“When we took up other land above Mistassini,” Samuel Chapdelaine continued, “it was the same thing over again; heavy work and hardship for both of us alike; but she was always full of courage and in good heart ...  We were in the midst of the forest, but as there were some open spaces of rich grass among the rocks we took to raising sheep.  One evening He was silent for a little, and when he began speaking again his eyes were fixed intently upon Maria, as though he wished to make very clear to her what he was about to say.

“It was in September; the time when all the great creatures of the woods become dangerous.  A man from Mistassini who was coming down the river in a canoe landed near our place and spoke to us thiswise:—­’Look after your sheep; the bears came and killed a heifer last week quite close to the houses.’  So your mother and I went off that evening to the pasture to drive the sheep into the pen for the night so that the bears would not devour them.

“I took one side and she the other, as the sheep used to scatter among the alders.  It was growing dark, and suddenly I heard Laura cry out:  ‘Oh, the scoundrels!’ Some animals were moving in the bushes, and it was plain to see they were not sheep, because in the woods toward evening sheep are white patches.  So, ax in hand, I started off running as hard as I could.  Later on, when we were on the way back to the house, your mother told me all about it.  She had come across a sheep lying dead, and two bears that were just going to eat it.  Now it takes a pretty good man, one not easily frightened and with a gun in his hand, to face a bear in September; as for a woman empty-handed, the best thing she can do is to run for it and not a soul will blame her.  But your mother snatched a stick from the ground and made straight for the bears, screaming at them:—­’Our beautiful fat sheep!  Be off with you, you ugly thieves, or I will do for you!’ I got there at my best speed, leaping. over the stumps; but by that time the bears had cleared off into the woods without showing fight, scared as could be, because she had put the fear of death into them.”

Maria listened breathlessly; asking herself if it was really her mother who had done this thing-the mother whom she had always known so gentle and tender-hearted; who had never given Telesphore a little rap on the head without afterwards taking him on her knees to comfort him, adding her own tears to his, and declaring that to slap a child was something to break one’s heart.

The brief spring shower was already spent; through the clouds the moon was showing her face—­eager to discover what was left of the winter’s snow after this earliest rain.  As yet the ground was everywhere white; the night’s deep silence told them that many days must pass before they would hear again the dull roaring of the cataract; but the tempered breeze whispered of consolation and promise.

Samuel Chapdelaine lapsed into silence for a while, his head bowed, his hands resting upon his knees, dreaming of the past with its toilsome years that were yet so full of brave hopes.  When he took up his tale it was in a voice that halted, melancholy with self-reproach.