, unlikely
though that might be, had taken place while she was away.

The great three-decked stove stood in the centre of the house; the
sheet-iron stove-pipe, after mounting for some feet, turned at a
right angle and was carried through the house to the outside, so
that none of the precious warmth should be lost. In a comer was the
large wooden cupboard; close by, the table; a bench against the
wall; on the other side of the door the sink and the pump. A
partition beginning at the opposite wall seemed designed to divide
the house in two, but it stopped before reaching the stove and did
not begin again beyond it, in such fashion that these divisions of
the only room were each enclosed on three sides and looked like a
stage setting-that conventional type of scene where the audience are
invited to imagine that two distinct apartments exist although they
look into both at once.

In one of these compartments the father and mother had their bed;
Maria and Alma Rose in the other. A steep stairway ascended from a
comer to the loft where the boys slept in the summer-time; with the
coming of winter they moved their bed down and enjoyed the warmth of
the stove with the rest of the family.

Hanging upon the wall were the illustrated calendars of shopk