of winter with a semblance of mad haste, as though in dread of
another winter already on the way.

Esdras and Da'Be returned from the shanties where they had worked
all the winter. Esdras was the eldest of the family, a tall fellow
with a huge frame, his face bronzed, his hair black; the low
forehead and prominent chin gave him a Neronian profile,
domineering, not without a suggestion of brutality; but be spoke
softly, measuring his words, and was endlessly patient. In face
alone had he anything of the tyrant; it was as though the long
rigours of the climate and the fine sense and good humour of the
race had refined his heart to a simplicity and kindliness that his
formidable aspect seemed to deny.

Da'Be, also tall, was less heavily built and more lively and merry.
He was like his father.

The married couple had given their first children, Esdras and Maria,
fine, high-sounding, sonorous names; but they had apparently wearied
of these solemnities, for the next two children never beard their
real names pronounced; always had they been called by the
affectionate diminutives of childhood, Da'Be and Tit'Be. With the
last pair, however, there had been a return to the earlier
ceremonious manner-Telesphore ... Alma Rose. "When the boys get
back we are going to make land," the father had promised. And, with
the help of Edwige Legare, their hired man, they set about the task.

In the Province of Quebec there is much uncertainty in the spelling
and the use of names. A scattered people in a huge half-wild
country, unlettered for the most part and with no one to turn to for