_A Chance Acquaintance. _

 BY W. D. HOWELLS. 

 BOSTON: JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY

 Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co. 

 1873. 

 University Press: Welch, Bigelow, & Co. , Cambridge. 

A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 

I. 

UP THE SAGUENAY. 

On the forward promenade of the Saguenay boat which had been advertisedto leave Quebec at seven o'clock on Tuesday morning, Miss Kitty Ellisonsat tranquilly expectant of the joys which its departure should bring, and tolerantly patient of its delay; for if all the Saguenay had notbeen in promise, she would have thought it the greatest happiness justto have that prospect of the St. Lawrence and Quebec. The sun shone witha warm yellow light on the Upper Town, with its girdle of gray wall, andon the red flag that drowsed above the citadel, and was a friendlylustre on the tinned roofs of the Lower Town; while away off to thesouth and east and west wandered the purple hills and the farmlit plainsin such dewy shadow and effulgence as would have been enough to make theheaviest heart glad. Near at hand the river was busy with every kind ofcraft, and in the distance was mysterious with silvery vapors; littlebreaths of haze, like an ethereal colorless flame, exhaled from itssurface, and it all glowed with a lovely inner radiance. In the middledistance a black ship was heaving anchor and setting sail, and the voiceof the seamen came soft and sad and yet wildly hopeful to the dreamy earof the young girl, whose soul at once went round the world before theship, and then made haste back again to the promenade of the Saguenayboat. She sat leaning forward a little with her hands fallen into herlap, letting her unmastered thoughts play as they would in memories andhopes around the consciousness that she was the happiest girl in theworld, and blest beyond desire or desert. To have left home as she haddone, equipped for a single day at Niagara, and then to have comeadventurously on, by grace of her cousin's wardrobe, as it were, toMontreal and Quebec; to be now going up the Saguenay, and finally to bedestined to return home by way of Boston and New York;--this was morethan any one human being had a right to; and, as she had written home tothe girls, she felt that her privileges ought to be divided up among allthe people of Eriecreek. She was very grateful to Colonel Ellison andFanny for affording her these advantages; but they being now out ofsight in pursuit of state-rooms, she was not thinking of them inrelation to her pleasure in the morning scene, but was rather regrettingthe absence of a lady with whom they had travelled from Niagara, and towhom she imagined she would that moment like to say something in praiseof the prospect. This lady was a Mrs. Basil March of Boston; and thoughit was her wedding journey and her husband's presence ought to haveabsorbed her, she and Miss Kitty had sworn a sisterhood, and werepledged to see each other before long at Mrs. March's home in Boston. Inher absence, now, Kitty thought what a very charming person she was, andwondered if all Boston people were really like her, so easy and friendlyand hearty. In her letter she had told the girls to tell her Uncle Jackthat he had not rated Boston people a bit too high, if she were to judgefrom Mr. And Mrs. March, and that she was sure they would help her asfar as they could to carry out his instructions when she got to Boston. 

These instructions were such as might seem preposterous if no moreparticular statement in regard to her Uncle Jack were made, but will beimaginable enough, I hope, when he is a little described. The Ellisonswere a West Virginia family who had wandered up into a corner ofNorthwestern New York, because Dr. Ellison (unceremoniously known toKitty as Uncle Jack) was too much an abolitionist to live in aslaveholding State with safety to himself or comfort to his neighbors. Here his family of three boys and two girls had grown up, and hither intime had come Kitty, the only child of his youngest brother, who hadgone first to Illinois and thence, from the pretty constant adversity ofa country editor, to Kansas, where he joined the Free State party andfell in one of the border feuds. Her mother had died soon after, findDr. Ellison's heart bowed itself tenderly over the orphan. She wassomething not only dear, but sacred to him as the child of a martyr tothe highest cause on earth; and the love of the whole family encompassedher. One of the boys had brought her from Kansas when she was yet verylittle, and she had grown up among them as their youngest sister; butthe doctor, from a tender scruple against seeming to usurp the place ofhis brother in her childish thought, would not let her call him father, and in obedience to the rule which she soon began to give their love, they all turned and called him Uncle Jack with her. Yet the Ellisons, though they loved their little cousin, did not spoil her, --neither thedoctor, nor his great grown-up sons whom she knew as the boys, nor hisdaughters whom she called the girls, though they were wellnigh womenwhen she came to them. She was her uncle's pet and most intimate friend, riding with him on his professional visits till she became as familiar afeature of his equipage as the doctor's horse itself; and he educatedher in those extreme ideas, tempered by humor, which formed thecharacter of himself and his family. They loved Kitty, and played withher, and laughed at her when she needed ridiculing; they made a jest oftheir father on the one subject on which he never jested, and even theantislavery cause had its droll points turned to the light. They hadseen danger and trouble enough at different times in its service, but noenemy ever got more amusement out of it. Their house was a principal_entrepôt_ of the underground railroad, and they were always helpinganxious travellers over the line; but the boys seldom came back from anexcursion to Canada without adventures to keep the family laughing for aweek; and they made it a serious business to study the comic points oftheir beneficiaries, who severally lived in the family records by somegrotesque mental or physical trait. They had an irreverent name amongthemselves for each of the humorless abolition lecturers who unfailinglyabode with them on their rounds; and these brethren and sisters, as theycalled them, paid with whatever was laughable in them for thesubstantial favors they received. 

Miss Kitty, having the same natural bent, began even as a child to sharein these harmless reprisals, and to look at life with the samewholesomely fantastic vision. But she remembered one abolition visitorof whom none of them made fun, but treated with a serious distinctionand regard, --an old man with a high, narrow forehead, and thereon athick upright growth of gray hair; who looked at her from under bushybrows with eyes as of blue flame, and took her on his knee one night andsang to her "Blow ye the trumpet, blow!" He and her uncle had beentalking of some indefinite, far-off place that they called Boston, interms that commended it to her childish apprehension as very little lessholy than Jerusalem, and as the home of all the good and great peopleoutside of Palestine. 

In fact, Boston had always been Dr. Ellison's foible. In the beginningof the great antislavery agitation, he had exchanged letters(corresponded, he used to say) with John Quincy Adams on the subject ofLovejoy's murder; and he had met several Boston men at the Free SoilConvention in Buffalo in 1848. "A little formal perhaps, a littlereserved, " he would say, "but excellent men; polished, and certainly ofsterling principle": which would make his boys and girls laugh, as theygrew older, and sometimes provoke them to highly colored dramatizationsof the formality of these Bostonians in meeting their father. The yearspassed and the boys went West, and when the war came, they took servicein Iowa and Wisconsin regiments. By and by the President's Proclamationof freedom to the slaves reached Eriecreek while Dick and Bob happenedboth to be home on leave. After they had allowed their sire his rapture, "Well, this is a great blow for father, " said Bob; "what are you goingto do now, father? Fugitive slavery and all its charms blotted outforever, at one fell swoop. Pretty rough on you, isn't it? No more menand brothers, no more soulless oligarchy. Dull lookout, father. "

"O no, " insinuated one of the girls, "there's Boston. "

"Why, yes, " cried Dick, "to be sure there is. The President hasn'tabolished Boston. Live for Boston. "

And the doctor did live for an ideal Boston, thereafter, so far at leastas concerned a never-relinquished, never-fulfilled purpose of some daymaking a journey to Boston. But in the mean time there were otherthings; and at present, since the Proclamation had given him a countryworth living in, he was ready to honor her by studying her antiquities. In his youth, before his mind had been turned so strenuously to theconsideration of slavery, he had a pretty taste for the mystery of theMound Builders, and each of his boys now returned to camp withinstructions to note any phenomena that would throw light upon thisinteresting subject. They would have abundant leisure for research, since the Proclamation, Dr. Ellison insisted, practically ended the war. 

The Mound Builders were only a starting-point for the doctor. Headvanced from them to historical times in due course, and it happenedthat when Colonel Ellison and his wife stopped off at Eriecreek on theirway East, in 1870, they found him deep in the history of the Old FrenchWar. As yet the colonel had not intended to take the Canadian routeeastward, and he escaped without the charges which he must otherwisehave received to look up the points of interest at Montreal and Quebecconnected with that ancient struggle. He and his wife carried Kitty withthem to see Niagara (which she had never seen because it was so near);but no sooner had Dr. Ellison got the despatch announcing that theywould take Kitty on with them down the St. Lawrence to Quebec, and bringher home by way of Boston, than he sat down and wrote her a letter ofthe most comprehensive character. As far as concerned Canada his mindwas purely historical; but when it came to Boston it was strangelyre-abolitionized, and amidst an ardor for the antiquities of the place, his old love for its humanitarian pre-eminence blazed up. He would haveher visit Faneuil Hall because of its Revolutionary memories, but notless because Wendell Phillips had there made his first antislaveryspeech. She was to see the collections of the Massachusetts HistoricalSociety, and if possible certain points of ancient colonial interestwhich he named; but at any rate she was somehow to catch sight of theauthor of the "Biglow Papers, " of Senator Sumner, of Mr. Whittier, ofDr. Howe, of Colonel Higginson, and of Mr. Garrison. These people wereall Bostonians to the idealizing remoteness of Dr. Ellison, and he couldnot well conceive of them asunder. He perhaps imagined that Kitty wasmore likely to see them together than separately; and perhaps indeedthey were less actual persons, to his admiration, than so many figuresof a grand historical composition. Finally, "I want you to remember, mydear child, " he wrote, "that in Boston you are not only in thebirthplace of American liberty, but the yet holier scene of itsresurrection. There everything that is noble and grand and liberal andenlightened in the national life has originated, and I cannot doubt thatyou will find the character of its people marked by every attribute of amagnanimous democracy. If I could envy you anything, my dear girl, Ishould envy you this privilege of seeing a city where man is valuedsimply and solely for what he is in himself, and where color, wealth, family, occupation, and other vulgar and meretricious distinctions arewholly lost sight of in the consideration of individual excellence. "

Kitty got her uncle's letter the night before starting up the Saguenay, and quite too late for compliance with his directions concerning Quebec;but she resolved that as to Boston his wishes should be fulfilled to theutmost limit of possibility. She knew that nice Mr. March must beacquainted with some of those very people. Kitty had her uncle's letterin her pocket, and she was just going to take it out and read it again, when something else attracted her notice. 

The boat had been advertised to leave at seven o'clock, and it was nowhalf past. A party of English people were pacing somewhat impatiently upand down before Kitty, for it had been made known among the passengers(by that subtle process through which matters of public interesttranspire in such places) that breakfast would not be served till theboat started, and these English people had the appetites which go beforethe admirable digestions of their nation. But they had also the goodtemper which does not so certainly accompany the insular good appetite. The man in his dashing Glengarry cap and his somewhat shabby gray suittook on one arm the plain, jolly woman who seemed to be his wife, and onthe other, the amiable, handsome young girl who looked enough like himto be his sister, and strode rapidly back and forth, saying that theymust get up an appetite for breakfast. This made the women laugh, and sohe said it again, which made them laugh so much that the elder lost herbalance, and in regaining it twisted off her high shoe-heel, which shebriskly tossed into the river. But she sat down after that, and thethree were presently intent upon the Liverpool steamer which was justarrived and was now gliding up to her dock, with her population ofpassengers thronging her quarter-deck. 

"She's from England!" said the husband, expressively. 

"Only fancy!" answered the wife. "Give me the glass, Jenny. " Then, aftera long survey of the steamer, she added, "Fancy her being from England!"They all looked and said nothing for two or three minutes, when thewife's mind turned to the delay of their own boat and of breakfast. "This thing, " she said, with that air of uttering a novelty which theEnglish cast about their commonplaces, --"this this thing doesn't startat seven, you know. "

"No, " replied the younger woman, "she waits for the Montreal boat. "

"Fancy her being from England!" said the other, whose eyes and thoughtshad both wandered back to the Liverpool steamer. 

"There's the Montreal boat now, comin' round the point, " cried thehusband. "Don't you see the steam?" He pointed with his glass, and thenstudied the white cloud in the distance. "No, by Jove! it's a saw-millon the shore. "

"O Harry!" sighed both the women, reproachfully. 

"Why, deuce take it, you know, " he retorted, "I didn't turn it into asaw-mill. It's been a saw-mill all along, I fancy. "

Half an hour later, when the Montreal boat came in sight, the womenwould have her a saw-mill till she stood in full view in mid-channel. Their own vessel paddled out into the stream as she drew near, and thetwo bumped and rubbed together till a gangway plank could he passed fromone to the other. A very well dressed young man stood ready to get uponthe Saguenay boat, with a porter beside him bearing his substantialvalise. No one else apparently was coming aboard. 

The English people looked upon him for an instant with wrathful eyes, asthey hung over the rail of the promenade. "Upon my word, " said the elderof the women, "have we been waitin' all this time for one man?"

"Hush, Edith, " answered the younger, "it's an Englishman. " And they allthree mutely recognized the right of the Englishman to stop, not onlythe boat, but the whole solar system, if his ticket entitled him to apassage on any particular planet, while Mr. Miles Arbuton of Boston, Massachusetts, passed at his ease from one vessel to the other. He hadoften been mistaken for an Englishman, and the error of thosespectators, if he had known it, would not have surprised him. Perhaps itmight have softened his judgment of them as he sat facing them atbreakfast; but he did not know it, and he thought them three very commonEnglish people with something professional, as of public singing oracting, about them. The young girl wore, instead of a travelling-suit, avivid light blue dress; and over her sky-blue eyes and fresh cheeks aglory of corn-colored hair lay in great braids and masses. It wasmagnificent, but it wanted distance; so near, it was almost harsh. Mr. Arbuton's eyes fell from the face to the vivid blue dress, which was notquite fresh and not quite new, and a glimmer of cold dismissal came intothem, as he gave himself entirely to the slender merits of the steamboatbreakfast. 

He was himself, meantime, an object of interest to a young lady who satnext to the English party, and who glanced at him from time to time, outof tender gray eyes, with a furtive play of feeling upon a sensitiveface. To her he was that divine possibility which every young man is toevery young maiden; and, besides, he was invested with a halo of romanceas the gentleman with the blond mustache, whom she had seen at Niagarathe week before, on the Goat Island Bridge. To the pretty matron at herside, he was exceedingly handsome, as a young man may frankly be to ayoung matron, but not otherwise comparable to her husband, thefull-personed good-humored looking gentleman who had just added sausageto the ham and eggs on his plate. He was handsome, too, but his fullbeard was reddish, whereas Mr. Arbuton's mustache was flaxen; and hisdress was not worn with that scrupulosity with which the Bostonian borehis clothes; there was a touch of slovenliness in him that scarcelyconsorted with the alert, ex-military air of some of his movements. "Good-looking young John Bull, " he thought concerning Mr. Arbuton, andthen thought no more about him, being no more self-judged before thesupposed Englishman than he would have been before so much Frenchman orSpaniard. Mr. Arbuton, on the other hand, if he had met an Englishman sowell dressed as himself, must at once have arraigned himself, and hadhimself tacitly tried for his personal and national difference. Helooked in his turn at these people, and thought he should have nothingto do with them, in spite of the long-lashed gray eyes. 

It was not that they had made the faintest advance towards acquaintance, or that the choice of knowing them or not was with Mr. Arbuton; but hehad the habit of thus protecting himself from the chances of life, and aconscience against encouraging people whom he might have to drop forreasons of society. This was sometimes a sacrifice, for he was not pastthe age when people take a lively interest in most other human beings. When breakfast was over, and he had made the tour of the boat, and seenall his fellow-passengers, he perceived that he could have little incommon with any of them, and that probably the journey would require thefull exercise of that tolerant spirit in which he had undertaken abranch of summer travel in his native land. 

The rush of air against the steamer was very raw and chill, and theforward promenade was left almost entirely to the English professionalpeople, who walked rapidly up and down, with jokes and laughter of theirkind, while the wind blew the girl's hair in loose gold about her freshface, and twisted her blue drapery tight about her comely shape. Whenthey got out of breath they sat down beside a large American lady, witha great deal of gold filling in her front teeth, and presently roseagain and ran races to and from the bow. Mr. Arbuton turned away indispleasure. At the stern he found a much larger company, most of whomhad furnished themselves with novels and magazines from the stock onboard and were drowsing over them. One gentleman was reading aloud tothree ladies the newspaper account of a dreadful shipwreck; other ladiesand gentlemen were coming and going forever from their state-rooms, asthe wont of some is; others yet sat with closed eyes, as if having cometo see the Saguenay they were resolved to see nothing of the St. Lawrence on the way thither, but would keep their vision sacred to thewonders of the former river. 

Yet the St. Lawrence was worthy to be seen, as even Mr. Arbuton owned, whose way was to slight American scenery, in distinction from hiscountrymen who boast it the finest in the world. As you leave Quebec, with its mural-crowned and castled rock, and drop down the statelyriver, presently the snowy fall of Montmorenci, far back in its purplehollow, leaps perpetual avalanche into the abyss, and then you areabreast of the beautiful Isle of Orleans, whose low shores, with theirexpanses of farmland, and their groves of pine and oak, are still aslovely as when the wild grape festooned the primitive forests and wonfrom the easy rapture of old Cartier the name of Isle of Bacchus. Fortwo hours farther down the river either shore is bright and populouswith the continuous villages of the _habitans_, each clustering aboutits slim-spired church, in its shallow vale by the water's edge, orlifted in more eminent picturesqueness upon some gentle height. Thebanks, nowhere lofty or abrupt, are such as in a southern land somemajestic river might flow between, wide, slumbrous, open to all theheaven and the long day till the very set of sun. But no starry palmglasses its crest in the clear cold green from these low brinks; thepale birch, slender and delicately fair, mirrors here the wintrywhiteness of its boughs; and this is the sad great river of the awfulNorth. 

