At the time of the Conquest the stubborn habitants,
refusing to accept the yielding of Quebec as the end of French power in
their proud province, had remained in arms and active, and had only
yielded when the musket and the torch had done their work, and smoking
ruins marked the places where homes had been. They took their fortune
with something of the heroic calm of men to whom an idea was
more than aught else. Jean Jacques' father, grandfather, and
great-great-grandfather had lived here, no one of them rising far, but
none worthless or unnoticeable. They all had had "a way of their own," as
their neighbours said, and had been provident on the whole. Thus it was
that when Jean Jacques' father died, and he came into his own, he found
himself at thirty a man of substance, unmarried, who "could have had the
pick of the province." This was what the Old Cure said in despair, when
Jean Jacques did the incomprehensible thing, and married l'Espagnole, or
"the Spanische," as the lady was always called in the English of the
habitant.
When she came it was spring-time, and all the world was budding, exuding
joy and hope, with the sun dancing over all. It was the time between the
sowing and the hay-time, and there was a feeling of alertness in
everything that had life, while even the rocks and solid earth seemed to
stir. The air was filled with the long happy drone of the mill-stones as
they ground the grain; and from farther away came the soft, stinging cry
of a saw-mill.
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