He found her a haven a good half-day's ride out across the prairies north-westward, in the home of his long-time acquaintance, Sosthene Gradnego, who had no more heart than his wife had to say No to either their eminent friend or a houseless widow; and, as to children, had so many already, that one more was nothing. They did not feel the burden of her, she died so soon; but they soon found she had left with them a positive quantity in her little prattling, restless, high-tempered Bonaventure. Bonaventure Deschamps: he was just two years younger than their own little Zosephine. Sosthene was already a man of some note in this region,--a region named after a bird. Why would it not often be well so to name places,--for the bird that most frequents the surrounding woods or fields? How pleasant to have one's hamlet called Nightingale, or Whippoorwill, or Goldfinch, or Oriole! The home of Zosephine and Bonaventure's childhood was in the district known as Carancro; in bluff English, Carrion Crow. CHAPTER II. BONAVENTURE AND ZOSEPHINE. They did not live _a la chapelle_; that is, in the village of six or eight houses clustered about the small wooden spire and cross of the mission chapel. Sosthene's small ground-story cottage, with garret stairs outside in front on the veranda and its five-acre farm behind, was not even on a highway nor on the edge of any rich _bas fond_,--creek-bottom. It was _au large_,--far out across the smooth, unscarred turf of the immense prairie, conveniently near one of the clear circular ponds--_maraises_--which one sees of every size and in every direction on the seemingly level land. Here it sat, as still as a picture, within its hollow square of China-trees, which every third year yielded their limbs for fuel; as easy to overlook the first time--as easy to see the next time--as a bird sitting on her eggs. Only the practised eye could read aright the infrequent obscure signs of previous travel that showed the way to it,--sometimes no more than the occasional soilure of the short turf by a few wheels or hoofs where the route led into or across the _coolees_--rivulets--that from _marais_ to _marais_ slipped southward toward the great marshes of the distant, unseen Gulf.