Gradually, as the day wore on, the hills which had shrunk almost out ofsight on one hand, and on the other were dark purple in the distance, drew near the shore, and at one point on the northern side rose almostfrom the water's edge. The river expanded into a lake before them, andin their lap some cottages, and half-way up the hillside, among thestunted pines, a much-galleried hotel, proclaimed a resort of fashion inthe heart of what seemed otherwise a wilderness. Indian huts sheathed inbirch-bark nestled at the foot of the rocks, which were rich in orangeand scarlet stains; out of the tops of the huts curled the blue smoke, and at the door of one stood a squaw in a flame-red petticoat; others inbright shawls squatted about on the rocks, each with a circle of dogsand papooses. But all this warmth of color only served, like a wintersunset, to heighten the chilly and desolate sentiment of the scene. Thelight dresses of the ladies on the veranda struck cold upon the eye; inthe faces of the sojourners who lounged idly to the steamer'slanding-place, the passenger could fancy a sad resolution to represstheir tears when the boat should go away and leave them. She put off twoor three old peasant-women who were greeted by other such on the pier, as if returned from a long journey; and then the crew discharged thevessel of a prodigious freight of onions which formed the sole luggagethese old women had brought from Quebec. Bale after bale of the pungentbulbs were borne ashore in the careful arms of the deck-hands, andcounted by the owners; at last order was given to draw in the plank, when a passionate cry burst from one of the old women, who extended bothhands with an imploring gesture towards the boat. A bale of onions hadbeen left aboard; a deck-hand seized it and ran quickly ashore with it, and then back again, followed by the benedictions of the tranquillizedand comforted beldam. The gay sojourners at Murray Bay controlled theirgrief, and as Mr. Arbuton turned from them, the boat, pushing out, leftthem to their fashionable desolation. She struck across to the southernshore, to land passengers for Cacouna, a watering-place greater thanMurray Bay. The tide, which rises fifteen feet at Quebec, is theimpulse, not the savor of the sea; but at Cacouna the water is salt, andthe sea-bathing lacks nothing but the surf; and hither resort in greatnumbers the Canadians who fly their cities during the fierce, brieffever of the northern summer. The watering-place village and hotel isnot in sight from the landing, but, as at Murray Bay, the sojournersthronged the pier, as if the arrival of the steamboat were the greatevent of their day. That afternoon they were in unusual force, havingcome on foot and by omnibus and calash; and presently there passed downthrough their ranks a strange procession with a band of music leadingthe way to the steamer. 

"It's an Indian wedding, " Mr. Arbuton heard one of the boat's officerssaying to the gentleman with the ex-military air, who stood next himbeside the rail; and now, the band having drawn aside, he saw the brideand groom, --the latter a common, stolid-faced savage, and the formerpretty and almost white, with a certain modesty and sweetness of mien. Before them went a young American, with a jaunty Scotch cap and a visageof supernatural gravity, as the master of ceremonies which he hadprobably planned; arm in arm with him walked a portly chieftain in blackbroadcloth, preposterously adorned on the breast with broad flat disksof silver in two rows. Behind the bridal couple came the whole villagein pairs, men and women, and children of all ages, even to brown babiesin arms, gay in dress and indescribably serious in demeanor. They weremated in some sort according to years and size; and the last couple wereyoung fellows paired in an equal tipsiness. These reeled and waveredalong the pier; and when the other wedding guests crowned the day'sfestivity by going aboard the steamer, they followed dizzily down thegangway. Midway they lurched heavily; the spectators gave a cry; butthey had happily lurched in opposite directions; their grip upon eachother's arms held, and a forward stagger launched them victoriouslyaboard in a heap. They had scarcely disappeared from sight, when, havingas it were instantly satisfied their curiosity concerning the boat, theother guests began to go ashore in due order. Mr. Arbuton waited in aslight anxiety to see whether the tipsy couple could repeat theirmaneuver successfully on an upward incline; and they had just appearedon the gangway, when he felt a hand passed carelessly and as ifunconsciously through his arm, and at the same moment a voice said, "Those are a pair of disappointed lovers, I suppose. "

He looked round and perceived the young lady of the party he had made uphis mind to have nothing to do with resting one hand on the rail, andsustaining herself with the other passed through his arm, while she wasaltogether intent upon the scene below. The ex-military gentleman, thehead of the party, and apparently her kinsman, had stepped aside withouther knowing, and she had unwittingly taken Mr. Arbuton's arm. So muchwas clear to him, but what he was to do was not so plain. It did notseem quite his place to tell her of her mistake, and yet it seemed apiece of unfairness not to do so. To leave the matter alone, however, was the simplest, safest, and pleasantest; for the pressure of thepretty figure lightly thrown upon his arm had something agreeablyconfiding and appealing in it. So he waited till the young lady, turningto him for some response, discovered her error, and disengaged herselfwith a face of mingled horror and amusement. Even then he had noinspiration. To speak of the mistake in tones of compliment would havebeen grossly out of place; an explanation was needless; and to hermurmured excuses, he could only bow silently. She flitted into thecabin, and he walked away, leaving the Indians to stagger ashore as theymight. His arm seemed still to sustain that elastic weight, and a voicehaunted his ear with the words, "A pair of disappointed lovers, Isuppose"; and still more awkward and stupid he felt his own part in theaffair to be; though at the same time he was not without some obscureresentment of the young girl's mistake as an intrusion upon him. 

It was late twilight when the boat reached Tadoussac, and ran into asheltered cove under the shadow of uplands on which a quaint villageperched and dispersed itself on a country road in summer cottages; abovethese in turn rose loftier heights of barren sand or rock, with here andthere a rank of sickly pines dying along their sterility. It had beenharsh and cold all day when the boat moved, for it was running full inthe face of the northeast; the river had widened almost to a sea, growing more and more desolate, with a few lonely islands breaking itsexpanse, and the shores sinking lower and lower till, near Tadoussac, they rose a little in flat-topped bluffs thickly overgrown with stuntedevergreens. Here, into the vast low-walled breadth of the St. Lawrence, a dark stream, narrowly bordered by rounded heights of rock, steals downfrom the north out of regions of gloomy and ever-during solitude. Thisis the Saguenay; and in the cold evening light under which the travellerapproaches its mouth, no landscape could look more forlorn than that ofTadoussac, where early in the sixteenth century the French traders fixedtheir first post, and where still the oldest church north of Florida isstanding. 

The steamer lies here five hours, and supper was no sooner over than thepassengers went ashore in the gathering dusk. Mr. Arbuton, guarding hisdistance as usual, went too, with a feeling of surprise at his ownconcession to the popular impulse. He was not without a desire to seethe old church, wondering in a half-compassionate way what such a bit ofAmerican antiquity would look like; and he had perceived since thelittle embarrassment at Cacouna that he was a discomfort to the younglady involved by it. He had caught no glimpse of her till supper, andthen she had briefly supped with an air of such studied unconsciousnessof his presence that it was plain she was thinking of her mistake everymoment. "Well, I'll leave her the freedom of the boat while we stay, "thought Mr. Arbuton as he went ashore. He had not the least notionwhither the road led, but like the rest he followed it up through thevillage, and on among the cottages which seemed for the most part empty, and so down a gloomy ravine, in the bottom of which, far beneath thetremulous rustic bridge, he heard the mysterious crash and fall of anunseen torrent. Before him towered the shadowy hills up into thestarless night; he thrilled with a sense of the loneliness andremoteness, and he had a formless wish that some one qualified by theproper associations and traditions were there to share the satisfactionhe felt in the whole effect. At the same instant he was once more awareof that delicate pressure, that weight so lightly, sweetly borne uponhis arm. It startled him, and again he followed the road, which with asudden turn brought him in sight of a hotel and in sound of abowling-alley, and therein young ladies' cackle and laughter, and hewondered a little scornfully who could be spending the summer there. Abay of the river loftily shut in by rugged hills lay before him, and onthe shore, just above high-tide, stood what a wandering shadow told himwas the ancient church of Tadoussac. The windows were faintly tingedwith red as from a single taper burning within, and but that theelements were a little too bare and simple for one so used to the richeffects of the Old World, Mr. Arbuton might have been touched by thevigil which this poor chapel was still keeping after three hundred yearsin the heart of that gloomy place. While he stood at least toleratingits appeal, he heard voices of people talking in the obscurity near thechurch door, which they seemed to have been vainly trying for entrance. 

"Pity we can't see the inside, isn't it?"

"Yes; but I am so glad to see any of it. Just think of its having beenbuilt in the seventeenth century!"

"Uncle Jack would enjoy it, wouldn't he?"

"O yes, poor Uncle Jack! I feel somehow as if I were cheating him out ofit. He ought to be here in my place. But I _do_ like it; and, Dick, Idon't know what I can ever say or do to you and Fanny for bringing me. "

"Well, Kitty, postpone the subject till you can think of the rightthing. We're in no hurry. "

Mr. Arbuton heard a shaking of the door, as of a final attempt upon it, before retreat, and then the voices faded into inarticulate sounds inthe darkness. They were the voices, he easily recognized, of the younglady who had taken his arm, and of that kinsman of hers, as she seemedto be. He blamed himself for having not only overheard them, but fordesiring to hear more of their talk, and he resolved to follow them backto the boat at a discreet distance. But they loitered so at every point, or he unwittingly made such haste, that he had overtaken them as theyentered the lane between the outlying cottages, and he could not helpbeing privy to their talk again. 

"Well, it may be old, Kitty, but I don't think it's lively. "

"It _is_n't exactly a whirl of excitement, I must confess. "

"It's the deadliest place I ever saw. Is that a swing in front of thatcottage? No, it's a gibbet. Why, they've all got 'em! I suppose they'refor the summer tenants at the close of the season. What a rush therewould be for them if the boat should happen to go off and leave herpassengers!"

Mr. Arbuton thought this rather a coarse kind of drolling, andstrengthened himself anew in his resolution to avoid those people. 

They now came in sight of the steamer, where in the cove she layillumined with all her lamps, and through every window and door andcrevice was bursting with the ruddy light. Her brilliancy contrastedvividly with the obscurity and loneliness of the shore where a fewlights glimmered in the village houses, and under the porch of thevillage store some desolate idlers--_habitans_ and half-breeds--hadclubbed their miserable leisure. Beyond the steamer yawned the widevacancy of the greater river, and out of this gloomed the course of theSaguenay. 

"O, I hate to go on board!" said the young lady. "Do you think he's gotback yet? It's perfect misery to meet him. "

"Never mind, Kitty. He probably thinks you didn't mean anything by it. _I_ don't believe you would have taken his arm if you hadn't supposed itwas mine, _any_ way. "

She made no answer to this, as if too much overcome by the true state ofthe case to be troubled by its perversion. Mr. Arbuton, following themon board, felt himself in the unpleasant character of persecutor, someone to be shunned and escaped by every maneuver possible toself-respect. He was to be the means, it appeared, of spoiling theenjoyment of the voyage for one who, he inferred, had not often theopportunity of such enjoyment. He had a willingness that she shouldthink well and not ill of him; and then at the bottom of all was asentiment of superiority, which, if he had given it shape, would havebeen _noblesse oblige_. Some action was due to himself as a gentleman. 

The young lady went to seek the matron of the party, and left hercompanion at the door of the saloon, wistfully fingering a cigar in onehand, and feeling for a match with the other. Presently he gave himselfa clap on the waistcoat which he had found empty, and was turning away, when Mr. Arbuton said, offering his own lighted cigar, "May I be of useto you?"

The other took it with a hearty, "O yes, thank you!" and, with manyinarticulate murmurs of satisfaction, lighted his cigar, and returnedMr. Arbuton's with a brisk, half-military bow. 

Mr. Arbuton looked at him narrowly a moment. "I'm afraid, " he saidabruptly, "that I've most unluckily been the cause of annoyance to oneof the ladies of your party. It isn't a thing to apologize for, and Ihardly know how to say that I hope, if she's not already forgotten thematter, she'll do so. " Saying this, Mr. Arbuton, by an impulse which hewould have been at a loss to explain, offered his card. 

His action had the effect of frankness, and the other took it forcordiality. He drew near a lamp, and looked at the name and streetaddress on the card, and then said, "Ah, of Boston! _My_ name isEllison; I'm of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. " And he laughed a free, trustfullaugh of good companionship. "Why yes, my cousin's been tormentingherself about her mistake the whole afternoon; but of course it's allright, you know. Bless my heart! it was the most natural thing in theworld. Have you been ashore? There's a good deal of repose aboutTadoussac, now; but it must be a lively place in winter! Such a cheerfullookout from these cottages, or that hotel over yonder! We went over tosee if we could get into the little old church; the purser told me thereare some lead tablets there, left by Jacques Cartier's men, you know, and dug up in the neighborhood. I don't think it's likely, and I'mbearing up very well under the disappointment of not getting in. I'vedone my duty by the antiquities of the place; and now I don't care howsoon we are off. "

Colonel Ellison was talking in the kindness of his heart to change thesubject which the younger gentleman had introduced, in the belief, whichwould scarcely have pleased the other, that he was much embarrassed. Hisgood-nature went still further; and when his cousin returned presently, with Mrs. Ellison, he presented Mr. Arbuton to the ladies, and thenthoughtfully made Mrs. Ellison walk up and down the deck with him forthe exercise she would not take ashore, that the others might be left todeal with their vexation alone. 

"I am very sorry, Miss Ellison, " said Mr. Arbuton, "to have been themeans of a mistake to you to-day. "

"And I was dreadfully ashamed to make you the victim of my blunder, "answered Miss Ellison penitently; and a little silence ensued. Then asif she had suddenly been able to alienate the case, and see it apartfrom herself in its unmanageable absurdity, she broke into a confidinglaugh, very like her cousin's, and said, "Why, it's one of the mosthopeless things I ever heard of. I don't see what in the world can bedone about it. "

"It _is_ rather a difficult matter, and I'm not prepared to say myself. Before I make up my mind I should like it to happen again. "

Mr. Arbuton had no sooner made this speech, which he thought neat, thanhe was vexed with himself for having made it, since nothing was furtherfrom his purpose than a flirtation. But the dark, vicinity, the younggirl's prettiness, the apparent freshness and reliance on his sympathyfrom which her frankness came, were too much: he tried to congeal again, and ended in some feebleness about the scenery, which was indeed verylonely and wild, after the boat started up the Saguenay, leaving the fewlights of Tadoussac to blink and fail behind her. He had an absurd senseof being alone in the world there with the young lady; and he sufferedhimself to enjoy the situation, which was as perfectly safe as anythingcould be. He and Miss Ellison had both come on from Niagara, it seemed, and they talked of that place, she consciously withholding the fact thatshe had noticed Mr. Arbuton there; they had both come down the Rapids ofthe St. Lawrence, and they had both stopped a day in Montreal. Thesecommon experiences gave them a surprising interest for each other, whichwas enhanced by the discovery that their experiences differedthereafter, and that whereas she had passed three days at Quebec, he, aswe know, had come on directly from Montreal. 

"Did you enjoy Quebec very much, Miss Ellison?"

"O yes, indeed! It's a beautiful old town, with everything in it that Ihad always read about and never expected to see. You know it's a walledcity. "

"Yes. But I confess I had forgotten it till this morning. Did you findit all that you expected a walled city to be?"

"More, if possible. There were some Boston people with us there, andthey said it was exactly like Europe. They fairly sighed over it, and itseemed to remind them of pretty nearly everything they had seen abroad. They were just married. "

"Did that make Quebec look like Europe?"

"No, but I suppose it made them willing to see it in the pleasantestlight. Mrs. March--that was their name--wouldn't allow me to say that_I_ enjoyed Quebec, because if I hadn't seen Europe, I _could_n'tproperly enjoy it. 'You may _think_ you enjoy it, ' she was alwayssaying, 'but that's merely fancy. ' Still I cling to my delusion. But Idon't know whether I cared more for Quebec, or the beautiful littlevillages in the country all about it. The whole landscape looks justlike a dream of 'Evangeline. '"

"Indeed! I must certainly stop at Quebec. I should like to see anAmerican landscape that put one in mind of anything. What can yourimagination do for the present scenery?"

"I don't think it needs any help from me, " replied the young girl, as ifthe tone of her companion had patronized and piqued her. She turned asshe spoke and looked up the sad, lonely river. The moon was making itsveiled face seen through the gray heaven, and touching the black streamwith hints of melancholy light. On either hand the uninhabitable shorerose in desolate grandeur, friendless heights of rock with a thincovering of pines seen in dim outline along their tops and deepeninginto the solid dark of hollows and ravines upon their sides. The cry ofsome wild bird struck through the silence of which the noise of thesteamer had grown to be a part, and echoed away to nothing. Then fromthe saloon there came on a sudden the notes of a song; and Miss Ellisonled the way within, where most of the other passengers were groupedabout the piano. The English girl with the corn-colored hair sat, inravishing picture, at the instrument, and the commonish man and his veryplain wife were singing with heavenly sweetness together. 

"Isn't it beautiful!" said Miss Ellison. "How nice it must be to be ableto do such things!"

"Yes? do you think so? It's rather public, " answered her companion. 

When the English people had ended, a grave, elderly Canadian gentlemansat down to give what he believed a comic song, and sent everybodydisconsolate to bed. 

"Well, Kitty?" cried Mrs. Ellison, shutting herself inside the younglady's state-room a moment. 

"Well, Fanny?"

"Isn't he handsome?"

"He is, indeed. "

"Is he nice?"

"I don't know. "

"Sweet?"

"_Ice_-cream, " said Kitty, and placidly let herself be kissed anenthusiastic good-night. Before Mrs. Ellison slept she wished to ask herhusband one question. 

"What is it?"

"Should you want Kitty to marry a Bostonian? They say Bostonians are socold. "

"What Bostonian has been asking Kitty to marry him?"

"O, how spiteful you are! I didn't say any had. But if there should?"

"Then it'll be time to think about it. You've married Kitty right andleft to everybody who's looked at her since we left Niagara, and I'veworried myself to death investigating the character of her husbands. NowI'm not going to do it any longer, --till she has an offer. "

"Very well. _You_ can depreciate your own cousin, if you like. But Iknow what _I_ shall do. I shall let her wear all my best things. Howfortunate it is, Richard, that we're exactly of a size! O, I am so gladwe brought Kitty along! If she should marry and settle down inBoston--no, I hope she could get her husband to live in New York--"

"Go on, go on, my dear!" cried Colonel Ellison, with a groan of despair. "Kitty has talked twenty-five minutes with this young man about thehotels and steamboats, and of course he'll be round to-morrow morningasking my consent to marry her as soon as we can get to a justice of thepeace. My hair is gradually turning gray, and I shall be bald before mytime; but I don't mind that if you find any pleasure in these littlehallucinations of yours. _Go_ on!"

II. 

MRS. ELLISON'S LITTLE MANEUVRE. 

The next morning our tourists found themselves at rest in Ha-Ha Bay, atthe head of navigation for the larger steamers. The long line of sullenhills had fallen away, and the morning sun shone warm on what in afriendlier climate would have been a very lovely landscape. The bay wasan irregular oval, with shores that rose in bold but not lofty heightson one side, while on the other lay a narrow plain with two villagesclinging about the road that followed the crescent beach, and liftingeach the slender tin-clad spire of its church to sparkle in the sun. 

