CHAPTER XVII.
"SHE TOOK UP THE BURDEN OF LIFE AGAIN." The second train from Montreal passing through St.Croix on its way to--somewhere else, was late in the afternoon of the fifth of June.
Instead of shrieking into the village depot at four P.M., it was six when it arrived, and halted about a minute and a half to let the passengers out and take passengers in.

Few got in and fewer got out--a sunburnt old Frenchman, a wizen little Frenchwoman, and their pretty, dark-skinned, black-eyed daughter; and a young man, who was tall and fair, and good-looking and gentlemanly, and not a Frenchman, judging by his looks.

But, although he did not look like one, he could talk like one, and had kept up an animated discussion with pretty dark eyes in capital Canadian French for the last hour.

He lifted his hat politely now, with "_Bon jour, Mademoiselle_," and walked away through the main street of the village.
It was a glorious summer evening.

"The western sky was all aflame" with the gorgeous hues of the sunset; the air was like amber mist, and the shrill-voiced Canadian birds, with their gaudy plumage, sang their vesper laudates high in the green gloom of the feathery tamaracks.
A lovely evening with the soft hum of village life, the distant tinkling cow-bells, the songs of boys and girls driving them home, far and faint, and now and then the rumbling of cart-wheels on the dusty road.