Clerks—­that was plain enough for anyone; but their minds were a little hazy as to the father’s business.

However Ephrem Surprenant chimed in with.—­” Piano-tuner; that was it, just so!” And his glance at Conrad Neron his neighbour was a trifle superior and challenging, as though intimating.—­” You would not believe me, and maybe you don’t know what it means, but now you see ...”

“Piano-tuner,” Samuel Chapdelaine echoed in turn, slowly grasping the meaning of the words.  “And is that a good trade?  Do you earn handsome wages?  Not too handsome, eh! ...  At any rate you are well educated, you and your sons; you can read and write and cipher?  And here am I, not able even to read!”

“Nor I!” struck in Ephrem Surprenant, and Conrad Neron and Egide Racicot added:  “Nor I!” “Nor I!” in chorus, whereupon the whole of them broke out laughing.

A motion of the Frenchman’s hand told them indulgently that they could very well dispense with these accomplishments; to himself of little enough use at the moment.

“You were not able to make a decent living out of your trades over there.  That is so, is it not?  And therefore you came here?”

The question was put simply, without thought of offence, for he was amazed that anyone should abandon callings that seemed so easy and so pleasant for this arduous life on the land.

Why indeed had they come? ...  A few months earlier they would have discovered a thousand reasons and clothed them in words straight from the heart:  weariness of the footway and the pavement, of the town’s sullied air; revolt against the prospect of lifelong slavery; some chance stirring word of an irresponsible speaker preaching the gospel of vigour and enterprise, of a free and healthy life upon a fruitful soil.  But a few months ago they could have found glowing sentences to tell it all ...  Now their best was a sorry effort to evade the question, as they groped for any of the illusions that remained to them.

“People are not always happy in the cities,” said the father.  “Everything is dear, and one is confined.”

In their narrow Parisian lodging it had seemed so wonderful a thing to them, the notion that in Canada they would spend their days out of doors, breathing the taintless air of a new country, close beside the mighty forest.  The black-flies they had not foreseen, nor comprehended the depth of the winter’s cold; the countless ill turns of a land that has no pity were undivined.

“Did you picture it to yourselves as you have found it,” Chapdelaine persisted, “the country here, the life?”

“Not exactly,” replied the Frenchman in a low voice.  “No, not exactly ...”  And a shadow crossed his face which brought from Ephrem.  Surprenant:—­“It is rough here, rough and hard!”