The meal was one long discussion about husbandry, with a few amusing stories and bits of harmless gossip thrown in; now and then one of the farmers, suddenly remembering where he was, would labour some pious remark which the priests acknowledged with a nod or an absent-minded "Yes! Yes!" The dinner over at last, some of the guests departed after lighting their pipes.

The cure, catching a glance from Chapdelaine, seemed to recall something; arising, he motioned to Maria, and went before her into the next room which served him both for visitors and as his office.
A small harmonium stood against the wall; on the other side was a table with agricultural journals, a Civil Code and a few books bound in black leather; on the walls hung a portrait of Pius X., an engraving of the Holy Family, the coloured broadside of a Quebec merchant with sleighs and threshing-machines side by side, and a number of official notices as to precautions against forest fires and epidemics amongst cattle.
Turning to Maria, the cure said kindly enough;--"So it appears that you are distressing yourself beyond what is reasonable and right ?" She looked at him humbly, not far from believing that the priest's supernatural power had divined her trouble without need of telling.
He inclined his tall figure, and bent toward her his thin peasant face; for beneath the robe was still the tiller of the soil: the gaunt and yellow visage, the cautious eyes, the huge bony shoulders.
Even his hands--hands wont to dispense the favours of Heaven-were those of the husbandman, with swollen veins beneath the dark skin.
But Maria saw in him only the priest, the cure of the parish, appointed of God to interpret life to her and show her the path of duty.
"Be seated there," he said, pointing to a chair.

She sat down somewhat like a schoolgirl who is to have a scolding, somewhat like a woman in a sorcerer's den who awaits in mingled hope and dread the working of his unearthly spells...

...

...
An hour later the sleigh was speeding over the hard snow.
Chapdelaine drowsed, and the reins were slipping from his open hands.