At the head of the bay was a mountainous top, and along its waters weremasses of rocks, gayly painted with lichens and stained with metallictints of orange and scarlet. The unchanging growth of stunted pines wasthe only forest in sight, though Ha-Ha Bay is a famous lumbering port, and some schooners now lay there receiving cargoes of odorous pineplank. The steamboat-wharf was all astir with the liveliest toil andleisure. The boat was taking on wood, which was brought in wheelbarrowsto the top of the steep, smooth gangway-planking, where the _habitant_in charge planted his broad feet for the downward slide, and was hurledaboard more or less _en masse_ by the fierce velocity of his heavy-ladenwheelbarrow. Amidst the confusion and hazard of this feat a processionof other habitans marched aboard, each one bearing under his arm acoffin-shaped wooden box. The rising fear of Colonel Ellison, that theseboxes represented the loss of the whole infant population of Ha-Ha Bay, was checked by the reflection that the region could not have produced somany children, and calmed altogether by the purser, who said that theywere full of huckleberries, and that Colonel Ellison could have as manyas he liked for fifteen cents a bushel. This gave him a keen sense ofthe poverty of the land, and he bought of the boys who came aboard suchabundance of wild red raspberries, in all manner of birch-bark canoesand goblets and cornucopias, that he was obliged to make presents ofthem to the very dealers whose stock he had exhausted, and he was intreaty with the local half-wit--very fine, with a hunchback, and amassive wen on one side of his head--to take charity in the wild fruitsof his native province, when the crowd about him was gently opened by aperson who advanced with a flourishing bow and a sprightly "Goodmorning, good morning, sir!" "How do you do?" asked Colonel Ellison; butthe other, intent on business, answered, "I am the only person at Ha-HaBay who speaks English, and I have come to ask if you would not like tomake a promenade in my horse and buggy upon the mountain beforebreakfast. You shall be gone as long as you will for one shilling andsixpence. I will show you all that there is to be seen about the place, and the beautiful view of the bay from the top of the mountain. But itis elegant, you know, I can assure you. "

The speaker was so fluent of his English, he had such an audacious, wide-branching mustache, such a twinkle in his left eye, --which wore itslid in a careless, slouching fashion, --that the heart of man naturallyclove to him; and Colonel Ellison agreed on the spot to make theproposed promenade, for himself and both his ladies, of whom he wentjoyfully in search. He found them at the stern of the boat, admiring thewild scenery, and looking

 "Fresh as the morn and as the season fair. "

He was not a close observer, and of his wife's wardrobe he had theignorance of a good husband, who, as soon as the pang of paying for herdresses is past, forgets whatever she has; but he could not help seeingthat some gayeties of costume which he had dimly associated with hiswife now enhanced the charms of his cousin's nice little face andfigure. A scarf of lively hue carelessly tied about the throat to keepoff the morning chill, a prettier ribbon, a more stylish jacket thanMiss Ellison owned, --what do I know?--an air of preparation for battle, caught the colonel's eye, and a conscious red stole responsive intoKitty's cheek. 

"Kitty, " said he, "don't you let yourself be made a goose of. "

"I hope she won't--by _you_!" retorted his wife, "and I'll thank you, Colonel Ellison, not to be a Betty, whatever you are. I don't think it'smanly to be always noticing ladies' clothes. "

"Who said anything about clothes?" demanded the colonel, taking hisstand upon the letter. 

"Well, don't _you_, at any rate. Yes, I'd like to ride, of all things;and we've time enough, for breakfast isn't ready till half past eight. Where's the carriage?"

The only English scholar at Ha-Ha Bay had taken the light wraps of theladies and was moving off with them. "This way, this way, " he said, waving his hand towards a larger number of vehicles on the shore thancould have been reasonably attributed to Ha-Ha Bay. "I hope you won'tobject to having another passenger with you? There's plenty of room forall. He seems a very nice, gentlemanly person, " said he, with a queer, patronizing graciousness which he had no doubt caught from his Englishpatrons. 

"The more the merrier, " answered Colonel Ellison, and "Not in theleast!" said his wife, not meaning the proverb. Her eye had swept thewhole array of vehicles and had found them all empty, save one, in whichshe detected the blamelessly coated back of Mr. Arbuton. But I oughtperhaps to explain Mrs. Ellison's motives better than they can be madeto appear in her conduct. She cared nothing for Mr. Arbuton; and she hadno logical wish to see Kitty in love with him. But here were two youngpeople thrown somewhat romantically together; Mrs. Ellison was a bornmatch-maker, and to have refrained from promoting their betteracquaintance in the interest of abstract matrimony was what never couldhave entered into her thought or desire. Her whole being closed for thetime about this purpose; her heart, always warm towards Kitty, --whom sheadmired with a sort of generous frenzy, --expanded with all kinds oflovely designs; in a word, every dress she had she would instantly havebestowed upon that worshipful creature who was capable of adding anothermarriage to the world. I hope the reader finds nothing vulgar orunbecoming in this, for I do not; it was an enthusiasm, pure and simple, a beautiful and unselfish abandon; and I am sure men ought to be sorrythat they are not worthier to be favored by it. Ladies have often tolament in the midst of their finesse that, really, no man is deservingthe fate they devote themselves to prepare for him, or, in other words, that women cannot marry women. 

I am not going to be so rash as try to depict Mrs. Ellison's arts, forthen, indeed, I should make her appear the clumsy conspirator she wasnot, and should merely convict myself of ignorance of such matters. Whether Mr. Arbuton was ever aware of them, I am not sure: as a man hewas, of course, obtuse and blind; but then, on the other hand, he hadseen far more of the world than Mrs. Ellison, and she may have beenclear as day to him. Probably, though, he did not detect any design; hecould not have conceived of such a thing in a person with whom he hadbeen so irregularly made acquainted, and to whom he felt himself sohopelessly superior. A film of ice such as in autumn you find casing thestill pools early in the frosty mornings had gathered upon his mannerover night; but it thawed under the greetings of the others, and hejumped actively out of the vehicle to offer the ladies their choice ofseats. When all was arranged he found himself at Mrs. Ellison's side, for Kitty had somewhat eagerly climbed to the front seat with thecolonel. In these circumstances it was pure zeal that sustained Mrs. Ellison in the flattering constancy with which she babbled on to Mr. Arbuton and refrained from openly resenting Kitty's contumacy. 

As the wagon began to ascend the hill, the road was so rough that thesprings smote together with pitiless jolts, and the ladies uttered someirrepressible moans. "Never mind, my dear, " said the colonel, turningabout to his wife, "we've got all the English there is at Ha-Ha Bay, anyway. " Whereupon the driver gave him a wink of sudden liking andgood-fellowship. At the same time his tongue was loosed, and he began totalk of himself. "You see my dog, how he leaps at the horse's nose? Heis a moose-dog, and keeps himself in practice of catching the moose bythe nose. You ought to come in the hunting season. I could furnish youwith Indians and everything you need to hunt with. I am a dealer in wildbeasts, you know, and I must keep prepared to take them. "

"Wild beasts?"

"Yes, for Barnum and the other showmen. I deal in deer, wolf, bear, beaver, moose, cariboo, wild-cat, link--"

"What?"

"Link--link! You say deer for deers, and link for lynx, don't you?"

"Certainly, " answered the unblushing colonel. "Are there many link abouthere?"

"Not many, and they are a very expensive animal. I have been shamefullytreated in a link that I have sold to a Boston showman. It was adifficult beast to take; bit my Indian awfully; and Mr. Doolittle wouldnot give the price he promised. "

"What an outrage!"

"Yes, but it was not so bad as it might have been. He wanted the moneyback afterwards; the link died in about two weeks, " said the dealer inwild animals, with a smile that curled his mustache into his ears, and aglance at Colonel Ellison. "He may have been bruised, I suppose. He mayhave been homesick. Perhaps he was never a very strong link. The link isa curious animal, miss, " he said to Kitty, in conclusion. 

They had been slowly climbing the mountain road, from which, on eitherhand, the pasturelands fell away in long, irregular knolls and hollows. The tops were quite barren, but in the little vales, despite the stones, a short grass grew very thick and tenderly green, and groups of kinetinkled their soft bells in a sweet, desultory assonance as they croppedthe herbage. Below, the bay filled the oval of the hills with its sunnyexpanse, and the white steamer, where she lay beside the busy wharf, andthe black lumber-ships, gave their variety to the pretty scene, whichwas completed by the picturesque villages on the shore. It was a verysimple sight, but somehow very touching, as if the soft spectacle werebut a respite from desolation and solitude; as indeed it was. 

Mr. Arbuton must have been talking of travel elsewhere, for now he saidto Mrs. Ellison, "This looks like a bit of Norway; the bay yonder mightvery well be a fjord of the Northern sea. "

Mrs. Ellison murmured her sense of obligation to the bay, the fjord, andMr. Arbuton, for their complaisance, and Kitty remembered that he hadsomewhat snubbed her the night before for attributing any suggestivegrace to the native scenery. "Then you've really found something in anAmerican landscape. I suppose we ought to congratulate it, " she said, insmiling enjoyment of her triumph. 

The colonel looked at her with eyes of humorous question; Mrs. Ellisonlooked blank; and Mr. Arbuton, having quite forgotten what he had saidto provoke this comment now, looked puzzled and answered nothing: for hehad this trait also in common with the sort of Englishman for whom hewas taken, that he never helped out your conversational venture, but ifhe failed to respond inwardly, left you with your unaccepted remark uponyour hands, as it were. In his silence, Kitty fell a prey to very evilthoughts of him, for it made her harmless sally look like a blunderingattack upon him. But just then the driver came to her rescue; he said, "Gentlemen and ladies, this is the end of the mountain promenade, " and, turning his horse's head, drove rapidly back to the village. 

At the foot of the hill they came again to the church, and hispassengers wanted to get out and look into it. "O certainly, " said he, "it isn't finished yet, but you can say as many prayers as you like init. "

The church was decent and clean, like most Canadian churches, and atthis early hour there was a good number of the villagers at theirdevotions. The lithographic pictures of the stations to Calvary were, ofcourse, on its walls, and there was the ordinary tawdriness of paint andcarving about the high altar. 

"I don't like to see these things, " said Mrs. Ellison. "It really seemsto savor of idolatry. Don't you think so, Mr. Arbuton?"

"Well, I don't know. I doubt if they're the sort of people to be hurt byit. "

"They need a good stout faith in cold climates, I can tell you, " saidthe colonel. "It helps to keep them warm. The broad church would be toofull of draughts up here. They want something snug and tight. Justimagine one of these poor devils listening to a liberal sermon aboutbirds and fruits and flowers and beautiful sentiments, and then drivinghome over the hills with the mercury thirty degrees below zero! Hecouldn't stand it. "

"Yes, yes, certainly, " said Mr. Arbuton, and looked about him with aneye of cold, uncompassionate inspection, as if he were trying it by astandard of taste, and, on the whole, finding the poor little churchvulgar. 

When they mounted to their places again, the talk fell entirely to thecolonel, who, as his wont was, got what information he could out of thedriver. It appeared, in spite of his theory, that they were not all goodCatholics at Ha-Ha Bay. "This chap, for example, " said the Frenchman, touching himself on the breast and using the slang he must have pickedup from American travellers, "is no Catholic, --not much! He has made toomany studies to care for religion. There's a large French party, sir, inCanada, that's opposed to the priests and in favor of annexation. "

He satisfied the colonel's utmost curiosity, discoursing, as he drove bythe log-built cottages which were now and then sheathed in birch-bark, upon the local affairs, and the character and history of such of hisfellow-villagers as they met. He knew the pretty girls upon the streetand saluted them by name, interrupting himself with these courtesies inthe lecture he was giving the colonel on life at Ha-Ha Bay. There wasonly one brick house (which he had built himself, but had been obligedto sell in a season unfavorable for wild beasts), and the other edificesdropped through the social scale to some picturesque barns thatched withstraw. These he excused to his Americans, but added that the ungainlythatch was sometimes useful in saving the lives of the cattle toward theend of an unusually long, hard winter. 

"And the people, " asked the colonel, "what do they do in the winter topass the time?"

"Draw the wood, smoke the pipe, court the ladies. --But wouldn't you liketo see the inside of one of our poor cottages? I shall be very proud tohave you look at mine, and to have you drink a glass of milk from mycows. I am sorry that I cannot offer you brandy, but there's none to bebought in the place. "

"Don't speak of it! For an eye-opener there is nothing like a glass ofmilk, " gayly answered the colonel. 

They entered the best room of the house, --wide, low-ceiled, dimly lit bytwo small windows, and fortified against the winter by a huge Canadastove of cast-iron. It was rude but neat, and had an air of decentcomfort. Through the window appeared a very little vegetable garden witha border of the hardiest flowers. "The large beans there, " explained thehost, "are for soup and coffee. My corn, " he said, pointing out somerows of dwarfish maize, "has escaped the early August frosts, and so Iexpect to have some roasting-ears yet this summer. "

"Well, it isn't exactly what you'd call an inviting climate, is it?"asked the colonel. 

The Canadian seemed a hard little man, but he answered now with a kindof pathos, "It's cruel! I came here when it was all bush. Twenty years Ihave lived here, and it has not been worth while. If it was to do overagain, I should rather not live anywhere. I was born in Quebec, " hesaid, as if to explain that he was used to mild climates, and began totell of some events of his life at Ha-Ha Bay. "I wish you were going tostay here awhile with me. You wouldn't find it so bad in thesummer-time, I can assure you. There are bears in the bush, sir, " hesaid to the colonel, "and you might easily kill one. "

"But then I should be helping to spoil your trade in wild beasts, "replied the colonel, laughing. 

Mr. Arbuton looked like one who might be very tired of this. He made nosign of interest either in the early glooms and privations or the summerbears of Ha-Ha Bay. He sat in the quaint parlor, with his hat on hisknee, in the decorous and patient attitude of a gentleman making a call. 

He had no feeling, Kitty said to herself; but that is a matter aboutwhich we can easily be wrong. It was rather to be said of Mr. Arbutonthat he had always shrunk from knowledge of things outside of a verynarrow world, and that he had not a ready imagination. Moreover, he hada personal dislike, as I may call it, of poverty; and he did not enjoythis poverty as she did, because it was strange and suggestive, thoughdoubtless he would have done as much to relieve distress. 

"Rather too much of his autobiography, " he said to Kitty, as he waitedoutside the door with her, while the Canadian quieted his dog, which wasagain keeping himself in practice of catching the moose by makingvicious leaps at the horse's nose. "The egotism of that kind of peopleis always so aggressive. But I suppose he's in the habit of throwinghimself upon the sympathy of summer visitors in this way. You can'toffer a man so little as shilling and sixpence who's taken you into hisconfidence. Did you find enough that was novel in his place to justifyhim in bringing us here, Miss Ellison?" he asked with an air he had oftaking you of course to be of his mind, and which equally offended youwhether you were so or not. 

Every face that they had seen in their drive had told its pathetic storyto Kitty; every cottage that they passed she had entered in thought, anddreamed out its humble drama. What their host had said gave breath andcolor to her fancies of the struggle of life there, and she was startledand shocked when this cold doubt was cast upon the sympathetic tints ofher picture. She did not know what to say at first; she looked at Mr. Arbuton with a sudden glance of embarrassment and trouble; then sheanswered, "I was very much interested. I don't agree with you, Ibelieve"; which, when she heard it, seemed a resentful little speech, and made her willing for some occasion to soften its effect. But nothingoccurred to her during the brief drive back to the boat, save the factthat the morning air was delicious. 

"Yes, but rather cool, " said Mr. Arbuton, whose feelings apparently hadnot needed any balm; and the talk fell again to the others. 

On the pier he helped her down from the wagon, for the colonel wasintent on something the driver was saying, and then offered his hand toMrs. Ellison. 

She sprang from her place, but stumbled slightly, and when she touchedthe ground, "I believe I turned my foot a little, " she said with alaugh. "It's nothing, of course, " and fainted in his arms. 

Kitty gave a cry of alarm, and the next instant the colonel had relievedMr. Arbuton. It was a scene, and nothing could have annoyed him morethan this tumult which poor Mrs. Ellison's misfortune occasioned amongthe bystanding habitans and deck-hands, and the passengers eagerlycraning forward over the bulwarks, and running ashore to see what thematter was. Few men know just how to offer those little offices ofhelpfulness which such emergencies demand, and Mr. Arbuton could donothing after he was rid of his burden; he hovered anxiously anduselessly about, while Mrs. Ellison was carried to an airy position onthe bow of the boat, where in a few minutes he had the greatsatisfaction of seeing her open her eyes. It was not the moment for himto speak, and he walked somewhat guiltily away with the dispersingcrowd. 

Mrs. Ellison addressed her first words to pale Kitty at her side. "Youcan have all my things, now, " she said, as if it were a clause in herwill, and perhaps it had been her last thought before unconsciousness. 

"Why, Fanny, " cried Kitty, with an hysterical laugh, "you're not goingto die! A sprained ankle isn't fatal!"

"No; but I've heard that a person with a sprained ankle can't put theirfoot to the ground for weeks; and I shall only want a dressing-gown, youknow, to lie on the sofa in. " With that, Mrs. Ellison placed her handtenderly on Kitty's head, like a mother wondering what will become of ahelpless child during her disability; in fact she was mentally weighingthe advantages of her wardrobe, which Kitty would now fully enjoy, against the loss of the friendly strategy which she would now lack. Helpless to decide the matter, she heaved a sigh. 

"But, Fanny, you won't expect to travel in a dressing-gown. "

"Indeed, I wish I knew whether I _could_ travel in _anything_ or not. But the next twenty-four hours will show. If it swells up, I shall haveto rest awhile at Quebec; and if it doesn't, there may be somethinginternal. I've read of accidents when the person thought they wereperfectly well and comfortable, and the first thing they knew they werein a very dangerous state. That's the worst of these internal injuries:you never can tell. Not that I think there's anything of that kind thematter with me. But a few days' rest won't do any harm, whateverhappens; the stores in Quebec are quite as good and a little cheaperthan in Montreal; and I could go about in a carriage, you know, and putin the time as well in one place as the other. I'm sure we could get onvery pleasantly there; and the colonel needn't be home for a month yet. I suppose that I could hobble into the stores on a crutch. "

Whilst Mrs. Ellison's monologue ran on with scarcely a break from Kitty, her husband was gone to fetch her a cup of tea and such other lightrefreshment as a lady may take after a swoon. When he returned shebethought herself of Mr. Arbuton, who, having once come back to see ifall was going well, had vanished again. 

"Why, our friend Boston is bearing up under his share of the morning'swork like a hero--or a lady with a sprained ankle, " said the colonel ashe arranged the provision. "To see the havoc he's making in the ham andeggs and chiccory is to be convinced that there is no appetizer likeregret for the sufferings of others. "

"Why, and here's poor Kitty not had a bite yet!" cried Mrs. Ellison. "Kitty, go off at once and get your breakfast. Put on my--"

"O, _don't_, Fanny, or I can't go; and I'm really very hungry. "

"Well, I won't then, " said Mrs. Ellison, seeing the rainy cloud inKitty's eyes. "Go just as you are, and don't mind me. " And so Kittywent, gathering courage at every pace, and sitting down opposite Mr. Arbuton with a vivid color to be sure, but otherwise lion-bold. He hadbeen upbraiding the stars that had thrust him further and further atevery step into the intimacy of these people, as he called them tohimself. It was just twenty-four hours, he reflected, since he had metthem, and resolved to have nothing to do with them, and in that time theyoung lady had brought him under the necessity of apologizing for ablunder of her own; he had played the eavesdropper to her talk; he hadsentimentalized the midnight hour with her; they had all taken a morningride together; and he had ended by having Mrs. Ellison sprain her ankleand faint in his arms. It was outrageous; and what made it worse wasthat decency obliged him to take henceforth a regretful, deprecatoryattitude towards Mrs. Ellison, whom he liked least among these people. So he sat vindictively eating an enormous breakfast, in a sort of angryabstraction, from which Kitty's coming roused him to say that he hopedMrs. Ellison was better. 

