"You think them absurd?" replied madame.

"M. Bois-le-Duc told me he had great talent. You know that, for a time the cure sent him to Laval at his own expense, and now talks of sending him to Paris."

"To Paris! and for what purpose?"

"Oh! the cure thinks he will make a great painter. He is always painting during his holidays. I'm sure I can't see the good of it."

"Well, my mother, M. Bois-le-Duc is a very clever man, and whatever he does is good, but I, for one, have no very high opinion of Eugene Lacroix."

While this conversation had been going on, Noel McAllister did ample justice to the good fare his mother set before him. Madame McAllister was nothing if not practical, and cooking was one of her strong points. Her _bouillon_, a sort of hotch-potch, was so good that a hungry Esau might well have bartered his birthright for it. Her pancakes and _galettes_ were marvels of culinary skill.

Noel, having appeased his appet.i.te, sharpened by the salt sea breezes, and after enjoying a pipe, said, "Now, my mother, I think I shall go out for a walk and hear the news. I shall not be late."

"Very well, my son. Come back soon," said the old lady, and, as she heard the door close on Noel, she smiled grimly to herself and muttered,

"The news, eh? The news! That is to say in plain words, Marie Gourdon."

CHAPTER III.

"Il y a longtemps qui je t'aime, Jamais je ne t'oublierai."

French Canadian Song.

It is a beautiful evening. The tide is rushing in over the crisp yellow sands of the beach at Father Point. The sun is setting slowly, as if loath to leave this part of the world, and, as he departs, touches with his rays the gold and crimson tops of the maple and sumach trees, which border the road leading into the churchyard of the Good St. Anne.

The clouds are scudding over the sky in great ma.s.ses of copper color and gold, parting every here and there, and showing glimpses of clear translucent blue beyond.

And how quickly the whole panorama changes as the sun sinks to his bed in the sea. Anon everything was golden and amethystine, like a foreshadowing of the splendor of the New Jerusalem. A moment later and all is a deep vivid crimson, flooding the scene with its rich radiance and casting into shade even the tints of yon tall sumach tree in the prime of its early autumn coloring. The old grey slate boulders on the beach are illumined by it, and stand out in prominence from the yellow sands.

All is still to-night, save for the beating of the waves against the rocks, or ever and anon the sound of a gun fired from the distant light-house.

The light-house of Father Point stands out clear and distinct on a long neck of rocky land running into the St. Lawrence.

All is still. But hark! A song comes faintly, carried on the evening breeze, and presently it grows clearer, louder, more distinct.

The words now can be heard plainly. They are those of that old French Canadian song so familiar to all dwellers in the Province of Quebec:

"A la claire fontaine, M'en allant promener, J'ai trouve l'eau si belle Que je me suis baigne.

Il y a longtemps que je t'aime Jamais je ne t'oublierai."

The voice was tuneful, strong, and full and clear, though lacking in cultivation. It was that of a girl, who was sitting under the shadow of a large boulder on the beach. She seemed about eighteen, though, in the uncertain wavering light of the sunset, it was impossible to distinguish her features clearly.

Her gown was of simple pink cotton, and on her head she wore a large peaked straw hat, which gave her a quaint old-world appearance.

Her brown hair had escaped from beneath this large head-gear, and blew about in pretty, untidy curls round her neck and shoulders. In her hand was a roll of music, which she had just brought from the church, where she had been practising for the morrow's ma.s.s.

The girl was Marie Gourdon, only daughter of old Jean Baptiste Gourdon, fisherman of Father Point. As far as the educational advantages of Father Point and Rimouski could take her Marie had gone, but that was not saying much. Her father was fairly well-to-do for that part of the world, and had sent her, at an early age, to the convent of Rimouski. There she was brought up under the careful training of Mother Annette, the superioress, and received enough musical instruction to enable her to act as organist at the Father Point church, and to direct the choir at Grand Ma.s.s.

Marie Gourdon was rather a lonely girl, although she had more outside interests than many of her age. She had few companions, for most of the young girls of the district obtained situations in Quebec, or some of the large towns, finding the dullness of Father Point insupportable. Her father and brother had this summer been on long fishing expeditions, one taking them even so far as the Island of Anticosti, so that Marie was left much to her own devices. Noel McAllister, it is true, was often here, but neither his mother nor M. Bois-le-Duc seemed to like to see him in Marie Gourdon's society.

This evening she had been thinking over these things after choir-practice. Lately she had found time pa.s.s very slowly. Her father and brother had come home early in the evening, but went off directly after supper to skin the seals, and she would see no more of them that night. In all probability in a few days they would go on another expedition.

A quick footstep crunching the sand and a voice saying, "Good evening, Marie," made the girl turn round to see Noel McAllister standing beside her.

She sprang to her feet and exclaimed, with a certain glad ring in her voice:

"Oh! Noel, is that you? I am so pleased you are back."

"Yes, Marie, it is I, not my ghost, though you look as if you had seen one. And are you pleased to see me?"

"Of course I am. I think you need scarcely ask that question."

"And what have you been doing, my dear one, since I have been away?"

"Oh! Noel, the time has seemed so long, so wearisome. There has been no one here to speak to, except for a week or two when Eugene Lacroix came home for his holidays. I used to watch him paint, and he talked to me about his work at Laval."

"Marie, I don't like Eugene Lacroix. He is stupid, conceited, impractical."

"Indeed, I think you are mistaken. M. Bois-le-Duc calls him a genius.

Eugene, too, is a most interesting companion, and he has told me many tales of countries far beyond here."

"Well, he may be a genius, though I for my part cannot see it. And you, my dear one, do you long to see those countries beyond the sea? I know I do. I am tired of this life, this continual struggle for a bare existence. The same thing day after day, year after year; nothing new happens. Why did M. Bois-le-Duc teach me of an outer world beyond the bleak Gulf of St. Lawrence? Why did he teach me to read Virgil and Plato?

He did it for the best, no doubt; but I think he did wrong. He has stirred up within me a restless evil spirit of discontent. Oh! Marie, to think I am doomed to be a fisherman here all my life. It is hard."

"Yes, Noel, it is hard. It has always seemed to me that you with your talents, your learning, are thrown away here. But why not go to Quebec or Montreal? You would have a wider sphere there."

"I would go to-morrow, Marie, if it were not for one thing."

"What is that, Noel?"

"Marie, do you not know?"

"I suppose your reason is that you do not wish to leave your mother,"

said the girl hesitatingly.

"No, Marie, that is not the reason. My mother would let me go to-morrow, if I wished."

"Then I cannot understand why you stay. You would do much better in Quebec, you with your ability."

"You cannot understand, Marie? You do not know that it is because of _you_, and you alone, that I stay on in this place, smothering all my ambitions, my hopes of advancement. No, Marie, you say you do not understand. If you spoke more truly you would say you did not care where I went."

"Noel," said the girl gently, and looking distressed, "you know, my dear one, that I do care very much, and I cannot think why you speak to me in that bitter way."

"Marie, do you care? You have seemed lately so indifferent to my plans, and it has made me angry, for, my darling, you must have seen that my love for you is deep, strong, mighty, like the flow of yonder great river. Aye, it is stronger, greater, more unchangeable."