"Come with me, into the woods," he said to her. "We will live there happily together. I don't want an Englishman to set his eyes upon you. I am still able to work. You will help me. We shall want for nothing." And he took her into his lonely habitation beside the Falls of Montmorenci, where in effect the two spent a tranquil, easy existence. At the end of three years, the son of a farmer of Charlesbourg fell in love with the girl, and spite of his attachment, Batoche consented to a marriage between them. It was a rude blow when the bride went forth from his cabin to take up her residence in her husband's house, about twelve miles away, but the sacrifice was generously made, and when ten or eleven months later, a grandchild was born to him, Batoche felt that he had received sufficient compensation for his loss. "Little Blanche will live with me," he said, "and replace her mother." He did not know how sad was the prophecy that he uttered. XI. DEATH IN THE FALLS. It was a beautiful summer evening. The young mother, having recovered from her illness, decided that her first visit should be to the cabin of her old father, and, of course, the baby went with her. After resting awhile, and receiving the caresses of the hermit, the daughter, with the child in her arms, wandered about the familiar environs to enjoy once more all the pleasures attached to her old home. It was a beautiful summer evening. The forest was charged with perfume; a thousand birds fluttered from branch to branch; the earth was spangled with an endless variety of wild flowers; brilliant insects flashed and buzzed in the slanting beams of the sunset; the whole air gently undulated in a rhythmic wave that disposed the soul to revery and prayer. The young woman felt this influence, without, of course, being able to define it, and yielding to its sway, she wandered farther than she had intended, or than her bodily strength justified, from the hut of her father. It was so delightful to revisit all these scenes which she had learned to love so much, and to see them again under such different circumstances. Even the inanimate world is not the same to the wife as it is to the girl. Marriage for woman seems to alter the form, color, scent and effect of material things, giving them a character of pathos, if not of sadness, which they never wore in the pleasant days when the body owed no service to a master, and the mind was, in very literalness, fancy-free.