"O, very much! It's just a sprain. "

"A sprain may be a very annoying thing, " said Mr. Arbuton dismally. "Miss Ellison, " he cried, "I've been nothing but an affliction to yourparty since I came on board this boat!"

"Do you think evil genius of our party would be too harsh a term?"suggested Kitty. 

"Not in the least; it would be a mere euphemism, --base flattery, infact. Call me something worse. "

"I can't think of anything. I must leave you to your own conscience. Itwas a pity to end our ride in that way; it would have been such apleasant ride!" And Kitty took heart from his apparent mood to speak ofsome facts of the morning that had moved her fancy. "What a strangelittle nest it is up here among these half-thawed hills! and imagine thewinter, the fifteen or twenty months of it, they must have every year. Icould almost have shed tears over that patch of corn that had escapedthe early August frosts. I suppose this is a sort of Indian summer thatwe are enjoying now, and that the cold weather will set in after a weekor two. My cousin and I thought that Tadoussac was somewhat retired andcomposed last night, but I'm sure that I shall see it in its true light, as a metropolis, going back. I'm afraid that the turmoil and bustle ofEriecreek, when I get home--"

"Eriecreek?--when you got home?--I thought you lived at Milwaukee. "

"O no! It's my cousins who live at Milwaukee. I live at Eriecreek, NewYork State. "

"Oh!" Mr. Arbuton looked blank and not altogether pleased. Milwaukee wasbad enough, though he understood that it was largely peopled from NewEngland, and had a great German element, which might account for thefact that these people were not quite barbaric. But this Eriecreek, NewYork State! "I don't think I've heard of it, " he said. 

"It's a small place, " observed Kitty, "and I believe it isn't noted foranything in particular; it's not even on any railroad. It's in thenorth-west part of the State. "

"Isn't it in the oil-regions?" groped Mr. Arbuton. 

"Why, the oil-regions are rather migratory, you know. It used to be inthe oil-regions; but the oil was pumped out, and then the oil-regionsgracefully withdrew and left the cheese-regions and grape-regions tocome back and take possession of the old derricks and the rusty boilers. You might suppose from the appearance of the meadows, that all theboilers that ever blew up had come down in the neighborhood ofEriecreek. And every field has its derrick standing just as the lastdollar or the last drop of oil left it. "

Mr. Arbuton brought his fancy to bear upon Eriecreek, and wholly failedto conceive of it. He did not like the notion of its being thrust withinthe range of his knowledge; and he resented its being the home of MissEllison, whom he was beginning to accept as a not quite comprehensibleyet certainly agreeable fact, though he still had a disposition to casther off as something incredible. He asked no further about Eriecreek, and presently she rose and went to join her relatives, and he went tosmoke his cigar, and to ponder upon the problem presented to him in thisyoung girl from whose locality and conjecturable experiences he was atloss how to infer her as he found her here. 

She had a certain self-reliance mingling with an innocent trust ofothers which Mrs. Isabel March had described to her husband as a charmpotent to make everybody sympathetic and good-natured, but which itwould not be easy to account for to Mr. Arbuton. In part it was anatural gift, and partly it came from mere ignorance of the world; itwas the unsnubbed fearlessness of a heart which did not suspect a senseof social difference in others, or imagine itself misprized for anythingbut a fault. For such a false conception of her relations to politesociety, Kitty's Uncle Jack was chiefly to blame. In the fiercedemocracy of his revolt from his Virginian traditions he had taught hisfamily that a belief in any save intellectual and moral distinctions wasa mean and cruel superstition; he had contrived to fix this idea sodeeply in the education of his children, that it gave a coloring totheir lives, and Kitty, when her turn came, had the effect of it in thecharacter of those about her. In fact she accepted his extreme theoriesof equality to a degree that delighted her uncle, who, having held themmany years, was growing perhaps a little languid in their tenure and wasglad to have his grasp strengthened by her faith. Socially as well aspolitically Eriecreek was almost a perfect democracy, and there waslittle in Kitty's circumstances to contradict the doctor's teachings. The brief visits which she had made to Buffalo and Erie, and, since thecolonel's marriage, to Milwaukee, had not sufficed to undeceive her; shehad never suffered slight save from the ignorant and uncouth; sheinnocently expected that in people of culture she should always findcommunity of feeling and ideas; and she had met Mr. Arbuton all the moretrustfully because as a Bostonian he must be cultivated. 

In the secluded life which she led perforce at Eriecreek there was anabundance of leisure, which she bestowed upon books at an age when mostgirls are sent to school. The doctor had a good taste of anold-fashioned kind in literature, and he had a library pretty wellstocked with the elderly English authors, poets and essayists andnovelists, and here and there an historian, and these Kitty readchildlike, liking them at the time in a certain way, and storing up inher mind things that she did not understand for the present, but whosebeauty and value dawned upon her from time to time, as she grew older. But of far more use and pleasure to her than these now somewhat mouldyclassics were the more modern books of her cousin Charles, --that prideand hope of his father's heart, who had died the year before she came toEriecreek. He was named after her own father, and it was as if her UncleJack found both his son and his brother in her again. When her taste forreading began to show itself in force, the old man one day unlocked acertain bookcase in a little upper room, and gave her the key, saying, with a broken pride and that queer Virginian pomp which still clung tohim, "This was my son's, who would one day have been a great writer; nowit is yours. " After that the doctor would pick up the books out of thiscollection which Kitty was reading and had left lying about the rooms, and look into them a little way. Sometimes he fell asleep over them;sometimes when he opened on a page pencilled with marginal notes, hewould put the volume gently down and go very quickly out of the room. 

"Kitty, I reckon you'd better not leave poor Charley's books aroundwhere Uncle Jack can get at them, " one of the girls, Virginia or Rachel, would say; "I don't believe he cares much for those writers, and thesight of the books just tries him. " So Kitty kept the books, and herselffor the most part with them, in the upper chamber which had been CharlesEllison's room, and where, amongst the witnesses of the dead boy'sambitious dreams, she grew dreamer herself and seemed to inherit withhis earthly place his own fine and gentle spirit. 

The doctor, as his daughter suggested, did not care much for the modernauthors in whom his son had delighted. Like many another simple andpure-hearted man, he thought that since Pope there had been no greatpoet but Byron, and he could make nothing out of Tennyson and Browning, or the other contemporary English poets. Amongst the Americans he had agreat respect for Whittier, but he preferred Lowell to the rest becausehe had written The Biglow Papers, and he never would allow that the lastseries was half so good as the first. These and the other principalpoets of our nation and language Kitty inherited from her cousin, aswell as a full stock of the contemporary novelists and romancers, whomshe liked better than the poets on the whole. She had also the advantageof the magazines and reviews which used to come to him, and the houseover-flowed with newspapers of every kind, from the Eriecreek Courier tothe New York Tribune. What with the coming and going of the eccentricvisitors, and this continual reading, and her rides about the countrywith her Uncle Jack, Kitty's education, such as it was, went on veryactively and with the effect, at least, to give her a great livelinessof mind and several decided opinions. Where it might have warped her outof natural simplicity, and made her conceited, the keen and wholesomeairs which breathed continually in the Ellison household came in torestore her. There was such kindness in this discipline, that she nevercould remember when it wounded her; it was part of the gayety of thosetimes when she would sit down with the girls, and they took up some worktogether, and rattled on in a free, wild, racy talk, with an edge ofsatire for whoever came near, a fantastic excess in its drollery, andjust a touch of native melancholy tingeing it. The last queer guest, some neighborhood gossip, some youthful folly or pretentiousness ofKitty's, some trait of their own, some absurdity of the boys if theyhappened to be at home, and came lounging in, were the themes out ofwhich they contrived such jollity as never was, save when in UncleJack's presence they fell upon some characteristic action or theory ofhis and turned it into endless ridicule. 

But of such people, of such life, Mr. Arbuton could have made nothing ifhe had known them. In many things he was an excellent person, andgreatly to be respected for certain qualities. He was very sincere; hismind had a singular purity and rectitude; he was a scrupulously justperson so far as he knew. He had traits that would have fitted him verywell for the career he had once contemplated, and he had even made somepreliminary studies for the ministry. But the very generosity of hiscreed perplexed him, his mislikers said; contending that he could neverhave got on with the mob of the redeemed. "Arbuton, " said a fat youngfellow, the supposed wit of the class, "thinks there _are_ persons oflow extraction in heaven; but he doesn't like the idea. " And Mr. Arbutondid not like the speaker very well, either, nor any of his poorerfellow-students, whose gloveless and unfashionable poverty, and meagreboard and lodgings, and general hungry dependence upon pious bequestsand neighborhood kindnesses, offended his instincts. "So he's given itup, has he?" moralized the same wit, upon his retirement. "If Arbutoncould have been a divinely commissioned apostle to the best society, andbeen obliged to save none but well-connected, old-established, andcultivated souls, he might have gone into the ministry. " This was acoarse construction of the truth, but it was not altogether aperversion. It was long ago that he had abandoned the thought of theministry, and he had since travelled, and read law, and become a man ofsociety and of clubs; but he still kept the traits that had seemed tomake his vocation clear. On the other hand he kept the prejudices thatwere imagined to have disqualified him. He was an exclusive by trainingand by instinct. He gave ordinary humanity credit for a certain measureof sensibility, and it is possible that if he had known more kinds ofmen, he would have recognized merits and excellences which did not nowexist for him; but I do not think he would have liked them. His doubt ofthese Western people was the most natural, if not the most justifiablething in the world, and for Kitty, if he could have known all about her, I do not see how he could have believed in her at all. As it was, hewent in search of her party, when he had smoked his cigar, and foundthem on the forward promenade. She had left him in quite a lenient mood, although, as she perceived with amusement, he had done nothing to meritit, except give her cousin a sprained ankle. At the moment of hisreappearance, Mrs. Ellison had been telling Kitty that she thought itwas beginning to swell a little, and so it could not be anythinginternal; and Kitty had understood that she meant her ankle as well asif she had said so, and had sorrowed and rejoiced over her, and thecolonel had been inculpated for the whole affair. This made Mr. Arbuton's excuses rather needless, though they were most graciouslyreceived. 

III. 

ON THE WAY BACK TO QUEBEC. 

By this time the boat was moving down the river, and every one was aliveto the scenery. The procession of the pine-clad, rounded heights oneither shore began shortly after Ha-Ha Bay had disappeared behind acurve, and it hardly ceased, save at one point, before the boatre-entered the St. Lawrence. The shores of the stream are almostuninhabited. The hills rise from the water's edge, and if ever a narrowvale divides them, it is but to open drearier solitudes to the eye. Insuch a valley would stand a saw-mill, and huddled about it a few poorhuts, while a friendless road, scarce discernible from the boat, woundup from the river through the valley, and led to wildernesses all theforlorner for the devastation of their forests. Now and then an island, rugged as the shores, broke the long reaches of the grim river with itsmassive rock and dark evergreen, and seemed in the distance to forbidescape from those dreary waters, over which no bird flew, and in whichit was incredible any fish swam. 

Mrs. Ellison, with her foot comfortably and not ungracefully supportedon a stool, was in so little pain as to be looking from time to time atone of the guide-books which the colonel had lavished upon his party, and which she was disposed to hold to very strict account for anyexcesses of description. 

"It says here that the water of the Saguenay is as black as ink. Do_you_ think it is, Richard?"

"It looks so. "

"Well, but if you took some up in your hand?"

"Perhaps it wouldn't be as black as the best Maynard and Noyes, but itwould be black enough for all practical purposes. "

"Maybe, " suggested Kitty, "the guide-book means the kind that is lightblue at first, but 'becomes a deep black on exposure to the air, ' as thelabel says. "

"What do you think, Mr. Arbuton?" asked Mrs. Ellison with unabatedanxiety. 

"Well, really, I don't know, " said Mr. Arbuton, who thought it a verytrivial kind of talk, "I can't say, indeed. I haven't taken any of it upin my hand. "

"That's true, " said Mrs. Ellison gravely, with an accent of reproval forthe others who had not thought of so simple a solution of the problem, "very true. "

The colonel looked into her face with an air of well-feigned alarm. "Youdon't think the sprain has gone to your head, Fanny?" he asked, andwalked away, leaving Mr. Arbuton to the ladies. Mrs. Ellison did notcare for this or any other gibe, if she but served her own purposes; andnow, having made everybody laugh and given the conversation a livelyturn, she was as perfectly content as if she had not been herself anoffering to the cause of cheerfulness. She was, indeed, equal to anysacrifice in the enterprise she had undertaken, and would not only havegiven Kitty all her worldly goods, but would have quite effaced herselfto further her own designs upon Mr. Arbuton. She turned again to herguide-book, and left the young people to continue the talk in unbrokengayety. They at once became serious, as most people do after a heartylaugh, which, if you think, seems always to have something strange andsad in it. But besides, Kitty was oppressed by the coldness that seemedperpetually to hover in Mr. Arbuton's atmosphere, while she wasinterested by his fastidious good looks and his blameless manners andhis air of a world different from any she had hitherto known. He was oneof those men whose perfection makes you feel guilty of misdemeanorwhenever they meet you, and whose greeting turns your honest good-daycoarse and common; even Kitty's fearless ignorance and more than Westerndisregard of dignities were not proof against him. She had found it easyto talk with Mrs. March as she did with her cousin at home: she liked tobe frank and gay in her parley, to jest and to laugh and to makeharmless fun, and to sentimentalize in a half-earnest way; she liked tobe with Mr. Arbuton, but now she did not see how she could take hernatural tone with him. She wondered at her daring lightness at thebreakfast-table; she waited for him to say something, and he said, witha glance at the gray heaven that always overhangs the Saguenay, that itwas beginning to rain, and unfurled the slender silk umbrella whichharmonized so perfectly with the London effect of his dress, and held itover her. Mrs. Ellison sat within the shelter of the projecting roof, and diligently perused her book with her eyes, and listened to theirtalk. 

"The great drawback to this sort of thing in America, " continued Mr. Arbuton, "is that there is no human interest about the scenery, fine asit is. "

"Why, I don't know, " said Kitty, "there was that little settlement roundthe saw-mill. Can't you imagine any human interest in the lives of thepeople there? It seems to me that one might make almost anything out ofthem. Suppose, for example, that the owner of that mill was adisappointed man who had come here to bury the wreck of his lifein--sawdust?"

"O, yes! That sort of thing; certainly. But I didn't mean that, I meantsomething historical. There is no past, no atmosphere, no traditions, you know. "

"O, but the Saguenay _has_ a tradition, " said Kitty. "You know that aparty of the first explorers left their comrades at Tadoussac, and cameup the Saguenay three hundred years ago, and never were seen or heard ofagain. I think it's so in keeping with the looks of the river. TheSaguenay would never tell a secret. "

"Um!" uttered Mr. Arbuton, as if he were not quite sure that it was theSaguenay's place to have a legend of this sort, and disposed to snub thelegend because the Saguenay had it. After a little silence, he began tospeak of famous rivers abroad. 

"I suppose, " Kitty said, "the Rhine has traditions enough, hasn't it?"

"Yes, " he answered, "but I think the Rhine rather overdoes it. You can'thelp feeling, you know, that it's somewhat melodramatic and--common. Have you ever seen the Rhine?"

"O, no! This is almost the first I've seen of anything. Perhaps, " sheadded, demurely, yet with a tremor at finding herself about to makelight of Mr. Arbuton, "if I had had too much of tradition on the Rhine Ishould want more of it on the Saguenay. "

"Why, you must allow there's a golden mean in everything, Miss Ellison, "said her companion with a lenient laugh, not feeling it disagreeable tobe made light of by her. 

"Yes; and I'm afraid we're going to find Cape Trinity and Cape Eternityaltogether too big when we come to them. Don't you think eighteenhundred feet excessively high for a feature of river scenery?"

Mr. Arbuton really did have an objection to the exaggerations of natureon this continent, and secretly thought them in bad taste, but he hadnever formulated his feeling. He was not sure but it was ridiculous, nowthat it was suggested, and yet the possibility was too novel to beentertained without suspicion. 

However, when after a while the rumor of their approach to the greatobjects of the Saguenay journey had spread among the passengers, andthey began to assemble at points favorable for the enjoyment of thespectacle, he was glad to have secured the place he held with MissEllison, and a sympathetic thrill of excitement passed through his loathsuperiority. The rain ceased as they drew nearer, and the gray cloudsthat had hung so low upon the hills sullenly lifted from them and lettheir growing height he seen. The captain bade his sight-seers look atthe vast Roman profile that showed itself upon the rock, and then hepointed out the wonderful Gothic arch, the reputed doorway of anunexplored cavern, under which an upright shaft of stone had stood forages statue-like, till not many winters ago the frost heaved it from itsbase, and it plunged headlong down through the ice into the unfathomeddepths below. The unvarying gloom of the pines was lit now by thepensive glimmer of birch-trees, and this gray tone gave an indescribablesentiment of pathos and of age to the scenery. Suddenly the boat roundedthe corner of the three steps, each five hundred feet high, in whichCape Eternity climbs from the river, and crept in under the naked sideof the awful cliff. It is sheer rock, springing from the black water, and stretching upward with a weary, effort-like aspect, in long impulsesof stone marked by deep seams from space to space, till, fifteen hundredfeet in air, its vast brow beetles forward, and frowns with a scatteringfringe of pines. There are stains of weather and of oozing springs uponthe front of the cliff, but it is height alone that seems to seize theeye, and one remembers afterwards these details, which are indeed so fewas not properly to enter into the effect. The rock fully justifies itsattributive height to the eye, which follows the upward rush of themighty acclivity, steep after steep, till it wins the cloud-capt summit, when the measureless mass seems to swing and sway overhead, and thenerves tremble with the same terror that besets him who looks downwardfrom the verge of a lofty precipice. It is wholly grim and stern; notouch of beauty relieves the austere majesty of that presence. At thefoot of Cape Eternity the water is of unknown depth, and it spreads, ablack expanse, in the rounding hollow of shores of unimaginable wildnessand desolation, and issues again in its river's course around the baseof Cape Trinity. This is yet loftier than the sister cliff, but itslopes gently backward from the stream, and from foot to crest it isheavily clothed with a forest of pines. The woods that hitherto haveshagged the hills with a stunted and meagre growth, showing longstretches scarred by fire, now assume a stately size, and assemblethemselves compactly upon the side of the mountain, setting theirserried stems one rank above another, till the summit is crowned withthe mass of their dark green plumes, dense and soft and beautiful; sothat the spirit perturbed by the spectacle of the other cliff is calmedand assuaged by the serene grandeur of this. 

