"Are you mostly on the roads?" Donelle asked presently. Nick was growing restless under her hands. "Yes, when I’m not somewhere else. I fish some, and Father Mantelle teaches me and I read a lot, but I’m on the road a good deal." "I think," Donelle beamed, "I think your Father Mantelle is going to teach me. I heard Mamsey talking about it. Does he keep school?" "No. He’s the curé. He teaches only a few. He knows everything in the world. He once lived in Quebec. He’s old so they sent him here." "Well!" Donelle suddenly turned. "I’m going now, but I shall often walk on the road." She flung this back mischievously. At a distance her shyness disappeared. A few days later she met Tom again, this time she was more at her ease. They were young, lonely, and the spring helped thaw the superficial crust of convention. It was after they had seen each other several times that Tom confided to Donelle his feeling about roads. "They’re like friends," he said, blushing and laughing. "A road doesn’t mean anything to me," Donelle replied, "but something to walk or ride on, something that gets you somewhere." "Yes, it does get you somewhere, but you don’t always have to ride or walk on it. If you think about it, it gets you somewhere," said Tom. Donelle paused to whistle Nick back, the dog was after something in the bushes. "You’re very queer," she said at last eyeing Tom furtively. "Now I think about dogs and cats and birds as real, but I never thought about a road being real." Donelle was looking at the ground as if it were something alive upon which she had stepped inadvertently. "Tell me more about roads," she said. "There isn’t much, I’ve never told any one before—they would laugh." "I will not laugh." And indeed Donelle was very serious. "It began when I was a little chap. I didn’t have much to play with and a boy has to have something. I used to wonder where the road went and when I was only five I got to the top of the hill and looked beyond. My father walloped me for running away. I wasn’t really running away, but of course he wouldn’t have understood, and my mother was frightened. I didn’t go again for a long time. I was always a bit of a coward and I remembered the whipping." "I don’t believe you are a coward, Tom Gavot." "I am, a little. You see, I hate to be hurt, I sort of—dread it, but once I make the start, I forget and go on like everyone else." "I think that’s being braver than most people. If you are afraid and still do things, that’s not cowardly." Donelle spoke loyally and Tom gave her a long side glance of gratitude. The spring was in Tom’s blood, this lately-come friend was developing him rapidly. "Well, anyway, by the time I was seven I managed the hill again. From that time on I went every day. I think there must be a dent in a rock where I used to sit, playing with the road."