spoke but one speech they would all
be brothers. What an absurdity to be divided by mere syllables."

So they parted, with many "Au revoirs" and mutual compliments at the
water-side. The willing Francois planted one foot on a stone in the
water and handed the young lady into the boat, and Cuiller hastening for
the seat next her, made a pretended accidental lunge of his heavy
shoulder at him into the water. Francois kept his balance and, quite
unconscious of the malicious stratagem, held the ill-wisher himself from
going over, which he almost did, to Josephte's demure amusement; next
Chrysler got in and Francois essayed to push off. But as the boat stuck
in the bottom and refused to stir, he suddenly dropped his hold, and
with an "Avance done!" gallantly slushed his way into the water
alongside, in his Sunday trousers, lifted the gunwale and started her
afloat, amidst a shower of final "Au revoirs," and the rose _chaloupe_
moved with noiseless smoothness down the current.

Peace reigned over every surrounding. The broad, molten-like surface;
the dusky idealizing of the lines of cottages and delicate silhouetting
of the trees along the shore near them; the artistic picture of the old
white farm-house, mystic-looking in the soft evening light, with its
shapes of lilac-trees rioting about it and the three great oaks
darkening the bank in front; the ghost of light along the distant
horizon; the gentle coolness of the air; the occasional far-off echo of
some cry; and the regular splash and gleam of the oars as they leave the
water or dip gently in again. A fish leaps. An ocean steamer, low in the
distance, can be descried creeping noiselessly on. The islands and
shores mirror themselves half-distinctly in the water.

A mile above, some boatful of pensive hearts are singing. So calm is the
evening that the cadences come distinctly to us, and almost the words
can be plainly caught. In a lull of their song, faint sounds of another
arrive from far away. Rising and falling, now heard and now not,
plaintive and recurring, it is like the voices of spirits.

But farther, farther yet, a still more distant echo--a suggestion
scarcely real--floats also to us. The whole river, in its length and
breadth, from Soulanges and the Lake of Two Mountains, and the tributary
Ottawa, to Quebec and Kamouraska and the shores of the Gulf beyond, all
is alive with plaintive sweetness, echoing from spirit to spirit, (for
it is a fiction that music i