There have been, to be sure, some human agencies at work even under theshadow of Cape Eternity to restore the spirit to self-possession, andperhaps none turns from it wholly dismayed. Kitty, at any rate, tookheart from some works of art which the cliff wall displayed near thewater's edge. One of these was a lively fresco portrait ofLieutenant-General Sherman, with the insignia of his rank, and the otherwas an even more striking effigy of General O'Neil, of the Armies of theIrish Republic, wearing a threatening aspect, and designed in a boldconceit of his presence there as conqueror of Canada in the year 1875. Mr. Arbuton was inclined to resent these intrusions upon the sublimityof nature, and he could not conceive, without disadvantage to them, howMiss Ellison and the colonel should accept them so cheerfully as part ofthe pleasure of the whole. As he listened blankly to their exchange ofjests he found himself awfully beset by a temptation which one of theboat's crew placed before the passengers. This was a bucket full ofpebbles of inviting size; and the man said, "Now, see which can hit thecliff. It's farther than any of you can throw, though it looks so near. "

The passengers cast themselves upon the store of missiles, ColonelEllison most actively among them. None struck the cliff, and suddenlyMr. Arbuton felt a blind, stupid, irresistible longing to try hischance. The spirit of his college days, of his boating and ball-playingyouth, came upon him. He picked up a pebble, while Kitty opened her eyesin a stare of dumb surprise. Then he wheeled and threw it, and as itstruck against the cliff with a shock that seemed to have broken all thewindows on the Back Bay, he exulted in a sense of freedom the havoccaused him. It was as if for an instant he had rent away the ties ofcustom, thrown off the bonds of social allegiance, broken down andtrampled upon the conventions which his whole life long he had held sodear and respectable. In that moment of frenzy he feared himself capableof shaking hands with the shabby Englishman in the Glengarry cap, or ofasking the whole admiring company of passengers down to the bar. A cryof applause had broken from them at his achievement, and he had for thefirst time tasted the sweets of popular favor. Of course a revulsionmust come, and it must be of a corresponding violence; and the nextmoment Mr. Arbuton hated them all, and most of all Colonel Ellison, whohad been loudest in his praise. Him he thought for that momenteverything that was aggressively and intrusively vulgar. But he couldnot utter these friendly impressions, nor is it so easy to withdraw fromany concession, and he found it impossible to repair his brokendefences. Destiny had been against him from the beginning, and now whyshould he not strike hands with it for the brief half-day that he was tocontinue in these people's society? In the morning he would part fromthem forever, and in the mean time why should he not try to please andbe pleased? There might, to be sure, have been many reasons why heshould not do this; but however the balance stood he now yielded himselfpassively to his fate. He was polite to Mrs. Ellison, he was attentiveto Kitty, and as far as he could he entered into the fantastic spirit ofher talk with the colonel. He was not a dull man; he had quite an aptwit of his own, and a neat way of saying things; but humor always seemedto him something not perfectly well bred; of course he helped to praiseit in some old-established diner-out, or some woman of good fashion, whose _mots_ it was customary to repeat, and he even tolerated it inbooks; but he was at a loss with these people, who looked at life in sobizarre a temper, yet without airiness or pretension, nay, with awhimsical readiness to acknowledge kindred in every droll or laughablething. 

The boat stopped at Tadoussac on her return, and among the spectatorswho came down to the landing was a certain very pretty, conscious-looking, silly, bridal-faced young woman, --imaginably thebelle of the season at that forlorn watering-place, --who before comingon board stood awhile attended by a following of those elderly imperialand colonial British who heavily flutter round the fair at such resorts. She had an air of utterly satisfied vanity, in which there was no harmin the world, and when she saw that she had fixed the eyes of theshoreward-gazing passengers, it appeared as if she fell into a happytrepidation too blissful to be passively borne; she moistened her prettyred lips with her tongue, she twitched her mantle, she settled the bowat her lovely throat, she bridled and tossed her graceful head. 

"What should you do next, Kitty?" asked the colonel, who had beensympathetically intent upon all this. 

"O, I think I should pat my foot, " answered Kitty; and in fact thecharming simpleton on shore, having perfected her attitude, was tappingthe ground nervously with the toe of her adorable slipper. 

After the boat started, a Canadian lady of ripe age, yet of a vivacitynot to be reconciled with the notion of the married state, caperedbriskly about among her somewhat stolid and indifferent friends, saying, "They're going to fire it as soon as we round the point"; and presentlya dull boom, as of a small piece of ordnance discharged in theneighborhood of the hotel, struck through the gathering fog, and thiselderly sylph clapped her hands and exulted: "They've fired it, they'vefired it! and now the captain will blow the whistle in answer. " But thecaptain did nothing of the kind, and the lady, after some more girlisheffervescence, upbraided him for an old owl and an old muff, and so sankinto such a flat and spiritless calm that she was sorrowful to see. 

"Too bad, Mr. Arbuton, isn't it?" said the colonel; and Mr. Arbutonlistened in vague doubt while Kitty built up with her cousin a touchingromance for the poor lady, supposed to have spent the one brilliant andsuccessful summer of her life at Tadoussac, where her admirers hadagreed to bemoan her loss in this explosion of gunpowder. They asked himif he did not wish the captain _had_ whistled; and "Oh!" shudderedKitty, "doesn't it all make you feel just as if you had been doing ityourself?"--a question which he hardly knew how to answer, never having, to his knowledge, done a ridiculous thing in his life, much less beenguilty of such behavior as that of the disappointed lady. 

At Cacouna, where the boat stopped to take on the horses and carriagesof some home-returning sojourners, the pier was a labyrinth of equipagesof many sorts and sizes, and a herd of bright-hooded, gayly blanketedhorses gave variety to the human crowd that soaked and steamed in thefine, slowly falling rain. A draught-horse was every three minutesdriven into their midst with tedious iteration as he slowly drew basketsof coal up from the sloop unloading at the wharf, and each time theyclosed solidly upon his retreat as if they never expected to see thathorse again while the world stood. They were idle ladies and gentlemenunder umbrellas, Indians and habitans taking the rain stolidly erect orwith shrugged shoulders, and two or three clergymen of the curate type, who might have stepped as they were out of any dull English novel. Thesewere talking in low voices and putting their hands to their ears tocatch the replies of the lady-passengers who hung upon the rail, andtwaddled back as dryly as if there was no moisture in life. All thewhile the safety-valves hissed with the escaping steam, and the boat'screw silently toiled with the grooms of the different horses to get theequipages on board. With the carriages it was an affair of mere muscle, but the horses required to be managed with brain. No sooner had one ofthem placed his fore feet on the gangway plank than he protested bybacking up over a mass of patient Canadians, carrying with him half adozen grooms and deck-hands. Then his hood was drawn over his eyes, andhe was blindly walked up and down the pier, and back to the gangway, which he knew as soon as he touched it. He pulled, he pranced, he shied, he did all that a bad and stubborn horse can do, till at last a groommounted his back, a clump of deck-hands tugged at his bridle, and othergrooms, tenderly embracing him at different points, pushed, and he wasthus conveyed on board with mingled affection and ignominy. None of theCanadians seemed amused by this; they regarded it with serious composureas a fitting decorum, and Mr. Arbuton had no comment to make upon it. But at the first embrace bestowed upon the horse by the grooms thecolonel said absently, "Ah! long-lost brother, " and Kitty laughed; andas the scruples of each brute were successively overcome, she helped togive some grotesque interpretation to the various scenes of themelodrama, while Mr. Arbuton stood beside her, and sheltered her withhis umbrella; and a spice of malice in her heart told her that he viewedthis drolling, and especially her part in it, with grave misgiving. Thatgave the zest of transgression to her excess, mixed with dismay; for thetricksy spirit in her was not a domineering spirit, but was easilyabashed by the moods of others. She ought not to have laughed at Dick'sspeeches, she soon told herself, much less helped him on. She dreadfullyfeared that she had done something indecorous, and she was pensive andsilent over it as she moved listlessly about after supper; and she satat last thinking in a dreary sort of perplexity on what had passedduring the day, which seemed a long one. 

The shabby Englishman with his wife and sister were walking up and downthe cabin. By and by they stopped, and sat down at the table facingKitty; the elder woman, with a civil freedom, addressed her somecommonplace, and the four were presently in lively talk; for Kitty hadbeamed upon the woman in return, having already longed to know somethingof them. The world was so fresh to her, that she could find delight inthose poor singing or acting folk, though she had soon to own to herselfthat their talk was not very witty nor very wise, and that the bestthing about them was their good-nature. The colonel sat at the end ofthe table with a newspaper; Mrs. Ellison had gone to bed; and Kitty wasbeginning to tire of her new acquaintance, and to wonder how she couldget away from them, when she saw rescue in the eye of Mr. Arbuton as hecame down to the cabin. She knew he was looking for her; she saw himcheck himself with a start of recognition; then he walked rapidly by thegroup, without glancing at them. 

"Brrrr!" said the blond girl, drawing her blue knit shawl about hershoulders, "isn't it cold?" and she and her friends laughed. 

"O dear!" thought Kitty, "I didn't suppose they were so rude. I'm afraidI must say good night, " she added aloud, after a little, and stole awaythe most conscience-stricken creature on that boat. She heard thosepeople laugh again after she left them. 

IV. 

MR. ARBUTON'S INSPIRATION. 

The next morning, when Mr. Arbuton awoke, he found a clear light uponthe world that he had left wrapped in fog at midnight. A heavy gale wasblowing, and the wide river was running in seas that made the boatstagger in her course, and now and then struck her bows with a forcethat sent the spray from their seething tops into the faces of thepeople on the promenade. The sun, out of rifts of the breaking clouds, launched broad splendors across the villages and farms of the levellandscape and the crests and hollows of the waves; and a certain joy ofthe air penetrated to the guarded consciousness of Mr. Arbuton. Involuntarily he looked about for the people he meant to have nothingmore to do with, that he might appeal to the sympathies of one of them, at least, in his sense of such an admirable morning. But a great manypassengers had come on board, during the night, at Murray Bay, where thebrief season was ending, and their number hid the Ellisons from him. When he went to breakfast, he found some one had taken his seat nearthem, and they did not notice him as he passed by in search of anotherchair. Kitty and the colonel were at table alone, and they both worepreoccupied faces. After breakfast he sought them out and asked for Mrs. Ellison, who had shared in most of the excitements of the day before, helping herself about with a pretty limp, and who certainly had not, asher husband phrased it, kept any of the meals waiting. 

"Why, " said the colonel, "I'm afraid her ankle's worse this morning, andthat we'll have to lie by at Quebec for a few days, at any rate. "

Mr. Arbuton heard this sad news with a cheerful aspect unaccountable inone who was concerned at Mrs. Ellison's misfortune. He smiled, when heought to have looked pensive, and he laughed at the colonel's joke whenthe latter added, "Of course, this is a great hardship for my cousin, who hates Quebec, and wants to get home to Eriecreek as soon aspossible. "

Kitty promised to bear her trials with firmness, and Mr. Arbuton said, not very consequently, as she thought, "I had been planning to spend afew days in Quebec, myself, and I shall have the opportunity ofinquiring about Mrs. Ellison's convalescence. In fact, " he added, turning to the colonel, "I hope you'll let me be of service to you ingetting to a hotel. "

And when the boat landed, Mr. Arbuton actually busied himself in findinga carriage and putting the various Ellison wraps and bags into it. Thenhe helped to support Mrs. Ellison ashore, and to lift her to the bestplace. He raised his hat, and had good-morning on his tongue, when theastonished colonel called out, "Why, the deuce! You're going to ride upwith us!"

Mr. Arbuton thought he had better get another carriage; he shouldincommode Mrs. Ellison; but Mrs. Ellison protested that he would not atall; and, to cut the matter short, he mounted to the colonel's side. Itwas another stroke of fate. 

At the hotel they found a line of people reaching half-way down theouter steps from the inside of the office. 

"Hallo! what's this?" asked the colonel of the last man in the queue. 

"O, it's a little procession to the hotel register! We've been threequarters of an hour in passing a given point, " said the man, who wasplainly a fellow-citizen. 

"And haven't got by yet, " said the colonel, taking to the speaker. "Thenthe house is full?"

"Well, no; they haven't begun to throw them out of the window. "

"His humor is degenerating, Dick, " said Kitty; and "Hadn't you better goinside and inquire?" asked Mrs. Ellison. It was part of the Ellisontravelling joke for her thus to prompt the colonel in his duty. 

"I'm glad you mentioned it, Fanny. I was just going to drive off indespair. " The colonel vanished within doors, and after long delay cameout flushed, but not with triumph. "On the express condition that I haveladies with me, one an invalid, I am promised a room on the fifth floorsome time during the day. They tell me the other hotel is crammed andit's no use to go there. "

Mrs. Ellison was ready to weep, and for the first time since heraccident she harbored some bitterness against Mr. Arbuton. They all satsilent, and the colonel on the sidewalk silently wiped his brow. 

Mr. Arbuton, in the poverty of his invention, wondered if there was notsome lodging-house where they could find shelter. 

"Of course there is, " cried Mrs. Ellison, beaming upon her hero, andcalling Kitty's attention to his ingenuity by a pressure with her wellfoot. "Richard, we must look up a boarding-house. "

"Do you know of any good boarding-houses?" asked the colonel of thedriver, mechanically. 

"Plenty, " answered the man. 

"Well, drive us to twenty or thirty first-class ones, " commanded thecolonel; and the search began. 

The colonel first asked prices and looked at rooms, and if he pronouncedany apartment unsuitable, Kitty was despatched by Mrs. Ellison to viewit and refute him. As often as she confirmed him, Mrs. Ellison was surethat they were both too fastidious, and they never turned away from adoor but they closed the gates of paradise upon that afflicted lady. Shebegan to believe that they should find no place whatever, when at lastthey stopped before a portal so unboarding-house-like in all outwardsigns, that she maintained it was of no use to ring, and imparted somuch of her distrust to the colonel that, after ringing, he prefaced hisdemand for rooms with an apology for supposing that there were rooms tolet there. Then, after looking at them, he returned to the carriage andreported that the whole affair was perfect, and that he should look nofarther. Mrs. Ellison replied that she never could trust his judgment, he was so careless. Kitty inspected the premises, and came back in atransport that alarmed the worst fears of Mrs. Ellison. She was surethat they had better look farther, she knew there were plenty of nicerplaces. Even if the rooms were nice and the situation pleasant, she wascertain that there must be some drawbacks which they did not know ofyet. Whereupon her husband lifted her from the carriage, and bore her, without reply or comment of any kind, into the house. 

Throughout the search Mr. Arbuton had been making up his mind that hewould part with his friends as soon as they found lodgings, give the dayto Quebec, and take the evening train for Gorham, thus escaping theannoyances of a crowded hotel, and ending at once an acquaintance whichhe ought never to have let go so far. As long as the Ellisons werewithout shelter, he felt that it was due to himself not to abandon them. But even now that they were happily housed, had he done all thatnobility obliged? He stood irresolute beside the carriage. 

"Won't you come up and see where we live?" asked Kitty, hospitably. 

"I shall be very glad, " said Mr. Arbuton. 

"My dear fellow, " said the colonel, in the parlor, "I didn't engage aroom for you. I supposed you'd rather take your chances at the hotel. "

"O, I'm going away to-night. "

"Why, that's a pity!"

"Yes, I've no fancy for a cot-bed in the hotel parlor. But I don't quitelike to leave you here, after bringing this calamity upon you. "

"O, don't mention that! I was the only one to blame. We shall get onsplendidly here. "

Mr. Arbuton suffered a vague disappointment. At the bottom of his heartwas a formless hope that he might in some way be necessary to theEllisons in their adversity; or if not that, then that something mightentangle him further and compel his stay. But they seemed quite equal inthemselves to the situation; they were in far more comfortable quartersthan they could have hoped for, and plainly should want for nothing;Fortune put on a smiling face, and bade him go free of them. He fanciedit a mocking smile, though, as he stood an instant silently weighing onething against another. The colonel was patiently waiting his motion;Mrs. Ellison sat watching him from the sofa; Kitty moved about the roomwith averted face, --a pretty domestic presence, a household priestessordering the temporary Penates. Mr. Arbuton opened his lips to sayfarewell, but a god spoke through them, --inconsequently, as the gods forthe most part do, saying, "Besides, I suppose you've got all the roomshere. "

"O, as to that I don't know, " answered the colonel, not recognizing thelanguage of inspiration, "let's ask. " Kitty knocked a photograph-bookoff the table, and Mrs. Ellison said, "Why, Kitty!" But nothing more wasspoken till the landlady came. She had another room, but doubted if itwould answer. It was in the attic, and was a back room, though it had apleasant outlook. Mr. Arbuton had no doubt that it would do very wellfor the day or two he was going to stay, and took it hastily, withoutgoing to look at it. He had his valise carried up at once, and then hewent to the post-office to see if he had any letters, offering to askalso for Colonel Ellison. 

Kitty stole off to explore the chamber given her at the rear of thehouse; that is to say, she opened the window looking out on what theirhostess told her was the garden of the Ursuline Convent, and stood therein a mute transport. A black cross rose in the midst, and all about thiswandered the paths and alleys of the garden, through clumps oflilac-bushes and among the spires of hollyhocks. The grounds wereenclosed by high walls in part, and in part by the group of the conventedifices, built of gray stone, high gabled, and topped bydormer-windowed steep roofs of tin, which, under the high morning sun, lay an expanse of keenest splendor, while many a grateful shadow dappledthe full-foliaged garden below. Two slim, tall poplars stood against thegable of the chapel, and shot their tops above its roof, and under aporch near them two nuns sat motionless in the sun, black-robed, withblack veils falling over their shoulders, and their white faces lost inthe white linen that draped them from breast to crown. Their hands layquiet in their laps, and they seemed unconscious of the other nunswalking in the garden-paths with little children, their pupils, andanswering their laughter from time to time with voices as simple andinnocent as their own. Kitty looked down upon them all with a swellingheart. They were but figures in a beautiful picture of something old andpoetical; but she loved them, and pitied them, and was most happy inthem, the same as if they had been real. It could not be that they andshe were in the same world: she must be dreaming over a book inCharley's room at Eriecreek. She shaded her eyes for a better look, whenthe noonday gun boomed from the citadel; the bell upon the chapeljangled harshly, and those strange maskers, those quaint black birdswith white breasts and faces, flocked indoors. At the same time a smalldog under her window howled dolorously at the jangling of the bell; andKitty, with an impartial joy, turned from the pensive romance of theconvent garden to the mild comedy of the scene to which his woeful noteattracted her. When he had uttered his anguish, he relapsed into thequietest small French dog that ever was, and lay down near a large, tranquil cat, whom neither the bell nor he had been able to stir fromher slumbers in the sun; a peasant-like old man kept on sawing wood, anda little child stood still amidst the larkspurs and marigolds of a tinygarden, while over the flower-pots on the low window-sill of theneighboring house to which it belonged, a young, motherly face gazedpeacefully out. The great extent of the convent grounds had left thispoor garden scarce breathing-space for its humble blooms; with the lowpaling fence that separated it from the adjoining house-yards it lookedlike a toy-garden or the background of a puppet-show, and in its way itwas as quaintly unreal to the young girl as the nunnery itself. 

