rinsed, each in an individual pool which had been made by the damming of a juvenile stream. From the peak of the hill, the bare summits of the Sentinel and the Sugar Cone were in full view behind us. Below was the ocean, level to-day as a pavement of lasuli laid to the round rim of the sky. The vast interval between sky and ocean was filled with a blue lustre characteristic of these northern summer seas.
Wild flowers grew feebly in the scant earth about us. We were at pains not to crush them knowing with what effort they had bloomed at all. The few gardens of St. Pierre are enriched each spring by mould brought from Newfoundland in the holds of fishing-boats. On our way down hill we lingered to flatter a patch of zinnias inside a decrepit gate. The one who had planted them came out of the house. She looked as French as any Pierraise, but she was a Terra Novan who spoke English with a French accent. It was her boys we had photographed as they toiled up hill with a hand-barrow full of linen, aided by a dog tethered at the side. "What had the étrangers meant by 'Turn around' and 'Hold still'?" they had run to her to ask, so she related, untying her head mouchoir as if by so doing to fix more firmly her claim to British birth. As we talked she told us of the St. Pierre vessel that had foundered years before. Thirty-six fathers had been drowned, her husband among them. Her eldest son was now at sea.
