—­And then, the surnmertide; the glory of sunny noons, the heated quivering air that blurs the horizon and the outline of the forest, the flies swarming and circling in the sun’s rays, and but three hundred paces from the house the rapids and the fall—­white foam against dark water—­the mere sight of it filling one with a delicious coolness.  In its due time the harvest; the grain that gives life heaped into the barns; then autumn and soon the returning winter ...  But here was the marvel of it, that the winter seemed no longer abhorrent or terrifying; it brought in its train the sweet intimacies of a house shut fast, and beyond the door, with the sameness and the soundlessness of deep-drifted snow, peace, a great peace . .

In the cities were the strange and wonderful things whereof Lorenzo Surprenant had told, with others that she pictured to herself confusedly:  wide streets suffused with light, gorgeous shops, an easy fife of little toil with a round of small pleasures and distractions.  Perhaps, though, one would come to tire of this restlessness, and, yearning some evening only for repose and quiet, where would one discover the tranquillity of field and wood, the soft touch of that cooler air that draws from the north-west after set of sun, the wide-spreading peacefulness that settles on the earth sinking to untroubled sleep.

“And yet they must be beautiful!” thought she, still dreaming of those vast American cities ...  As though in answer, a second voice was raised.

—­Over there was it not a stranger land where people of an alien race spoke of unfamiliar things in another tongue, sang other songs?  Here ...

—­The very names of this her country, those she listened to every day, those heard but once, came crowding to memory:  a thousand names piously best owed by peasants from France on lakes, on rivers, on the settlements of the new country they were discovering and peopling as they went—­lac a l’Eau-Claire—­la Famine—­Saint-Coeur-de-Marie—­Trois-Pistoles—­Sainte Rose-du-Degel—­Pointe-aux-Outardes—­Saint-Andre-de-l’ Epouvante ...  An uncle of Eutrope Gagnon’s lived at Saint-Andre-de-l’Epouvante; Racicot of Honfleur spoke often of his son who was a stoker on a Gulf coaster, and every time new names were added to the old; names of fishing villages and little harbours on the St. Lawrence, scattered here and there along those shores between which the ships of the old days had boldly sailed toward an unknown land—­Pointe-Mille-Vaches—­les Escoumins—­Notre-Dame-du-Portage—­les Grandes-Bergeronnes—­Gaspe.

—­How sweet to hear these names where one was talking of distant acquaintance and kinsfolk, or telling of far journeys!  How dear and neighhourly was the sound of them, with a heart-warming friendly ring that made one feel as he spoke them:—­“Throughout all this land we are at home ... at home ...”

—­Westward, beyond the borders of the Province; southward, across the line were everywhere none but English names.  In time one might learn to speak them, even might they at last come familiarly to the ear; but where should one find again the happy music of the French names?