"'Oh, mère Babinot,' I whispered, scarcely able to make the sound of the words. 'It is as tall as the church door and all white.'
"She sits up in bed and stares at me like a corpse. 'La Rose,' she says,—just like that, shrill as a whistle of wind,—'La Rose, do you see a head to it?'
"'No, not any!'
"'Oh, mon Dieu, mon Dieu! Then it's sure! It is the very one, the horse without head!'
"And the next day she took only a little spoonful of tea, and in two weeks she was dead, poor mère Babinot; and that's as true as that I made my communion last Easter. Oh, it's often seen hereabouts, that horse. It's a sign that something will happen, and never has it failed yet."
They made their way, La Rose and Michel, slowly over the low hills, picking the blueberries that grew thickly in clumps of green close to the ground. La Rose always wore a faded yellow-black dress, the skirt caught up, to save it, over a red petticoat; and on her small brown head she carried the old Acadian mouchoir, black, brought up to a peak in front, and knotted at the side.
She picked rapidly, with her alert, spry movements, her head always cocked a little to one side, almost humorously, as she peered about among the bushes for the best spots. And wherever he was, Michel heard her chattering softly to herself, in an inconsequential undertone, now humming a scrap of some pious song, now commenting on the quality of the berry crop—never had she seen so few and so small as these last years. Surely there must be something to account for it. Perhaps the birds had learned the habitude of devouring them—now addressing some strayed sheep that had ventured with timid bleats within range: "Te voilà, petit méchant! Little rogue! What are you looking about for? Did the others go off and leave you? Eh bien, that's how it happens, mon petit. They'll leave you. The world's like that. Eh, là, là!"
He liked to go to the other side of the hill, out of sight of her, where he could imagine that he was lost dans les bois. Then he would listen for her continual soft garrulity; and if he could not hear it he would wait quietly for a minute in the silence, feeling a strange exhilaration, which was almost pain, in the presence of the great sombre spaces, the immense emptiness of the overhanging sky, until he could endure it no longer.
"La Rose!" he would call. "Êtes-vous toujours là?"