to sing them would they not straightway forget!

The clouds a little while ago drifting singly across a moonlit sky
were now spread over the heavens in a vast filmy curtain, and the
dim light passing through it was caught by the earth's pale coverlet
of melting snow; between the two wan expanses the ranks of the
forest darkly stretched their long battle-front.

Maria shuddered; the emotion which had glowed in her heart was
dying; once again she said to herself: "And yet it is a harsh
land, this land of ours ... Why should I linger here?"

Then it was that a third voice, mightier than the others, lifted
itself up in the silence: the voice of Quebec--now the song of a
woman, now the exhortation of a priest. It came to her with the
sound of a church bell, with the majesty of an organ's tones, like a
plaintive love-song, like the long high call of woodsmen in the
forest. For verily there was in it all that makes the soul of the
Province: the loved solemnities of the ancestral faith; the lilt of
that old speech guarded with jealous care; the grandeur and the
barbaric strength of this new land where an ancient race has again
found its youth.

Thus spake the voice.--"Three hundred years ago we came, and we
have remained ... They who led us hither might return among us
without knowing shame or sorrow, for if it be true that we have
little learned, most surely nothing is forgot.

"We bore oversea our prayers and our songs; they are ever the same.
We carried in our bosoms the hearts of the men of our fatherland,