The Devil's Pool

years old. You're getting on toward thirty, my boy, and when a man passes that age, you know, in our province, he's considered too old to begin housekeeping again. You have

ter your little Solange, and especially your little Sylvain, who isn't four years old and hardly keeps still a minute day or night. His blood is hot, like yours: he'll make a good workman, but he's a terrible child, and my old woman can't run fast enough now to catch him when he runs off toward the ditch or in among the feet of the cattle. And then, when my daughter-in-law brings this other one into the world, her last but one will be thrown on my wife's hands for a month, at least

f. You know what you've lost, and you don't know what you may find. I had an excellent wife, a good-looking wife, sweet and brave, good to her father and mother, good to her husband, good to her children, a good worker,

do we. But I'm not talking about forgetting her. The good God willed that she should leave us, and we don't let a day pass without showing Him, by our prayers, our thoughts, our words, our acts, that we respect her memory and are grieved at her departure. But if she could speak to you from the other world and tell you her will, she would bid you

d Germain, "I will do what you

se you to take a young woman. That isn't what you need. Youth is fickle; and as it's a burden to bring up three children, especially when they're the children of another marriage, what you must have is a kind-hearted soul, wise and

. "Suppose she should hate the poor little on

rarer in these parts than good ones, and a man must be a fo

village. There's Louise and Sylvaine and Claud

oo poor-or too pretty; for we must think of that, too, my s

n ugly one, pray?" said G

o sad as to have ugly, puny, unhealthy children. But a woman still in her pri

one as you want we must have her made to order; especially as you don't want

ain? what do you say to a widow withou

f any just now

t there are o

view, father; so tell