When she saw it first, the city's walls and other warlike ostentationshad taken her imagination with the historic grandeur of Quebec; but thefascination deepened now that she was admitted, as it were, to thereligious heart and the domestic privacy of the famous old town. She wasromantic, as most good young girls are; and she had the same pleasure inthe strangeness of the things about her as she would have felt in thekeeping of a charming story. To Fanny's "Well, Kitty, I suppose all thisjust suits you, " when she had returned to the little parlor where thesufferer lay, she answered with a sigh of irrepressible content, "O yes!could anything be more beautiful?" and her enraptured eye dwelt upon thelow ceilings, the deep, wide chimneys eloquent of the mighty fires withwhich they must roar in winter, the French windows with their curiousand clumsy fastenings, and every little detail that made the place alienand precious. 

Fanny broke into a laugh at the visionary absence in her face. 

"Do you think the place is good enough for your hero and heroine?" askedshe, slyly; for Kitty had one of those family reputes, so hard tosurvive, for childish attempts of her own in the world of fiction whereso great part of her life had been passed; and Mrs. Ellison, who was asunliterary a soul as ever breathed, admired her with the heartinesswhich unimaginative people often feel for their idealizing friends, andbelieved that she was always deep in the mysteries of some plot. 

"O, I don't know, " Kitty answered with a little color, "about heroes andheroines; but, I'd like to live here, myself. Yes, " she continued, rather to herself than to her listener, "I do believe this is what I wasmade for. I've always wanted to live amongst old things, in a stonehouse with dormer-windows. Why, there isn't a single dormer-window inEriecreek, nor even a brick house, let alone a stone one. O yes, indeed!I was meant for an old country. "

"Well, then, Kitty, I don't see what you're to do but to marry East andlive East; or else find a rich husband, and get him to take you toEurope to live. "

"Yes; or get him to come and live in Quebec. That's all I'd ask, and heneedn't be a very rich man, for that. "

"Why, you poor child, what sort of husband could you get to settle downin _this_ dead old place?"

"O, I suppose some kind of artist or literary man. "

This was not Mrs. Ellison's notion of the kind of husband who was torealize for Kitty her fancy for life in an old country; but she wascontent to let the matter rest for the present, and, in a serenethankfulness to the power that had brought two marriageable youngcreatures together beneath the same roof, and under her own observance, she composed herself among the sofa-cushions, from which she meant toconduct the campaign against Mr. Arbuton with relentless vigor. 

"Well, " she said, "it won't be fair if you are not happy in this world, Kitty, you ask so little of it"; while Kitty turned to the windowoverlooking the street, and lost herself in the drama of the passingfigures below. They were new, and yet oddly familiar, for she had longknown them in the realm of romance. The peasant-women who went by, inhats of felt or straw, some on foot with baskets, and some in theirlight market-carts, were all, in their wrinkled and crooked age or theirfresh-faced, strong-limbed youth, her friends since childhood in many atale of France or Germany; and the black-robed priests, who mixed withthe passers on the narrow wooden sidewalk, and now and then courteouslygave way, or lifted their wide-rimmed hats in a grave, smilingsalutation, were more recent acquaintances, but not less intimate. Theywere out of old romances about Italy and Spain, in which she was verylearned; and this butcher's boy, tilting along through the crowd with ahalf-staggering run, was from any one of Dickens's stories, and shedivined that the four-armed wooden trough on his shoulder was thebutcher's tray, which figures in every novelist's description of aLondon street-crowd. There were many other types, as French mothers offamilies with market-baskets on their arms; very pretty Frenchschool-girls with books under their arms; wild-looking country boys withred raspberries in birch-bark measures; and quiet gliding nuns withwhite hoods and downcast faces: each of whom she unerringly relegated toan appropriate corner of her world of unreality. A young, mild-faced, spectacled Anglican curate she did not give a moment's pause, but rushedhim instantly through the whole series of Anthony Trollope's novels, which dull books, I am sorry to say, she had read, and liked, every one;and then she began to find various people astray out of Thackeray. Thetrig corporal, with the little visorless cap worn so jauntily, the lightstick carried in one hand, and the broad-sealed official document in theother, had also, in his breast-pocket, one of those brief, infrequentmissives which Lieutenant Osborne used to send to poor Amelia; a tall, awkward officer did duty for Major Dobbin; and when a very pretty ladydriving a pony carriage, with a footman in livery on the little perchbehind her, drew rein beside the pavement, and a handsome young captainin a splendid uniform saluted her and began talking with her in alanguid, affected way, it was Osborne recreant to the thought of hisbetrothed, one of whose tender letters he kept twirling in his fingerswhile he talked. 

Most of the people whom she saw passing had letters or papers, and, infact, they were coming from the post-office, where the noonday mails hadjust been opened. So she went on turning substance into shadow, --unless, indeed, flesh and blood is the illusion, --and, as I am bound to own, catching at very slight pretexts in many cases for the exercise of hersorcery, when her eye fell upon a gentleman at a little distance. At thesame moment he raised his eyes from a letter at which he had beenglancing, and ran them along the row of houses opposite, till theyrested on the window at which she stood. Then he smiled and lifted hishat, and, with a start, she recognized Mr. Arbuton, while a certainchill struck to her heart through the tumult she felt there. Till he sawher there had been such a cold reserve and hauteur in his bearing, thatthe trepidation which she had felt about him at times, the day before, and which had worn quite away under the events of the morning, wasrenewed again, and the aspect, in which he had been so strange that shedid not know him, seemed the only one that he had ever worn. This effectlasted till Mr. Arbuton could find his way to her, and place in hereager hand a letter from the girls and Dr. Ellison. She forgot it then, and vanished till she read her letter. 

V. 

MR. ARBUTON MAKES HIMSELF AGREEABLE. 

The first care of Colonel Ellison had been to call a doctor, and to knowthe worst about the sprained ankle, upon which his plans had fallenlame; and the worst was that it was not a bad sprain, but Mrs. Ellison, having been careless of it the day before, had aggravated the hurt, andshe must now have that perfect rest, which physicians prescribe sorecklessly of other interests and duties, for a week at least, andpossibly two or three. 

The colonel was still too much a soldier to be impatient at the doctor'sorder, but he was of far too active a temper to be quiet under it. Hetherefore proposed to himself nothing less than the capture of Quebec inan historical sense, and even before dinner he began to prepare for thecampaign. He sallied forth, and descended upon the bookstores whereverhe found them lurking, in whatsoever recess of the Upper or Lower Town, and returned home laden with guide-books to Quebec, and monographs uponepisodes of local history, such as are produced in great quantity by thesemi-clerical literary taste of out-of-the-way Catholic capitals. Thecolonel (who had gone actively into business, after leaving the army, atthe close of the war) had always a newspaper somewhere about him, but hewas not a reader of many books. Of the volumes in the doctor's library, he had never in former days willingly opened any but the plays ofShakespeare, and Don Quixote, long passages of which he knew by heart. He had sometimes attempted other books, but for the most of Kitty'sfavorite authors he professed as frank a contempt as for theMound-Builders themselves. He had read one book of travel, namely, TheInnocents Abroad, which he held to be so good a book that he need neverread anything else about the countries of which it treated. When hebrought in this extraordinary collection of pamphlets, both Kitty andFanny knew what to expect; for the colonel was as ready to receiveliterature at second-hand as to avoid its original sources. He had inthis way picked up a great deal of useful knowledge, and he was famousfor clipping from newspapers scraps of instructive fact, all of which herelentlessly remembered. He had already a fair outline of the localhistory in his mind, and this had been deepened and freshened by Dr. Ellison's recent talk of his historical studies. Moreover, he hadsecured in the course of the present journey, from his wife's andcousin's reading of divers guide-books, a new store of names and dates, which he desired to attach to the proper localities with their help. 

"Light reading for leisure hours, Fanny, " said Kitty, looking askance atthe colonel's literature as she sat down near her cousin after dinner. 

"Yes; and you start fair, ladies. Start with Jacques Cartier, ancientmariner of Dieppe, in the year 1535. No favoritism in thisinvestigation; no bringing forward of Champlain or Montcalm prematurely;no running off on subsequent conquests or other side-issues. Stick tothe discovery, and the names of Jacques Cartier and Donnacona. Come, dosomething for an honest living. "

"Who was Donnacona?" demanded Mrs. Ellison, with indifference. 

"That is just what these fascinating little volumes will tell us. Kitty, read something to your suffering cousins about Donnacona, --he soundsuncommonly like an Irishman, " answered the colonel, establishing himselfin an easy-chair; and Kitty picked up a small sketch of the history ofQuebec, and, opening it, fell into the trance which came upon her at thetouch of a book, and read on for some pages to herself. 

"Well, upon my word, " said the colonel, "I might as well be readingabout Donnacona myself, for any comfort I get. "

"O Dick, I forgot. I was just looking. Now I'm really going tocommence. "

"No, not yet, " cried Mrs. Ellison, rising on her elbow. "Where is Mr. Arbuton?"

"What has he to do with Donnacona, my dear?"

"Everything. You know he's stayed on our account, and I never heard ofanything so impolite, so inhospitable, as offering to read without him. Go and call him, Richard, do. "

"O, no, " pleaded Kitty, "he won't care about it. Don't call him, Dick. "

"Why, Kitty, I'm surprised at you! When you read so beautifully! Yonneedn't be ashamed, I'm sure. "

"I'm not ashamed; but, at the same time, I don't want to read to him. "

"Well, call him any way, colonel. He's in his room. "

"If you do, " said Kitty, with superfluous dignity, "I must go away. "

"Very well, Kitty, just as you please. Only I want Richard to witnessthat I'm not to blame if Mr. Arbuton thinks us unfeeling or neglectful. "

"O, if he doesn't say what he thinks, it'll make no difference. "

"It seems to me that this is a good deal of fuss to make about one humanbeing, a mere passing man and brother of a day, isn't it?" said thecolonel. "Go on with Donnacona, do. "

There came a knock at the door. Kitty leaped nervously to her feet, andfled out of the room. But it was only the little French serving-maidupon some errand which she quickly despatched. 

"Well, _now_ what do you think?" asked Mrs. Ellison. 

"Why, I think you've a surprising knowledge of French for one whostudied it at school. Do you suppose she understood you?"

"O, nonsense! You know I mean Kitty and her very queer behavior. Richard, if you moon at me in that stupid way, " she continued, "I shallcertainly end in an insane asylum. Can't you see what's under your verynose?"

"Yes, I can, Fanny, " answered the colonel, "if anything's there. But Igive you my word, I don't know any more than millions yet unborn whatyou're driving at. " The colonel took up the book which Kitty had throwndown, and went to his room to try to read up Donnacona for himself, while his wife penitently turned to a pamphlet in French, which he hadbought with the others. "After all, " she thought, "men will be men"; andseemed not to find the fact wholly wanting in consolation. 

A few minutes after there was a murmur of voices in the entry without, at a window looking upon the convent garden, where it happened to Mr. Arbuton, descending from his attic chamber, to find Kitty standing, apretty shape against the reflected light of the convent roofs, andamidst a little greenery of house-plants, tall geraniums, an overarchingivy, some delicate roses. She had paused there, on her way from Fanny'sto her own room, and was looking into the garden, where a pair of silentnuns were pacing up and down the paths, turning now their backs with theheavy sable coiffure sweeping their black robes, and now their still, mask-like faces, set in that stiff framework of white linen. Sometimesthey came so near that she could distinguish their features, and imaginean expression that she should know if she saw them again; and while shestood self-forgetfully feigning a character for each of them, Mr. Arbuton spoke to her and took his place at her side. 

"We're remarkably favored in having this bit of opera under our windows, Miss Ellison, " he said, and smiled as Kitty answered, "O, is it reallylike an opera? I never saw one, but I could imagine it must bebeautiful, " and they both looked on in silence a moment, while the nunsmoved, shadow-like, out of the garden, and left it empty. 

Then Mr. Arbuton said something to which Kitty answered simply, "I'llsee if my cousin doesn't want me, " and presently stood beside Mrs. Ellison's sofa, a little conscious in color. "Fanny, Mr. Arbuton hasasked me to go and see the cathedral with him. Do you think it would beright?"

Mrs. Ellison's triumphant heart rose to her lips. "Why, you dear, particular, innocent little goose, " she cried, flinging her arms aboutKitty, and kissing her till the young girl blushed again; "of course itwould! Go! You mustn't stay mewed up in here. _I_ sha'n't be able to goabout with you; and if I can judge by the colonel's _breathing_, as hecalls it, from the room in there, _he_ won't, at present. But the ideaof _your_ having a question of propriety!" And indeed it was the firsttime Kitty had ever had such a thing, and the remembrance of it put akind of constraint upon her, as she strolled demurely beside Mr. Arbutontowards the cathedral. 

"You must be guide, " said he, "for this is my first day in Quebec, youknow, and you are an old inhabitant in comparison. "

"I'll show the way, " she answered, "if you'll interpret the sights. Ithink I must be stranger to them than you, in spite of my longresidence. Sometimes I'm afraid that I _do_ only fancy I enjoy thesethings, as Mrs. March said, for I've no European experiences to contrastthem with. I know that it _seems_ very delightful, though, and quitelike what I should expect in Europe. "

"You'd expect very little of Europe, then, in most things; thoughthere's no disputing that it's a very pretty illusion of the Old World. "

A few steps had brought them into the market-square in front of thecathedral, where a little belated traffic still lingered in the few oldpeasant-women hovering over baskets of such fruits and vegetables as hadlong been out of season in the States, and the housekeepers andserving-maids cheapening these wares. A sentry moved mechanically up anddown before the high portal of the Jesuit Barracks, over the arch ofwhich were still the letters I. H. S. Carved long ago upon the keystone;and the ancient edifice itself, with its yellow stucco front and itsgrated windows, had every right to be a monastery turned barracks inFrance or Italy. A row of quaint stone houses--inns and shops--formedthe upper side of the Square; while the modern buildings of the RueFabrique on the lower side might serve very well for that show ofimprovement which deepens the sentiment of the neighboring antiquity anddecay in Latin towns. As for the cathedral, which faced the convent fromacross the Square, it was as cold and torpid a bit of Renaissance ascould be found in Rome itself. A red-coated soldier or two passedthrough the Square; three or four neat little French policemen loungedabout in blue uniforms and flaring havelocks; some walnut-faced, blue-eyed old citizens and peasants sat upon the thresholds of the rowof old houses, and gazed dreamily through the smoke of their pipes atthe slight stir and glitter of shopping about the fine stores of the RueFabrique. An air of serene disoccupation pervaded the place, with whichthe occasional riot of the drivers of the long row of calashes andcarriages in front of the cathedral did not discord. Whenever a strayAmerican wandered into the Square, there was a wild flight of thesedrivers towards him, and his person was lost to sight amidst theirpantomime. They did not try to underbid each other, and they wereperfectly good-humored; as soon as he had made his choice, the rejectedmultitude returned to their places on the curbstone, pursuing thesuccessful aspirant with inscrutable jokes as he drove off, while thehorses went on munching the contents of their leathern head-bags, andtossing them into the air to shake down the lurking grains of corn. 

"It _is_ like Europe; your friends were right, " said Mr. Arbuton as theyescaped into the cathedral from one of these friendly onsets. "It'squite the atmosphere of foreign travel, and you ought to be able torealize the feelings of a tourist. "

A priest was saying mass at one of the side-altars, assisted by acolytesin their every-day clothes; and outside of the railing a market-woman, with a basket of choke-cherries, knelt among a few other poor people. Presently a young English couple came in, he with a dashing India scarfabout his hat, and she very stylishly dressed, who also made theirgenuflections with the rest, and then sat down and dropped their headsin prayer. 

"This is like enough Europe, too, " murmured Mr. Arbuton. "It's very goodNorth Italy; or South, for the matter of that. "

"O, is it?" answered Kitty, joyously. "I thought it must be!" And sheadded, in that trustful way of hers: "It's all very familiar; but thenit seems to me on this journey that I've seen a great many things that Iknow I've only read of before"; and so followed Mr. Arbuton in his tourof the pictures. 

She was as ignorant of art as any Roman or Florentine girl whose lifehas been passed in the midst of it; and she believed these mighty finepictures, and was puzzled by Mr. Arbuton's behavior towards them, whowas too little imaginative or too conscientious to make merit for themout of the things they suggested. He treated the poor altar-pieces ofthe Quebec cathedral with the same harsh indifference he would haveshown to the second-rate paintings of a European gallery; doubted theVandyck, and cared nothing for the Conception, "in the style of LeBrun, " over the high-altar, though it had the historical interest ofhaving survived that bombardment of 1759 which destroyed the church. 

Kitty innocently singled out the worst picture in the place as herfavorite, and then was piqued, and presently frightened, at his coldreluctance about it. He made her feel that it was very bad, and that sheshared its inferiority, though he said nothing to that effect. Shelearned the shame of not being a connoisseur in a connoisseur's company, and she perceived more painfully than ever before that a Bostonian, whohad been much in Europe, might be very uncomfortable to the simple, unravelled American. Yet, she reminded herself, the Marches had been inEurope, and they were Bostonians also; and they did not go about puttingeverything under foot; they seemed to care for everything they saw, andto have a friendly jest, if not praises, for it. She liked that; shewould have been well enough pleased to have Mr. Arbuton laugh outrightat her picture, and she could have joined him in it. But the look, however flattered into an air of polite question at last, which he hadbent upon her, seemed to outlaw her and condemn her taste in everything. As they passed out of the cathedral, she would rather have gone homethan continued the walk as he begged her, if she were not tired, to do;but this would have been flight, and she was not a coward. So theysauntered down the Rue Fabrique, and turned into Palace Street. As theywent by the door of Hôtel Musty, her pleasant friends came again intoher mind, and she said, "This is where we stayed last week, with Mr. AndMrs. March. "

"Those Boston people?"

"Yes. "

"Do you know where they live in Boston?"

"Why, we have their address; but I can't think of it. I believesomewhere in the southern part of the city--"

"The South End?"

"O yes, that's it. Have you ever heard of them?"

