Maria Chapdelaine

f awaiting a few dry days to cut and-store it. But after many weeks of fine weathe

it will rain again," said Edwige Legare with a gloomy face. Or it was old Chapdelaine who followed the movement of the white clouds t

wind had backed afresh, and the cheerful clouds of yesterday, now torn and shapeless,

-making weather. They say that down by the end of the lake some people of the same parish hav

y. Legare, Esdras and the father cut; Da'Be and Tit'Bé followed close on their heels, raking the hay together. Toward evening all five took their forks in hand and made it into cocks, high and carefully built, lest a change of wind should bring rain. But the sun

nto their eyes; when evening came, such was the ache of backs continually bent, they could not straighten themselves without making wry faces. Yet the

in a shady spot to keep it cool; and when throats became unbearably dry with heat, exertion an

in the barn before night. The scythes had done their work and the forks came into play. They threw down the cocks, spread the hay in the sun, and toward the en

lunged into the hard-packed hay, raised a thick mat of it with strain of wrist and back, and unloaded it to one side. By the end of the week the h

ared that the sunshine had not been timed with exact relation to their peculiar needs, for th

nd to pay him wages it was because he had entered their service eleven years before, when the children were young, and they kept him now, partly through habit, partly because they were loth to lose the help of so tremendous a worker.

daily use to measure oats for the horse or Indian corn for the fowls, not to mention twenty other casual purposes they were continually serving. By th

th tamarack logs, giving a steady and continuous heat. When the oven was hot enough, Maria slipped in the pans of

onstruct, which unquestionably should have been put in hand without delay; but on each trip to the-village, by one piece of bad luck and another, someone forgo

k after the second baking." And Maria would reply never a word, knowing full well that the mother would presently stretch herself on the bed for a little nap and not awake till morning. She then would revive the smudge that

dly and one red gleam escaped through the chink; the dusky border of the forest stole a little closer in the night. Maria sat ver

er, for she could think of him and of herself with nothing to distract her dear imaginings. Simple they were, these thoughts of hers, and never did they travel far afield. In the springtime he will come back; this return of hi

rmally, as others spoke it: Fran?ois Paradis, from St. Michel de Mistass

is faith, has lived the whole year discreetly, without drinking or swearing. There are no blueberries yet to gather-it is only springtime-yet some good reason they find for rambling off to the woo

rry the dream no further for the sudden pain stabbing her heart. Ah! dear God! how long will she have been lonely for him before that moment comes! A summer to be lived throug

n to her of marriage. A young man from the village and another from Normandin had b

Zotique best; but he went off to the drive on the St. Maurice, and he wasn't to be

table-for she was unable to imagine that between them it should have befallen otherwise; so must this love give warmth and unfading colour to every day of the dullest life. Always had she dim consciousness of s

cool sighing; again and again, farther away and yet farther, an owl is hooting; the chill that ushers in the dawn is still remote. And Ma

ing years; the encounter with some young man, like other young men, whose patient and hopeful courting ends by winning affection; a marriage then, and afterwards a vista of days under another roof, but scarce differ

, of what they are and will be to one another, he and she, something within her bosom has strange power to burn with the touch of fire, and yet to make her shiver. All the st

the red gleam q

t she cannot bring herself at once to rise, loth as s