This year, more than ever, Maria yearned to attend the-mass after many weeks of remoteness from houses and from churches; the favours she would fain demand seemed more likely to be granted were she able to prefer them before the altar, aided in heavenward flight by the wings of music.
But toward the middle of December much snow fell, dry and fine as dust, and three days before Christmas the north-west wind arose and made an end of the roads.

On the morrow of the storm Chapdelaine harnessed Charles Eugene to the heavy sleigh and departed with Tit'Be; they took shovels to clear the way or lay out another route.
The two men returned by noon, worn out, white with snow, asserting that there would be no breaking through for several days.

The disappointment must be borne; Maria sighed, but the idea came to her that there might be other means of attaining the divine goodwill.
"Is it true, mother," she asked as evening was falling, "that if you repeat a thousand Aves on the day before Christmas you are always granted the thing you seek ?" "Quite true," her mother reverently answered.

"One desiring a favour who says her thousand Aves properly before midnight on Christmas Eve, very seldom fails to receive what she asks." On Christmas Eve the weather was cold but windless.

The two men went out betimes in another effort to beat down the road, with no great hope of success; but long before they left, and indeed long before daylight, Maria began to recite her Aves.