The others talked among themselves or watched the play.  Madame recalled the many gatherings at St. Gedeon in the days of her girlhood, and looked from one to the other, with unconcealed pleasure at the fact that three young men should thus assemble beneath her roof.  But Maria sat at the table devoting herself to the cards, and left it for some vacant seat near the door with scarcely a glance about her.  Lorenzo Surprenant was always by her side and talking; she felt the continual regard of Eutrope Gagnon with that familiar look of patient waiting; she was conscious of the handsome bronzed face and fearless eyes of Francois Paradis who sat very silent beyond the door, elbows on his knees.

“Maria is not at her best this evening,” said Madame Chapdelaine by way of excusing her, “she is really not used to having visitors you see...”  Had she but known! ...

Four hundred miles away, at the far headwaters of the rivers, those Indians who have held aloof from missionaries and traders are squatting round a fire of dry cypress before their lodges, and the world they see about them, as in the earliest days, is filled with dark mysterious powers:  the giant Wendigo pursuing the trespassing hunter; strange potions, carrying death or healing, which wise old men know how to distil from roots and leaves; incantations and every magic art.  And here on the fringe of another world, but a day’s journey from the railway, in this wooden house filled with acrid smoke, another all-conquering spell, charming and bewildering the eyes of three young men, is being woven into the shifting cloud by a sweet and guileless maid with downcast eyes.

The hour was late; the visitors departed; first the two Surprenants, then Eutrope Gagnon, only Francois Paradis was left,—­standing there and seeming to hesitate.

“You will sleep here to-night, Francois?” asked the father.

His wife heard no reply.  “Of course!” said she.  “And to-morrow we will all gather blueberries.  It is the feast of Ste. Anne.”

When a few moments later Francois mounted to the loft with the boys, Maria’s heart was filled with happiness.  This seemed to bring him a little nearer, to draw him within the family circle.

The morrow was a day of blue sky, a day when from the heavens some of the sparkle and brightness descends to earth.  The green of tender grass and young wheat was of a ravishing delicacy, even the dun woods borrowed something from the azure of the sky.

Francois came down in the morning looking a different man, in clothes borrowed from Da’Be and Esdras, and after he had shaved and washed Madame Chapdelaine complimented him on his appearance.

When breakfast was over and the hour of the mass come, all told their chaplet together; and then the long delightful idle Sunday lay before them.  But the day’s programme was already settled.  Eutrope Gagnon came in just as they were finishing dinner, which was early, and at once they all set forth, provided with pails, dishes and tin mugs of every shape and size.