"No. "

"I thought perhaps you might have known Mr. March. He's in the insurancebusiness--"

"O no! No, I don't know him, " said Mr. Arbuton, eagerly. Kitty wonderedif there could be anything wrong with the business repute of Mr. March, but dismissed the thought as unworthy; and having perceived that herfriends were snubbed, she said bravely, that they were the mostdelightful people she had ever seen, and she was sorry that they werenot still in Quebec. He shared her regret tacitly, if at all, and theywalked in silence to the gate, whence they strolled down the windingstreet outside the wall into the Lower Town. But it was not a pleasantramble for Kitty: she was in a dim dread of hitherto unseen andunimagined trespasses against good taste, not only in pictures andpeople, but in all life, which, from having been a very smiling prospectwhen she set out with Mr. Arbuton, had suddenly become a narrow pathway, in which one must pick one's way with more regard to each step than anygeneral end. All this was as obscure and uncertain as the intimationswhich had produced it, and which, in words, had really amounted tonothing. But she felt more and more that in her companion there wassomething wholly alien to the influences which had shaped her; andthough she could not know how much, she was sure of enough to make herdreary in his presence. 

They wandered through the quaintness and noiseless bustle of the LowerTown thoroughfares, and came by and by to that old church, the oldest inQuebec, which was built near two hundred years ago, in fulfilment of avow made at the repulse of Sir William Phipps's attack upon the city, and further famed for the prophecy of a nun, that this church should beruined by the fire in which a successful attempt of the English was yetto involve the Lower Town. A painting, which represented the vision ofthe nun, perished in the conflagration which verified it, in 1759; butthe walls of the ancient structure remain to witness this singular pieceof history, which Kitty now glanced at furtively in one of the colonel'sguide-books; since her ill-fortune with the picture in the cathedral, she had not openly cared for anything. 

At one side of the church there was a booth for the sale of crockery andtin ware; and there was an every-day cheerfulness of small business inthe shops and tented stands about the square on which the church faced, and through which there was continual passing of heavy burdens from theport, swift calashes, and slow, country-paced market-carts. 

Mr. Arbuton made no motion to enter the church, and Kitty would not hintthe curiosity she felt to see the interior; and while they lingered amoment, the door opened, and a peasant came out with a little coffin inhis arms. His eyes were dim and his face wet with weeping, and he borethe little coffin tenderly, as if his caress might reach the dead childwithin. Behind him she came who must be the mother, her face deeplyhidden in her veil. Beside the pavement waited a shabby calash, with adriver half asleep on his perch; and the man, still clasping hisprecious burden, clambered into the vehicle, and laid it upon his knees, while the woman groped, through her tears and veil, for the step. Kittyand her companion had moved reverently aside; but now Mr. Arbuton cameforward, and helped the woman to her place. She gave him a hoarse, sad"_Merci!_" and spread a fold of her shawl fondly over the end of thelittle coffin; the drowsy driver whipped up his beast, and the calashjolted away. 

Kitty cast a grateful glance upon Mr. Arbuton, as they now entered thechurch, by a common impulse. On their way towards the high-altar theypassed the rude black bier, with the tallow candles yet smoking in theirblack wooden candlesticks. A few worshippers were dropped here and therein the vacant seats, and at a principal side-altar knelt a poor womanpraying before a wooden effigy of the dead Christ that lay in a glasscase under the altar. The image was of life-size, and was painted torepresent life, or rather death, with false hair and beard, and with themuslin drapery managed to expose the stigmata: it was stretched upon abed strewn with artificial flowers; and it was dreadful. But the poorsoul at her devotions there prayed to it in an ecstasy of supplication, flinging her arms asunder with imploring gesture, clasping her hands andbowing her head upon them, while her person swayed from side to side inthe abandon of her prayer. Who could she be, and what was her mightyneed of blessing or forgiveness? As her wont was, Kitty threw her ownsoul into the imagined case of the suppliant, the tragedy of her desireor sorrow. Yet, like all who suffer sympathetically, she was not withoutconsolations unknown to the principal; and the waning afternoon, as itlit up the conventional ugliness of the old church, and theparaphernalia of its worship, relieved her emotional self-abandon with aremote sense of content, so that it may have been a jealousy for theintegrity of her own revery, as well as a feeling for the poor woman, that made her tremble lest Mr. Arbuton should in some way disparage thespectacle. I suppose that her interest in it was more an aesthetic thana spiritual one; it embodied to her sight many a scene of penitence thathad played before her fancy, and I do not know but she would have beenwilling to have the suppliant guilty of some dreadful misdeed, ratherthan eating meat last Friday, which was probably her sin. However itwas, the ancient crone before that ghastly idol was precious to her, andit seemed too great a favor, when at last the suppliant wiped her eyes, rose trembling from her knees, and approaching Kitty, stretched towardsher a shaking palm for charity. 

It was a touch that transfigured all, and gave even Mr. Arbuton'sneutrality a light of ideal character. He bestowed the alms craved ofhim in turn, he did not repulse the beldame's blessing; and Kitty, whowas already moved by his kindness to that poor mourner at the door, forgot that the earlier part of their walk had been so miserable, andclimbed back to the Upper Town through the Prescott Gate in greatergayety than she had yet known that day in his company. I think he hadnot done much to make her cheerful; but it is one of the advantages of atemperament like his, that very little is expected of it, and that itcan more easily than any other make the human heart glad; at the leastsoftening in it, the soul frolics with a craven lightsomeness. For thisreason Kitty was able to enjoy with novel satisfaction thepicturesqueness of Mountain Street, and they both admired the hugeshoulder of rock near the gate, with its poplars atop, and the batteryat the brink, with the muzzles of the guns thrust forward against thesky. She could not move him to her pleasure in the grotesqueness of thecircus-bills plastered half-way up the rock; but he tolerated the levitywith which she commented on them, and her light sallies upon passingthings, and he said nothing to prevent her reaching home in serenesatisfaction. 

"Well, Kitty, " said the tenant of the sofa, as Kitty and the coloneldrew up to the table on which the tea was laid at the sofa-side, "you'vehad a nice walk, haven't you?"

"O yes, very nice. That is, the first part of it wasn't very nice; butafter a while we reached an old church in the Lower Town, --which wasvery interesting, --and then we appeared to cheer up and take a newstart. "

"Well, " asked the colonel, "what did you find so interesting at that oldchurch?"

"Why, there was a baby's funeral; and an old woman, perfectly crushed bysome trouble or other, praying before an altar, and--"

"It seems to take very little to cheer you up, " said the colonel. "Allyou ask of your fellow-beings is a heart-breaking bereavement and areligious agony, and you are lively at once. _Some_ people might requirehuman sacrifices, but you don't. "

Kitty looked at her cousin a moment with vague amaze. The grossness ofthe absurdity flashed upon her, and she felt as if another touch mustbring the tears. She said nothing; but Mrs. Ellison, who saw only thatshe was cut off from her heart's desire of gossip, came to the rescue. 

"Don't answer a word, Kitty, not a single word; I never heard anythingmore insulting from one cousin to another; and I should say it, if I wasbrought into a court of justice. "

A sudden burst of laughter from Kitty, who hid her conscious face in herhands, interrupted Mrs. Ellison's defence. 

"Well, " said Mrs. Ellison, piqued at her desertion, "I hope youunderstand yourselves. _I_ don't. " This was Mrs. Ellison's attitudetowards her husband's whole family, who on their part never had beenable to account for the colonel's choice except as a joke, and sometimesquestioned if he had not perhaps carried the joke too far; though theyloved her too, for a kind of passionate generosity and sublime, inconsequent unselfishness about her. 

"What I want to know, _now_, " said the colonel, as soon as Kitty wouldlet him, "and I'll try to put it as politely as I can, is simply this:what made the first part of your walk so disagreeable? You didn't see awedding-party, or a child rescued from a horrible death, or a man savedfrom drowning, or anything of that kind, did you?"

But the colonel would have done better not to say anything. His wife wasmade peevish by his persistence, and the loss of the harmless pleasureupon which she had counted in the history of Kitty's walk with Mr. Arbuton. Kitty herself would not laugh again; in fact she grew seriousand thoughtful, and presently took up a book, and after that went to herown room, where she stood awhile at her window, and looked out on thegarden of the Ursulines. The moon hung full orb in the stainless heaven, and deepened the mystery of the paths and trees, and lit the silveryroofs and chimneys of the convent with tender effulgence. A wanderingodor of leaf and flower stole up from the garden, but she perceived thesweetness, like the splendor, with veiled senses. She was turning overin her thought the incidents of her walk, and trying to make out ifanything had really happened, first to provoke her against Mr. Arbuton, and then to reconcile her to him. Had he said or done anything about herfavorite painting (which she hated now), or the Marches, to offend her?Or if it had been his tone and manner, was his after-conduct at the oldchurch sufficient penance? What was it he had done that common humanitydid not require? Was he so very superior to common humanity, that sheshould meekly rejoice at his kindness to the afflicted mother? Why needshe have cared for his forbearance toward the rapt devotee? She becameaware that she was ridiculous. "Dick was right, " she confessed, "and Iwill _not_ let myself be made a goose of"; and when the bugle at thecitadel called the soldiers to rest, and the harsh chapel-bell bade thenuns go dream of heaven, she also fell asleep, a smile on her lips and alight heart in her breast. 

VI. 

A LETTER OF KITTY'S. 

 Quebec, August --, 1870. 

 Dear Girls: Since the letter I wrote you a day or two after we got here, we have been going on very much as you might have expected. A whole week has passed, but we still bear our enforced leisure with fortitude; and, though Boston and New York are both fading into the improbable (as far as we are concerned), Quebec continues inexhaustible, and I don't begrudge a moment of the time we are giving it. 

 Fanny still keeps her sofa; the first enthusiasm of her affliction has worn away, and she has nothing to sustain her now but planning our expeditions about the city. She has got the map and the history of Quebec by heart, and she holds us to the literal fulfilment of her instructions. On this account, she often has to send Dick and me out together when she would like to keep him with her, for she won't trust either of us alone, and when we come back she examines us separately to see whether we have skipped anything. This makes us faithful in the smallest things. She says she is determined that Uncle Jack shall have a full and circumstantial report from me of all that he wants to know about the celebrated places here, and I really think he will, if I go on, or am goaded on, in this way. It's pure devotion to the cause in Fanny, for you know she doesn't care for such things herself, and has no pleasure in it but carrying a point. Her chief consolation under her trial of keeping still is to see how I look in her different dresses. She sighs over me as I appear in a new garment, and says, O, if she only had the dressing of me! Then she gets up and limps and hops across the room to where I stand before the glass, and puts a pin here and a ribbon there, and gives my hair (which she has dressed herself) a little dab, to make it lie differently, and then scrambles back to her sofa, and knocks her lame ankle against something, and lies there groaning and enjoying herself like a martyr. On days when she thinks she is never going to get well, she says she doesn't know why she doesn't give me her things at once and be done with it; and on days when she thinks she is going to get well right away, she says she will have me one made something like whatever dress I have got on, as soon as she's home. Then up she'll jump again for the exact measure, and tell me the history of every stitch, and how she'll have it altered just the least grain, and differently trimmed to suit my complexion better; and ends by having promised to get me something not in the least like it. You have some idea already of what Fanny is; and all you have got to do is to multiply it by about fifty thousand. Her sprained ankle simply intensifies her whole character. 

 Besides helping to compose Fanny's expeditionary corps, and really exerting himself in the cause of Uncle Jack, as he calls it, Dick is behaving beautifully. Every morning, after breakfast, he goes over to the hotel, and looks at the arrivals and reads the newspapers, and though we never get anything out of him afterwards, we somehow feel informed of all that is going on. He has taken to smoking a clay pipe in honor of the Canadian fashion, and he wears a gay, barbaric scarf of Indian muslin wound round his hat and flying out behind; because the Quebeckers protect themselves in that way against sunstroke when the thermometer gets up among the sixties. He has also bought a pair of snow-shoes to be prepared for the other extreme of weather, in case anything else should happen to Fanny, and detain us into the winter. When he has rested from his walk to the hotel, we usually go out together and explore, as we do also in the afternoon; and in the evening we walk on Durham Terrace, --a promenade overlooking the river, where the whole cramped and crooked city goes for exercise. It's a formal parade in the evening; but one morning I went there before breakfast, for a change, and found it the resort of careless ease; two or three idle boys were sunning themselves on the carriages of the big guns that stand on the Terrace, a little dog was barking at the chimneys of the Lower Town, and an old gentleman was walking up and down in his dressing-gown and slippers, just as if it were his own front porch. He looked something like Uncle Jack, and I wished it had been he, --to see the smoke curling softly up from the Lower Town, the bustle about the market-place, and the shipping in the river, and the haze hanging over the water a little way off, and the near hills all silver, and the distant ones blue. 

 But if we are coming to the grand and the beautiful, why, there is no direction in which you can look about Quebec without seeing it; and it is always mixed up with something so familiar and homelike, that my heart warms to it. The Jesuit Barracks are just across the street from us in the foreground of the most magnificent landscape; the building is--think, you Eriecreekers of an hour!--two hundred years old, and it looks five hundred. The English took it away from the Jesuits in 1760, and have used it as barracks ever since; but it isn't in the least changed, so that a Jesuit missionary who visited it the other day said that it was as if his brother priests had been driven out of it the week before. Well, you might think so old and so historical a place would be putting on airs, but it takes as kindly to domestic life as a new frame-house, and I am never tired of looking over into the yard at the frowsy soldiers' wives hanging out clothes, and the unkempt children playing among the burdocks, and chickens and cats, and the soldiers themselves carrying about the officers' boots, or sawing wood and picking up chips to boil the teakettle. They are off dignity as well as off duty, then; but when they are on both, and in full dress, they make our volunteers (as I remember them) seem very shabby and slovenly. 

 Over the belfry of the Barracks, our windows command a view of half Quebec, with its roofs and spires dropping down the slope to the Lower Town, where the masts of the ships in the river come tapering up among them, and then of the plain stretching from the river in the valley to a range of mountains against the horizon, with far-off white villages glimmering out of their purple folds. The whole plain is bright with houses and harvest-fields; and the distinctly divided farms--the owners cut them up every generation, and give each son a strip of the entire length--run back on either hand, from the straight roads bordered by poplars, while the highways near the city pass between lovely villas. 

 But this landscape and the Jesuit Barracks, with all their merits, are nothing to the Ursuline Convent, just under our back windows, which I told you something about in my other letter. We have been reading up its history since, and we know about Madame de la Peltrie, the noble Norman lady who founded it in 1640. She was very rich and very beautiful, and a saint from the beginning, so that when her husband died, and her poor old father wanted her to marry again and not go into a nunnery, she didn't mind cheating him by a sham marriage with a devout gentleman; and she came to Canada as soon as her father was dead, with another saint, Marie de l'Incarnation, and founded this convent. The first building is standing yet, as strong as ever, though everything but the stone walls was burnt two centuries ago. Only a few years since an old ash-tree, under which the Ursulines first taught the Indian children, blew down, and now a large black cross marks its place. The modern nuns are in the garden nearly the whole morning long, and by night the ghosts of the former nuns haunt it; and in very bright moonlight I myself do a bit of Madame de la Peltrie there, and teach little Indian boys, who dwindle like those in the song, as the moon goes down. It is an enchanted place, and I wish we had it in the back yard at Eriecreek, though I don't think the neighbors would approve of the architecture. I have adopted two nuns for my own: one is tall and slender and pallid, and you can see at a glance that she broke the heart of a mortal lover, and knew it, when she became the bride of heaven; and the other is short and plain and plump, and looks as comfortable and commonplace as life-after-dinner. When the world is bright I revel in the statue-like sadness of the beautiful nun, who never laughs or plays with the little girl pupils; but when the world is dark--as the best of worlds will be at times for a minute or two--I take to the fat nun, and go in for a clumsy romp with the children; and then I fancy that I am wiser if not better than the fair slim Ursuline. But whichever I am, for the time being, I am vexed with the other; yet they always are together, as if they were counterparts. I think a nice story might be written about them. 

 In Wolfe's siege of Quebec this Ursuline Garden of ours was everywhere torn up by the falling bombs, and the sisters were driven out into the world they had forsaken forever, as Fanny has been reading in a little French account of the events, written at the time, by a nun of the General Hospital. It was there the Ursulines took what refuge there was; going from their cloistered school-rooms and their innocent little ones to the wards of the hospital, filled with the wounded and dying of either side, and echoing with their dreadful groans. What a sad, evil, bewildering world they had a glimpse of! In the garden here, our poor Montcalm--I belong to the French side, please, in Quebec--was buried in a grave dug for him by a bursting shell. They have his skull now in the chaplain's room of the convent, where we saw it the other day. They have made it comfortable in a glass box, neatly bound with black, and covered with a white lace drapery, just as if it were a saint's. It was broken a little in taking it out of the grave; and a few years ago, some English officers borrowed it to look at, and were horrible enough to pull out some of the teeth. Tell Uncle Jack the head is very broad above the ears, but the forehead is small. 

 The chaplain also showed us a copy of an old painting of the first convent, Indian lodges, Madame de la Peltrie's house, and Madame herself, very splendidly dressed, with an Indian chief before her, and some French cavaliers riding down an avenue towards her. Then he showed us some of the nuns' work in albums, painted and lettered in a way to give me an idea of old missals. By and by he went into the chapel with us, and it gave such a queer notion of his indoors life to have him put on an overcoat and india-rubbers to go a few rods through the open air to the chapel door: he had not been very well, he said. When he got in, he took off his hat, and put on an octagonal priest's cap, and showed us everything in the kindest way--and his manners were exquisite. There were beautiful paintings sent out from France at the time of the Revolution; and wood-carvings round the high-altar, done by Quebec artists in the beginning of the last century; for he said they had a school of arts then at St. Anne's, twenty miles below the city. Then there was an ivory crucifix, so life-like that you could scarcely bear to look at it. But what I most cared for was the tiny twinkle of a votive lamp which he pointed out to us in one corner of the nuns' chapel: it was lit a hundred and fifty years ago by two of our French officers when their sister took the veil, and has never been extinguished since, except during the siege of 1759. Of course, I think a story might be written about _this_; and the truth is, the possibilities of fiction in Quebec are overpowering; I go about in a perfect haze of romances, and meet people at every turn who have nothing to do but invite the passing novelist into their houses, and have their likenesses done at once for heroes and heroines. They needn't change a thing about them, but sit just as they are; and if this is in the present, only think how the whole past of Quebec must be crying out to be put into historical romances!

