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