I am here with some Belgians who are going to buy furs from the Indians; we shall push up so soon as the river is clear, and if we pitch a tent above the falls close to your farm I will spend the evening with you." "That is good, Francois, we will expect you." The alders formed a thick and unbroken hedge along the river Peribonka; but the leafless stems did not shut away the steeply sloping bank, the levels of the frozen river, the dark hem of the woods crowding to the farther edge-leaving between the solitude of the great trees, thick-set and erect, and the bare desolateness of the ice only room for a few narrow fields, still for the most part uncouth with stumps, so narrow indeed that they seemed to be constrained in the grasp of an unkindly land.
To Maria Chapdelaine, glancing inattentively here and there, there was nothing in all this to make one feel lonely or afraid.

Never had she known other prospect from October to May, save those still more depressing and sad, farther yet from the dwellings of man and the marks of his labour; and moreover all about her that morning had taken on a softer outline, was brighter with a new promise, by virtue of something sweet and gracious that the future had in its keeping.

Perhaps the coming springtime ...

perhaps another happiness that was stealing toward her, nameless and unrecognized.
Samuel Chapdelaine and Maria were to dine with their relative Azalma Larouche, at whose house they had spent the night.

No one was there but the hostess, for many years a widow, and old Nazaire Larouche, her brother-in-law.