"Oh! then where is he?"
"Don't know."
"Isn't that rather strange, that his wife should be here, and that you should not know where the husband is?"
"I can't see the ships on the other side of the world."
"Where did he go to?"
"Well, when he last sailed"—deliberately—"he went to Newcastle. His ship is what they call a tramp; it don't belong to any loine. So at Newcastle she was hired to go to Africy. Like enough, there she got cargo for some place else."
"Oh! a very long voyage."
"She carries steam; the longest voyage comes to an end quick enough in these days."
"Has Madame Le Maître always lived on this island? Was she married here?"
"She came here a year this October past. She came from a place near the Pierced Rock, south of Gaspé Basin. I lived there myself. I came here because the skipper had good land here that she said I could farm."