"I am glad that I saw you, for I shall be passing up the river near
your place in two or three weeks, when the ice goes out. I am here
with some Belgians who are going to buy furs from the Indians; we
shall push up so soon as the river is clear, and if we pitch a tent
above the falls close to your farm I will spend the evening with
you."

"That is good, Francois, we will expect you."

The alders formed a thick and unbroken hedge along the river
Peribonka; but the leafless stems did not shut away the steeply
sloping bank, the levels of the frozen river, the dark hem of the
woods crowding to the farther edge-leaving between the solitude of
the great trees, thick-set and erect, and the bare desolateness of
the ice only room for a few narrow fields, still for the most part
uncouth with stumps, so narrow indeed that they seemed to be
constrained in the grasp of an unkindly land.

To Maria Chapdelaine, glancing inattentively here and there, there
was nothing in all this to make one feel lonely or afraid. Never had
she known other prospect from October to May, save those still more
depressing and sad, farther yet from the dwellings of man and the
marks of his labour; and moreover all about her that morning had
taken on a softer outline, was brighter with a new promise, by
virtue of something sweet and gracious that the future had in its
keeping. Perhaps the coming springtime ... perhaps another
happiness that was stealing toward her, nameless and unrecognized.

Samuel Chapdelaine and Maria were to dine with their relative Azalma
Larouche, at whose house they had spent the night. No one was there