The ordinary subjects of conversation exhausted, they played cards:  quatre-sept and boeuf; then Eutrope looked at his big silver watch and said that it was time to be going.  His lantern lit, the good-byes said, he halted on the threshold for a moment to observe the night.

“It is raining!” he exclaimed.  His hosts made toward the door to see for themselves; the rain had in truth begun, a spring rain with great drops that fell heavily, under which the snow was already softening and melting.  “The sou’east has taken hold,” announced the elder Chapdelaine.  “Now we can say that the winter is practically over.”

Everyone had his own way of expressing relief and delight; but it was Maria who stood longest by the door, hearkening to the sweet patter of the rain, watching the indistinct movement of cloud in the dark sky above the darker mass of the forest, breathing the mild air that came from the south.

“Spring is not far ...  Spring is not far ...”

In her heart she felt that never since the earth began was there a springtime like this springtime to-be.

CHAPTER III

FRANCOIS PASSES BY

One morning three days later, on opening the door, Maria’s ear caught a sound that made her stand motionless and listening.  The distant and continuous thunder was the voice of wild waters, silenced all winter by the frost.

“The ice is going out,” she announced to those within.  “You can hear the falls.”

This set them all talking once again of the opening season, and of the work soon to be commenced.  The month of May came in with alternate warm rains and fine sunny days which gradually conquered the accumulated ice and snow of the long winter.  Low stumps and roots were beginning to appear, although the shade of close-set cypress and fir prolonged the death-struggle of the perishing snowdrifts; the roads became quagmires; wherever the brown mosses were uncovered they were full of water as a sponge.  In other lands it was already spring; vigorously the sap was running, buds were bursting and presently leaves would unfold; but the soil of far northern Canada must be rid of one chill and heavy mantle before clothing itself afresh in green.

A dozen times in the course of the day Maria and her mother opened the window to feel the softness of the air, listen to the tinkle of water running from the last drifts on higher slopes, or hearken to the mighty roar telling that the exulting Peribonka was free, and hurrying to the lake a freight of ice-floes from the remote north.

Chapdelaine seated himself that evening on the door-step for his smoke; a stirring of memory brought the remark—­“Franc will soon be passing.  He said that perhaps he would come to see us.”  Maria replied with a scarce audible “Yes,” and blessed the shadow hiding her face.