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.

"At Normandin, at Mistassini and the other places we have lived I
always worked hard; no one can say nay to that. Many an acre of
forest have I cleared and I have built houses and barns, always
saying to myself that one day we should have a comfortable farm
where your mother would live as do the women in the old parishes,
with fine smooth fields all about the house as far as the eye could
see, a kitchen garden, handsome well-fed cattle in the farm-yard ...
And, after it all, here is she dead in this half-savage spot,
leagues from other houses and churches, and so near the bush that
some nights one can hear the foxes bark. And it is my fault that she
has died so ... My fault ... My fault." Remorse seized him; be
shook his head at the pity of it, his eyes upon the floor.

"Many times it happened, after we had spent five or six years in
one place and all had gone well, that we were beginning to get
together a nice property--good pasturage, broad fields ready for
sowing, a house lined inside with pictures from the papers ...
Then people came and settled about us; we bad but to wait a little,
working on quietly, and soon we should have been in the midst of a
well-to-do settlement where Laura could have passed the rest of her
days in happiness ... And then all of a sudden I lost heart; I
grew sick and tired of my work and of the countryside; I began to
hate the very faces of those who had taken up land near-by and used
to come to see us, thinking that we should be pleased to have a