Beyond the fields, at the border of the forest plenty of dead trees yet were standing.

Esdras and Legare took ax in hand and felled for three days; the trunks were piled, awaiting another fall of snow when they could be loaded on the big wood-sleigh.
All through October, frosty and rainy days came alternately, and meanwhile the woods were putting on a dress of unearthly loveliness.
Five hundred paces from the Chapdelaine house the bank of the Peribonka fell steeply to the rapid water and the huge blocks of stone above the fall, and across the river the opposite bank rose in the fashion of a rocky amphitheatre, mounting to loftier heights-an amphitheatre trending in a vast curve to the northward.

Of the birches, aspens, alders and wild cherries scattered upon the slope, October made splashes of many-tinted red and gold.

Throughout these weeks the ruddy brown of mosses, the changeless green of fir and cypress, were no more than a background, a setting only for the ravishing colours of those leaves born with the spring, that perish with the autumn.

The wonder of their dying spread over the hills and unrolled itself, an endless riband following the river, ever as beautiful, as rich in shades brilliant and soft, as enrapturing, when they pawed into the remoteness of far northern regions and were unseen by human eye.
But ere long there sweeps from out the cold north a mighty wind like a final sentence of death, the cruel ending to a reprieve, and soon the poor leaves, brown, red and golden, shaken too unkindly, strow the ground; the snow covers them, and the white expanse has only for adornment the sombre green of trees that alter not their garb-triumphing now, as do those women inspired with bitter wisdom who barter their right to beauty for life everlasting.
In November Esdras, Da'Be and Edwige Legare went off again to the shanties.