I knew it all from study on the
spot.

From The 'Pomp of the Lavilettes', with which might be associated
'The Lane That Had no Turning', to 'The Right of Way', was a natural
progression; it was the emergence of a big subject which must be treated
in a large bold way, if it was to succeed. It succeeded to a degree
which could not fail to gratify any one who would rather have a wide
audience than a contracted one, who believes that to be popular is not
necessarily to be contemptible--as the ancient Pistol put it, "base,
common and popular."

THE POMP OF THE LAVILETTES

CHAPTER I

You could not call the place a village, nor yet could it be called a
town. Viewed from the bluff, on the English side of the river, it was a
long stretch of small farmhouses--some painted red, with green shutters,
some painted white, with red shutters--set upon long strips of land,
green, yellow, and brown, as it chanced to be pasture land, fields of
grain, or "plough-land."

These long strips of property, fenced off one from the other, so narrow
and so precise, looked like pieces of ribbon laid upon a wide quilt of
level country. Far back from this level land lay the dark, limestone
hills, which had rambled down from Labrador, and, crossing the River St.
Lawrence, stretched away into the English province. The farmhouses and
the long strips of land were in such regular procession, it might almost
have seemed to the eye of the whimsical spectator that the houses and
the ribbon were of a piece, and had been set down there, sentinel after
sentinel, like so many toy soldiers, along the banks of the great river.
There was one important break in the long line of precise settlement,
and that was where the Parish Church, about the middle of the line, had
gathered round it a score or so of buildings. But this only added to the
strength of the line rather than broke its uniformity. Wide stretches of
meadow-land reached back from the Parish Church until they were lost in
the darker verdure of the hills.

On either side of the Parish Church, with its tall, stone tower, were
two stout-built houses, set among trees and shrubbery. They were low
set, broad and square, with heavy-studded, old-fashioned doors. The
roofs were steep and high, with dormer windows and a sort of shelf at
the gables.

They were both on the highest ground in the whole settlement, a little
higher than the site of the Parish Church. The one was the residence of
the ol