rapture.

With hands upon her hips, refusing to seat herself at table, she
extolled the beauty Of the world as it existed for her: not the
beauty wherein human beings have no hand, which the townsman makes
such an ado about with his unreal ecstasies.-mountains, lofty and
bare, wild seas-but the quiet unaffected loveliness of the level
champaign, finding its charm in the regularity of the long furrow
and the sweetly-flowing stream--the naked champaign courting with
willing abandon the fervent embraces of the sun.

She sang the great deeds of the four Chapdelaines and Edwige Legare,
their struggle against the savagery of nature, their triumph of the
day. She awarded praises and displayed her own proper pride, albeit
the five men smoked their wooden or clay pipes in silence,
motionless as images after their long task; images of earthy hue,
hollow-eyed with fatigue.

"The stumps are hard to get out." at length said the elder
Chapdelaine, "the roots have not rotted in the earth so much as I
should have imagined. I calculate that we shall not be through for
three weeks." He glanced questioningly at Legare who gravely
confirmed him.

"Three weeks ... Yes, confound it! That is what I think too."

They fell silent again, patient and determined, like men who face a
long war.

The Canadian spring had but known a few weeks of life when, by