"A fine sight, our Marais, eh, boys? Now let us go in together; supper will be waiting." Then as, in the darkness, André came first, he added: "How glad I am to have you home again from the regiment, my Driot!" CHAPTER X. THE UPROOTED VINEYARD. Winter had come. La Fromentière seemed peaceful and happy. Anyone going over the fields and watching the men at work, would have had no fear for the future of the farmstead. The new farm-hand did not excite himself, as Toussaint Lumineau said, that is to say, he worked his fourteen hours a day regularly, without uttering fourteen words. As for André, he was the joy and pride of his father, who, on his part, did not spare himself. Good labourer, good sower, an early riser, careful of the animals and of everything else that came to his hand, the young man seemed to prove that he had found his vocation, and was determined to remain a farmer all his life. And yet at the bottom of his affectionate, restless heart, there was a growing sore. André could not accustom himself to François' absence. He missed the friend of his young life, the companion without whom La Fromentière had never presented itself to his mind. The week after his return home, André had gone to see François and Eléonore at La Roche-sur-Yon. He had found them settled in a house in the outskirts, already somewhat discontented: one inveighing against the hardness of his employers; the other that customers did not come; without any regrets, however, for what they had done, and quite decided as to the advantages of living in a town, and being their own masters. He had gone back without the least wish to follow their example--more severe even than before against the renegades from the old home life; but possessed of a fixed idea, he sought François in everything. La Fromentière that knew François no longer was to him empty and void. It became a thing of which he could not shake himself free; a suffering of which he never spoke, but that everyone unwittingly renewed.