The blueberries were fully ripe.  In the burnt lands the purple of the clusters and the green of the leaves now overcame the paling rose of the laurels.  The children began picking at once with cries of delight, but their elders scattered through the woods in search of the larger patches, where one might sit on one’s heels and fill a pail in an hour.  The noise of footsteps on dry twigs, of rustling in the alder bushes, the calls of Telesphore and Alma Rose to one another, all faded slowly into the distance, and about each gatherer was only the buzzing of flies drunk with sunshine, and the voice of the wind in the young birches and aspens.

“There is a fine clump over here,” said a voice.  Maria’s heart beat faster as she arose and went toward Francois Paradis who was kneeling behind the alders.  Side by side they picked industriously for a time, then plunged farther into the woods, stepping over fallen trees, looking about them for the deep blue masses of the ripe berries.

“There are very few this year,” said Francois.  “It was the spring frosts that killed the blossoms.”  He brought to the berry-seeking his woodsman’s knowledge.  “In the hollows and among the alders the snow was lying longer and kept them from freezing.”

They sought again and made some happy finds:  broad clumps of bushes laden with huge berries which they heaped into their pails.  In the space of an hour these were filled; they rose and went to sit on a fallen tree to rest themselves.

Mosquitos swarmed and circled in the fervent afternoon heat.  Every moment the hand must be raised to scatter them; after a panic-stricken flight they straightway returned, reckless and pitiless, bent only on finding one tiny spot to plant a sting; with their sharp note was blended that of the insatiate black-fly, filling the woods with unceasing sound.  Living trees there were not many; a few young birches, some aspens, alder bushes were stirring in the wind among the rows of lifeless and blackened trunks.

Francois Paradis looked about him as though to take his bearings.  “The others cannot be far away,” he said.

“No,” replied Maria in a low voice.  But neither he nor she called to summon them.

A squirrel ran down the bole of a dead birch tree and watched the pair with his sharp eyes for some moments before venturing to earth.  The strident flight of heavy grasshoppers rose above the intoxicated clamour of the flies; a wandering air brought the fall’s dull thunder through the alders.

Francois Paradis stole a glance at Maria, then turned his eyes away and tightly clasped his hands.  Ah, but she was good to look upon!  Thus to sit beside her, to catch these shy glimpses of the strong bosom, the sweet face so modest and so patient, the utter simplicity of attitude and of her rare gestures; a great hunger for her awoke in him, and with it a new and marvellous tenderness, for he had lived his life with other men, in hard give-and-take, among the wild forests and on the snowy plains.