On such days as these the men scarcely left the house except to care for the beasts, and came back on the run, their faces rasped with the cold and shining-wet with snow-crystals melted by the heat of the house.  Chapdelaine would pluck the icicles from his moustache, slowly draw off his sheepskin-lined coat and settle himself by the stove with a satisfied sigh.  “The pump is not frozen?” he asks.  “Is there plenty of wood in the house?”

Assured that the frail wooden fortress is provided with water, wood and food, he gives himself up to the indolences of winter quarters, smoking pipes innumerable while the women-folk are busy with the evening meal.  The cold snaps the nails in the plank walls with reports like pistol-shots; the stove crammed with birch roars lustily; the howling of the wind without is like the cries of a besieging host.

“It must be a bad day in the woods!” thinks Maria to herself; and then perceives that she has spoken aloud.

“In the woods they are better off than we are here,” answers her father.  “Up there where the trees stand close together one does not feel the wind.  You can be sure that Esdras and Da’Be are all right.”

“Yes?”

But it was not of Esdras and Da’Be that she had just been thinking.

CHAPTER IX

ONE THOUSAND AVES

Since the coming of winter they had often talked at the Chapdelaines about the holidays, and now these were drawing near.

“I am wondering whether we shall have any callers on New Year’s Day,” said Madame Chapdelaine one evening.  She went over the list of all relatives and friends able to make the venture.  “Azalma Larouche does not live so far away, but she—­she is not very energetic.  The people at St. Prime would not me to take the journey.  Possibly Wilfrid or Ferdinand might drive from St. Gedeon if the ice on the lake were in good condition.”  A sigh disclosed that she still was dreaming of the coming and going in the old parishes at the time of the New Year, the family dinners, the unlooked-for visits of kindred arriving by sleigh from the next village, buried under rugs and furs, behind a horse whom coat was white with frost.

Maria’s thoughts were turning in another direction.  “If the roads are as bad as they were last year,” said she, “we shall not be able to attend the midnight mass.  And yet I should so much have liked it this time, and father promised ...”

Through the little window they looked on the gray sky, and found little to cheer them.  To go to midnight mass is the natural and strong desire of every French-Canadian peasant, even of those living farthest from the settlements.  What do they not face to accomplish it I Arctic cold, the woods at night, obliterated roads, great distances do but add to the impressiveness and the mystery.  This anniversary of the birth of Jesus is more to them than a mere