sea,
growing more and more desolate, with a few lonely islands breaking its
expanse, and the shores sinking lower and lower till, near Tadoussac,
they rose a little in flat-topped bluffs thickly overgrown with stunted
evergreens. Here, into the vast low-walled breadth of the St. Lawrence,
a dark stream, narrowly bordered by rounded heights of rock, steals down
from the north out of regions of gloomy and ever-during solitude. This
is the Saguenay; and in the cold evening light under which the traveller
approaches its mouth, no landscape could look more forlorn than that of
Tadoussac, where early in the sixteenth century the French traders fixed
their first post, and where still the oldest church north of Florida is
standing.

The steamer lies here five hours, and supper was no sooner over than the
passengers went ashore in the gathering dusk. Mr. Arbuton, guarding his
distance as usual, went too, with a feeling of surprise at his own
concession to the popular impulse. He was not without a desire to see
the old church, wondering in a half-compassionate way what such a bit of
American antiquity would look like; and he had perceived since the
little embarrassment at Cacouna that he was a discomfort to the young
lady involved by it. He had caught no glimpse of her till supper, and
then she had briefly supped with an air of such studied unconsciousness
of his presence that it was plain she was thinking of her mistake every
moment. "Well, I'll leave her the freedom of the boat while we stay,"
thought Mr. Arbuton as he went ashore. He had not the least notion
whither the road led, but like the rest he followed it up through the
village, and on among the cottages which seemed for the most part empty,
and so down a gloomy ravine, in the bottom of which, far beneath the
tremulous rustic bridge, he heard the mysterious crash and fall of an
unseen torrent. Before him towered the shadowy hills up into the
starless night; he thrilled with a sense of the loneliness and
remoteness, and he had a formless wish that some one qualified by the
proper associations and traditions were there to share the satisfaction
he felt in the whole effect. At the same instant he was once more aware
of that delicate pressure, that weight so lightly, sweetly borne upon
his arm. It startled him, and again he followed the road, which with a
sudden turn brought him in sight of a hotel and in sound of a
bowling-alley, and therein young ladies' cackle and laugh