Fresh as of old, to this day the hill-top keeps its crown of emerald, the slope preserves its varied verdure; but of the ancient grove there remain but five gnarled maples. These trees, decaying little by little beneath the touch of time, like the closing years of the master of the domain, appear almost like a visible and ceaseless prophecy that his life will fade out with that of the last veteran of the grove. When the last log shall have been consumed in warming the old man's frozen limbs, its ashes will mingle with his own--a grim admonition, like that of the priest on Ash Wednesday: "Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, ut in pulverem reverteris." The manor house, situated between the river St. Lawrence and the bluff, was divided from the water only by the highway, the grove, and a spacious yard. It was a one-storied structure with high gables, about a hundred feet long, with two wings of fifty feet. A bake-house, built into the northeast corner of the kitchen, served also the purpose of a laundry. A small attachment, adjoining the great drawing-room on the southwest, gave symmetry to the proportions of this piece of early Canadian architecture. Two other small buildings at the southeast served, the one for a dairy, the other for a second wash-house. This wash-house stood over a well, which was connected by a long trough with the kitchen of the main building. Coach-houses, barns, stables, five small sheds (three of them standing in the grove), a kitchen garden to the southwest of the manor house, two orchards on the north and northeast, respectively--all these went to make up the establishment of one of the old French Canadian seigneurs. The _habitants_ called the establishment "le village D'Haberville." Sitting on the crest of the bluff, it mattered little in what direction one allowed his gaze to wander. Immediately below the little village, dazzlingly white, appeared to spring from the green bosom of the meadows. On all sides a panorama of splendid magnificence unrolled itself. There was the sovereign of streams, already seven leagues in width, confined on the north by the ancient barrier of Laurentians, whose feet it washes, and whose peopled slopes are in view from Cape Tourmente to Malbaie; yonder, to the west, _Ile aux Oies_ and _Ile aux Grues_; right in front, the Piliers Islands, one of which is as arid as the Ægean rock of Circe, the other always green, like the Ogygian paradise of Calypso; northward, the reefs and shoals of the Loups-Marins, so dear to Canadian hunters; and, lastly, the hamlets of l'Islet and St. Jean-Port-Joli, crowned with their gleaming spires. It was nearly nine in the evening when the young men arrived on the slope overlooking the manor. At the first glimpse of the scene which recalled the happiest days of his existence, Jules paused and exclaimed: