He spoke with heat and volubly—­a man of the town who talks every day with his equals, reads the papers, hears public speakers.  The listeners, of a race easily moved by words, were carried away by his plaints and criticisms; the very real harshness of their lives was presented in such a new and startling light as to surprise even themselves.

However Madame Chapdelaine again shook her head.  “Do not say such things as that; there is no happier life in the world than the life of a farmer who owns good land.”

“Not in these parts, Madame Chapdelaine.  You are too far north; the summer is too short; the grain is hardly up before the frosts come.  Each time that I return from the States, and see the tiny wooden houses lost in this wilderness-so far from one another that they seem frightened at being alone-and the woods hemming you in on every side ...  By Heaven!  I lose heart for you, I who live here no longer, and I ask myself how it comes about that all you folk did not long ago seek a kinder climate where you would find everything that makes for comfort, where you could go out for a walk in the winter-time without being in fear of death ...”

Without being in fear of death!  Maria shuddered as the thought swiftly awoke of those dark secrets hidden beneath the ever-lasting green and white of the forest.  Lorenzo Surprenant was right in what he had been saying; it was a pitiless ungentle land.  The menace lurking just outside the door-the cold-the shrouding snows-the blank solitude-forced a sudden entrance and crowded about the stove, an evil swarm sneering presages of ill or hovering in a yet more dreadful silence:—­“Do you remember, my sister, the men, brave and well-beloved, whom we have stain and hidden in the woods?  Their souls have known how to escape us; but their bodies, their-bodies, their bodies, none shall ever snatch them from our hands ...”

The voice of the wind at the comers of the house was loud with hollow laughter, and to Maria it seemed that all gathered within the wooden walls huddled and spoke low, like men whose lives are under a threat and who go in dread.

A burden of sadness was upon the rest of the evening, at least for her.  Racicot told stories of the chase:  of trapped bears struggling and growling so fiercely at the sight of the trapper that he loses courage and falls a-trembling; and then, giving up suddenly when the hunters come in force and the deadly guns are aimed—­giving up, covering their heads with their paws and whimpering with groans and outcries almost human, very heart-rending and pitiful.

After these tales came others of ghosts and apparitions; of blood-curdling visitations or solemn warnings to men who had blasphemed or spoken ill of the priests.  Then, as no one could be persuaded to sing, they played at cards and the conversation dropped to more commonplace themes.  The only memory that Maria carried away of the later talk, as the sleigh bore them homeward through the midnight woods, was of Lorenzo Surprenant extolling the United States and the magnificence of its great cities, the easy and pleasant life, the never-ending spectacle of the fine straight streets flooded with light at evening.