t old times.

"Nor have you altered in these seven years; not a bit; as for Maria
... surely you find a difference!"

He gazed at Maria with something of wonder in his eyes. "You see
that ... that I saw her the other day at Peribonka." Tone and
manner showed that the meeting of a fortnight ago had been allowed
to blot the remoter days from his recollection. But since the talk
was of her he ventured an appraising glance.

Her young vigour and health, the beautiful heavy hair and sunburnt
neck of a country girl, the frank honesty of eye and gesture, all
these things, thought he, were possessions of the child of seven
years ago; and twice or thrice he shook his head as though to say
that, in truth, she had not changed. But the consciousness too was
there that he, if not she, had changed, for the sight of her before
him took strange hold upon his heart.

Maria's smile was a little timid, but soon she dared to raise her
eyes and look at him in turn. Assuredly a handsome fellow; comely of
body, revealing so much of supple strength; comely of face in
well-cut feature and fearless eye ... To herself she said with
some surprise that she had not thought him thus--more forward
perhaps, talking freely and rather positively-but now he scarcely
spoke at all and everything about him bad an air of perfect
simplicity. Doubtless it was his expression that had given her this
idea, and his bold straightforward manner.

Mother Chapdelaine took up her questioning:--"And so you sold the
farm when your father died?"

"Yes, I sold everything. I was never a very good hand at farming,
you know. Working in the shanties, trapping, making a little money
from time to time as a guide or in trade with the Indians, that is
the life for me; but to scratch away at the same fields from one
year's end to another, and stay there forever, I would not have been
able to stick to that all my life; I would have felt like a cow
tethered to a stake."

"That is so, some men are made that way. Samuel, for example, and
you, and many another. It seem as if the woods had some magic for
you ..." She shook her head and looked at him in wonderment.
"Frozen in winter, devoured by flies in summer; living in a tent on
the snow, or in a log cabin full of chinks that the wind blows
through, you like that better than spending your life on a good
farm, near shops and houses. Just think of it; a nice bit of level
land without a stump or a hollow, a good warm house all pa