large wooden cupboard; close by, the table; a bench against the
wall; on the other side of the door the sink and the pump. A
partition beginning at the opposite wall seemed designed to divide
the house in two, but it stopped before reaching the stove and did
not begin again beyond it, in such fashion that these divisions of
the only room were each enclosed on three sides and looked like a
stage setting-that conventional type of scene where the audience are
invited to imagine that two distinct apartments exist although they
look into both at once.

In one of these compartments the father and mother had their bed;
Maria and Alma Rose in the other. A steep stairway ascended from a
comer to the loft where the boys slept in the summer-time; with the
coming of winter they moved their bed down and enjoyed the warmth of
the stove with the rest of the family.

Hanging upon the wall were the illustrated calendars of shopkeepers
in Roberval and Chicoutimi; a picture of the infant Jesus in his
mother's arms-a rosy-faced Jesus with great blue eyes, holding out
his chubby hands; a representation of some unidentified saint
looking rapturously heavenward; the first page of the Christmas
number of a Quebec newspaper, filled with stars big as moons and
angels flying with folded wings.

"Were you a good girl while I was away, Alma Rose?"

It was the mother who replied:--"Alma Rose was not too naughty;
but Telesphore has been a perfect torment to me. It is not so much
that he does what is wrong; but the things he says! One might
suppose that the boy had not all his wits."