With a start of fear the mother half rose. "Not about the boys?"

"No, Madame Chapdelaine. Esdras and Da'Be are well, if that be
God's pleasure. The word I bring is not of them-not of your own kin.
It concerns a young man you know." Pausing a moment he spoke a name
under his breath. :--"Francois Paradis."

His glance was lifted to Maria and as quickly fell, but she did not
so much as see his look of honest distress. Deep stillness weighed
upon the house-upon the whole universe. Everything alive and dead
was breathlessly awaiting news of such dreadful moment-touching him
that was for her the one man in all the world ...

"This is what happened. You knew perhaps that he was foreman in a
shanty above La Tuque, on the Vermilion River. About the middle of
December he suddenly told the boss that he was going off to spend
Christmas and New Year at Lake St. John-up here. The boss objected,
naturally enough; for if the men take ten or fifteen days' leave
right in the middle of the winter you might as well stop the work
altogether. The boss did not wish him to go and said so plainly; but
you know Francois-a man not be thwarted when a notion entered his
head. He answered that he was set on going to the lake for the
holidays, and that go he would. Then the boss let him have his way,
afraid to lose a man useful beyond the common, and of such
experience in the bush."

Eutrope Gagnon was speaking with unusual ease, slowly, but without
seeking words, as though his story had been shaped beforehand. Amid
her overwhelming grief the thought flitted through Maria's heart:--