 I wish you could see the houses, and how substantial they are. I can only think of Eriecreek as an assemblage of huts and bark-lodges in contrast. Our boarding-house is comparatively slight, and has stone walls only a foot and a half thick, but the average is two feet and two and a half; and the other day Dick went through the Laval University, --he goes everywhere and gets acquainted with everybody, --and saw the foundation walls of the first building, which have stood all the sieges and conflagrations since the seventeenth century; and no wonder, for they are six feet thick, and form a series of low-vaulted corridors, as heavy, he says, as the casemates of a fortress. There is a beautiful old carved staircase there, of the same date; and he liked the president, a priest, ever so much; and we like the looks of all the priests we see; they are so handsome and polite, and they all speak English, with some funny little defect. The other day, we asked such a nice young priest about the way to Hare Point, where it is said the Recollet friars had their first mission on the marshy meadows: he didn't know of this bit of history, and we showed him our book. "Ah! you see, the book say 'pro-_bab_-ly the site. ' If it had said _certainly_, I should have known. But pro-_bab_-ly, pro-_bab_-ly, you see!" However, he showed us the way, and down we went through the Lower Town, and out past the General Hospital to this Pointe aux Lièvres, which is famous also because somewhere near it, on the St. Charles, Jacques Cartier wintered in 1536, and kidnapped the Indian king Donnacona, whom he carried to France. And it was here Montcalm's forces tried to rally after their defeat by Wolfe. (Please read this several times to Uncle Jack, so that he can have it impressed upon him how faithful I am in my historical researches. )

 It makes me dreadfully angry and sad to think the French should have been robbed of Quebec, after what they did to build it. But it is still quite a French city in everything, even to sympathy with France in this Prussian war, which you would hardly think they would care about. Our landlady says the very boys in the street know about the battles, and explain, every time the French are beaten, how they were outnumbered and betrayed, --something the way we used to do in the first of our war. 

 I suppose you will think I am crazy; but I do wish Uncle Jack would wind up his practice at Eriecreek, and sell the house, and come to live at Quebec. I have been asking prices of things, and I find that everything is very cheap, even according to the Eriecreek standard; we could get a beautiful house on the St. Louis Road for two hundred a year; beef is ten or twelve cents a pound, and everything else in proportion. Then besides that, the washing is sent out into the country to be done by the peasant-women, and there isn't a crumb of bread baked in the house, but it all comes from the bakers; and only think, girls, what a relief that would be! Do get Uncle Jack to consider it _seriously_. 

 Since I began this letter the afternoon has worn away--the light from the sunset on the mountains would glorify our supper-table without extra charge, if we lived here--and the twilight has passed, and the moon has come up over the gables and dormer-windows of the convent, and looks into the garden so invitingly that I can't help joining her. So I will put my writing by till to-morrow. The going-to-bed bell has rung, and the red lights have vanished one by one from the windows, and the nuns are asleep, and another set of ghosts is playing in the garden with the copper-colored phantoms of the Indian children of long ago. What! not Madame de la Peltrie? Oh! how do they like those little fibs of yours up in heaven?

 _Sunday afternoon. _--As we were at the French cathedral last Sunday, we went to the English to-day; and I could easily have imagined myself in some church of Old England, hearing the royal family prayed for, and listening to the pretty poor sermon delivered with such an English _brogue_. The people, too, had such Englishy faces and such queer little eccentricities of dress; the young lady that sang contralto in the choir wore a scarf like a man's on her hat. The cathedral isn't much, architecturally, I suppose, but it affected me very solemnly, and I couldn't help feeling that it was as much a part of British power and grandeur as the citadel itself. Over the bishop's seat drooped the flag of a Crimean regiment, tattered by time and battles, which was hung up here with great ceremonies, in 1860, when the Prince of Wales presented them with new colors; and up in the gallery was a kind of glorified pew for royal highnesses and governor-generals and so forth, to sit in when they are here. There are tablets and monumental busts about the walls; and one to the memory of the Duke of Lenox, the governor-general who died in the middle of the last century from the bite of a fox; which seemed an odd fate for a duke, and somehow made me very sorry for him. 

 Fanny, of course, couldn't go to church with me, and Dick got out of it by lingering too late over the newspapers at the hotel, and so I trudged off with our Bostonian, who is still with us here. I didn't dwell much upon him in my last letter, and I don't believe now I can make him quite clear to you. He has been a good deal abroad, and he is Europeanized enough not to think much of America, though I can't find that he quite approves of Europe, and his experience seems not to have left him any particular country in either hemisphere. 

 He isn't the Bostonian of Uncle Jack's imagination, and I suspect he wouldn't like to be. He is rather too young, still, to have much of an antislavery record, and even if he had lived soon enough, I think that he would not have been a John Brown man. I am afraid that he believes in "vulgar and meretricious distinctions" of all sorts, and that he hasn't an atom of "magnanimous democracy" in him. In fact, I find, to my great astonishment, that some ideas which I thought were held only in England, and which I had never seriously thought of, seem actually a part of Mr. Arbuton's nature or education. He talks about the lower classes, and tradesmen, and the best people, and good families, as I supposed nobody in _this_ country _ever_ did, --in earnest. To be sure, I have always been reading of characters who had such opinions, but I thought they were just put into novels to eke out somebody's unhappiness, --to keep the high-born daughter from marrying beneath her for love, and so on; or else to be made fun of in the person of some silly old woman or some odious snob; and I could hardly believe at first that our Bostonian was serious in talking in that way. Such things sound so differently in real life; and I laughed at them till I found that he didn't know what to make of my laughing, and then I took leave to differ with him in some of his notions; but he never disputes anything I say, and so makes it seem rude to differ with him. I always feel, though he begins it, as if I had thrust my opinions upon him. But in spite of his weaknesses and disagreeabilities, there is something really _high_ about him; he is so scrupulously true, so exactly just, that Uncle Jack himself couldn't be more so; though you can see that he respects his virtues as the peculiar result of some extraordinary system. Here at Quebec, though he goes round patronizing the landscape and the antiquities, and coldly smiling at my little enthusiasms, there is really a great deal that ought to be at least improving in him. I get to paying him the same respect that he pays himself, and imbues his very clothes with, till everything he has on appears to look like him and respect itself accordingly. I have often wondered what his hat, his honored hat, for instance, would do, if I should throw it out of the front window. It would make an earthquake, I believe. 

 He is politely curious about us; and from time to time, in a shrinking, disgusted way, he asks some leading question about Eriecreek, which he doesn't seem able to form any idea of, as much as I explain it. He clings to his original notion, that it is in the heart of the Oil Regions, of which he has seen pictures in the illustrated papers; and when I assert myself against his opinions, he treats me very gingerly, as if I were an explosive sprite, or an inflammable naiad from a torpedoed well, and it wouldn't be quite safe to oppose me, or I would disappear with a flash and a bang. 

 When Dick isn't able to go with me on Fanny's account, Mr. Arbuton takes his place in the expeditionary corps; and we have visited a good many points of interest together, and now and then he talks very entertainingly about his travels. But I don't think they have made him very cosmopolitan. It seems as if he went about with a little imaginary standard, and was chiefly interested in things, to see whether they fitted it or not. Trifling matters annoy him; and when he finds sublimity mixed up with absurdity, it almost makes him angry. One of the oddest and oldest-looking buildings in Quebec is a little one-story house on St. Louis Street, to which poor General Montgomery was taken after he was shot; and it is a pastry-cook's now, and the tarts and cakes in the window vexed Mr. Arbuton so much--not that he seemed to care for Montgomery--that I didn't dare to laugh. 

 I live very little in the nineteenth century at present, and do not care much for people who do. Still I have a few grains of affection left for Uncle Jack, which I want you to give him. 

 I suppose it will take about six stamps to pay this letter. I forgot to say that Dick goes to be barbered every day at the "Montcalm Shaving and Shampooing Saloon, " so called because they say Montcalm held his last council of war there. It is a queer little steep-roofed house, with a flowering bean up the front, and a bit of garden, full of snap-dragons, before it. 

 We shall be here a week or so yet, at any rate, and then, I think, we shall go straight home, Dick has lost so much time already. 

 With a great deal of love, Your Kitty. 

VII. 

LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM. 

With the two young people whose days now lapsed away together, it couldnot be said that Monday varied much from Tuesday, or ten o'clock fromhalf past three; they were not always certain what day of the week itwas, and sometimes they fancied that a thing which happened in themorning had taken place yesterday afternoon. 

But whatever it was, and however uncertain in time and character theirslight adventure was to themselves, Mrs. Ellison secured all possibleknowledge of it from Kitty. Since it was her misfortune that promotedit, she considered herself a martyr to Kitty's acquaintance with Mr. Arbuton, and believed that she had the best claim to any gossip thatcould come of it. She lounged upon her sofa, and listened with apatience superior to the maiden caprice with which her inquisition wassometimes met; for if that delayed her satisfaction it also employed herarts, and the final triumph of getting everything out of Kitty affordedher a delicate self-flattery. But commonly the young girl was readyenough to speak, for she was glad to have the light of a worldlier mindand a greater experience than her own on Mr. Arbuton's character: ifMrs. Ellison was not the wisest head, still talking him over was atleast a relief from thinking him over; and then, at the end of the ends, when were ever two women averse to talk of a man?

She commonly sought Fanny's sofa when she returned from her ramblesthrough the city, and gave a sufficiently strict account of what hadhappened. This was done light-heartedly and with touches of burlesqueand extravagance at first; but the reports grew presently to have a moreserious tone, and latterly Kitty had been so absent at times that shewould fall into a puzzled silence in the midst of her narration; or elseshe would meet a long procession of skilfully marshalled questions witha flippancy that no one but a martyr could have suffered. But Mrs. Ellison bore all and would have borne much more in that cause. Battledat one point, she turned to another, and the sum of her researches wasoften a clearer perception of Kitty's state of mind than the young girlherself possessed. For her, indeed, the whole affair was full of mysteryand misgiving. 

"Our acquaintance has the charm of novelty every time we meet, " she saidonce, when pressed hard by Mrs. Ellison. "We are growing betterstrangers, Mr. Arbuton and I. By and by, some morning, we shall not knoweach other by sight. I can barely recognize him now, though I thought Iknew him pretty well once. I want you to understand that I speak as anunbiassed spectator, Fanny. "

"O Kitty! how can you accuse me of trying to pry into your affairs!"cries injured Mrs. Ellison, and settles herself in a more comfortableposture for listening. 

"I don't accuse you of anything. I'm sure you've a right to knoweverything about me. Only, I want you really to know. "

"Yes, dear, " says the matron, with hypocritical meekness. 

"Well, " resumes Kitty, "there are things that puzzle me more and moreabout him, --things that used to amuse me at first, because I didn'tactually believe that they could be, and that I felt like defyingafterwards. But now I can't bear up against them. They frighten me, andseem to deny me the right to be what I believe I am. "

"I don't understand you, Kitty. "

"Why, you've seen how it is with us at home, and how Uncle Jack hasbrought us up. We never had a rule for anything except to do what wasright, and to be careful of the rights of others. "

"Well. "

"Well, Mr. Arbuton seems to have lived in a world where everything isregulated by some rigid law that it would be death to break. Then, youknow, at home we are always talking about people, and discussing them;but we always talk of each person for what he is in himself, and Ialways thought a person could refine himself if he tried, and wassincere, and not conceited. But _he_ seems to judge people according totheir origin and locality and calling, and to believe that allrefinement must come from just such training and circumstances as hisown. Without exactly saying so, he puts everything else quite out of thequestion. He doesn't appear to dream that there can be any differentopinion. He tramples upon all that I have been taught to believe; andthough I cling the closer to my idols, I can't help, now and then, trying myself by his criterions; and then I find myself wanting in everycivilized trait, and my whole life coarse and poor, and all myassociations hopelessly degraded. I think his ideas are hard and narrow, and I believe that even my little experience would prove them false; butthen, they are his, and I can't reconcile them with what I see is goodin him. "

Kitty spoke with half-averted face where she sat beside one of the frontwindows, looking absently out on the distant line of violet hills beyondCharlesbourg, and now and then lifting her glove from her lap andletting it drop again. 

"Kitty, " said Mrs. Ellison in reply to her difficulties, "you oughtn'tto sit against a light like that. It makes your profile quite black toany one back in the room. "

"O well, Fanny, I'm not black in reality. "

"Yes, but a young lady ought always to think how she is looking. Supposesome one was to come in. "

"Dick's the only one likely to come in just now, and he wouldn't mindit. But if you like it better, I'll come and sit by you, " said Kitty, and took her place beside the sofa. 

Her hat was in her hand, her sack on her arm; the fatigue of a recentwalk gave her a soft pallor, and languor of face and attitude. Mrs. Ellison admired her pretty looks with a generous regret that they shouldbe wasted on herself, and then asked, "Where were you this afternoon?"

"O, we went to the Hôtel Dieu, for one thing, and afterwards we lookedinto the court-yard of the convent; and there another of his pleasantlittle traits came out, --a way he has of always putting you in the wrongeven when it's a matter of no consequence any way, and there needn't beany right or wrong about it. I remembered the place because Mrs. March, you know, showed us a rose that one of the nuns in the hospital gaveher, and I tried to tell Mr. Arbuton about it, and he graciously took itas if poor Mrs. March had made an advance towards his acquaintance. I dowish you could see what a lovely place that court-yard is, Fanny. It'sso strange that such a thing should be right there, in the heart of thiscrowded city; but there it was, with its peasant cottage on one side, and its long, low barns on the other, and those wide-horned Canadiancows munching at the racks of hay outside, and pigeons and chickens allabout among their feet--"

"Yes, yes; never mind all that, Kitty. You know I hate nature. Go onabout Mr. Arbuton, " said Mrs. Ellison, who did not mean a sarcasm. 

"It looked like a farmyard in a picture, far out in the countrysomewhere, " resumed Kitty; "and Mr. Arbuton did it the honor to say itwas just like Normandy. "

"Kitty!"

"He did, indeed, Fanny; and the cows didn't go down on their knees outof gratitude, either. Well, off on the right were the hospital buildingsclimbing up, you know, with their stone walls and steep roofs, andwindows dropped about over them, like our convent here; and there was anartist there, sketching it all; he had such a brown, pleasant face, witha little black mustache and imperial, and such gay black eyes thatnobody could help falling in love with him; and he was talking in such afree-and-easy way with the lazy workmen and women overlooking him. Hejotted down a little image of the Virgin in a niche on the wall, and oneof the people called out, --Mr. Arbuton was translating, --'Look there!with one touch he's made our Blessed Lady. ' 'O, ' says the painter, 'that's nothing; with three touches I can make the entire Holy Family. 'And they all laughed; and that little joke, you know, won my heart, --Idon't hear many jokes from Mr. Arbuton;--and so I said what a blessedlife a painter's must be, for it would give you a right to be a vagrant, and you could wander through the world, seeing everything that waslovely and funny, and nobody could blame you; and I wondered everybodywho had the chance didn't learn to sketch. Mr. Arbuton took itseriously, and said people had to have something more than the chance tolearn before they could sketch, and that most of them were an afflictionwith their sketchbooks, and he had seen too much of the sad effects ofdrawing from casts. And he put me in the wrong, as he always does. Don'tyou see? I didn't want to learn drawing; I wanted to be a painter, andgo about sketching beautiful old convents, and sit on camp-stools onpleasant afternoons, and joke with people. Of course, he couldn'tunderstand that. But I know the artist could. O Fanny, if it had onlybeen the painter whose arm I took that first day on the boat, instead ofMr. Arbuton! But the worst of it is, he is making a hypocrite of me, anda cowardly, unnatural girl. I wanted to go nearer and look at thepainter's sketch; but I was ashamed to say I'd never seen a realartist's sketch before, and I'm getting to be ashamed, or to seemashamed, of a great many innocent things. He has a way of not seeming tothink it possible that any one he associates with can differ from him. And I do differ from him. I differ from him as much as my whole pastlife differs from his; I know I'm just the kind of production that hedisapproves of, and that I'm altogether irregular and unauthorized andunjustifiable; and though it's funny to have him talking to me as if Imust have the sympathy of a rich girl with his ideas, it's provoking, too, and it's very bad for me. Up to the present moment, Fanny, if youwant to know, that's the principal effect of Mr. Arbuton on me. I'mbeing gradually snubbed and scared into treasons, stratagems, andspoils. "

Mrs. Ellison did not find all this so very grievous, for she was one ofthose women who like a snub from the superior sex, if it does notinvolve a slight to their beauty or their power of pleasing. But shethought it best not to enter into the question, and merely said, "Butsurely, Kitty, there are a great many things in Mr. Arbuton that youmust respect. "

"Respect? O, yes, indeed! But respect isn't just the thing for one whoseems to consider himself sacred. Say _revere_, Fanny; say revere!"

Kitty had risen from her chair, but Mrs. Ellison waved her again to herseat with an imploring gesture. "Don't go, Kitty; I'm not half done withyou yet. You _must_ tell me something more. You've stirred me up so, now. I know you don't always have such disagreeable times. You've oftencome home quite happy. What do you generally find to talk about? Do tellme some particulars for once. "

"Why, little topics come up, you know. But sometimes we don't talk atall, because I don't like to say what I think or feel, for fear I shouldbe thinking or feeling something vulgar. Mr. Arbuton is rather a blightupon conversation in that way. He makes you doubtful whether there isn'tsomething a little common in breathing and the circulation of the blood, and whether it wouldn't be true refinement to stop them. "

"Stuff, Kitty! He's very cultivated, isn't he? Don't you talk aboutbooks? He's read everything, I suppose. "

"O yes, he's _read_ enough. "

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing. Only sometimes it seems to me as if he hadn't read because heloved it, but because he thought it due to himself. But maybe I'mmistaken. I could imagine a delicate poem shutting up half its sweetnessfrom his cold, cold scrutiny, --if you will excuse the floweriness of theidea. "

"Why, Kitty! don't you think he's refined? I'm sure, I think he's a_very_ refined person. "

"He's a very elaborated person. But I don't think it would make muchdifference to him what our opinion of him was. His own good opinionwould be quite enough. "

"Is he--is he--always agreeable?"

"I thought we were discussing his mind, Fanny. I don't know that I feellike enlarging upon his manners, " said Kitty, slyly. 

"But surely, Kitty, " said the matron, with an air of argument, "there'ssome connection between his mind and his manners. "

"Yes, I suppose so. I don't think there's much between his heart and hismanners. They seem to have been put on him instead of having come out ofhim. He's very well trained, and nine times out of ten he's soexquisitely polite that it's wonderful; but the tenth time he may saysomething so rude that you can't believe it. "

"Then you like him nine times out of ten. "

"I didn't say that. But for the tenth time, it's certain, his trainingdoesn't hold out, and he seems to have nothing natural to fall backupon. But you can believe that, if he knew he'd been disagreeable, he'dbe sorry for it. "

"Why, then, Kitty, how can you say that there's no connection betweenhis heart and manners? This very thing proves that they come from hisheart. Don't be illogical, Kitty, " said Mrs. Ellison, and her nervesadded, _sotto voce_, "if you _are_ so abominably provoking!"

"O, " responded the young girl, with the kind of laugh that meant it was, after all, not such a laughing matter, "I didn't say he'd be sorry for_you_! Perhaps he would; but he'd be certain to be sorry for himself. It's with his politeness as it is with his reading; he seems to considerit something that's due to himself as a gentleman to treat people well;and it isn't in the least as if he cared for _them_. He wouldn't like tofail in such a point. "

"But, Kitty, isn't that to his credit?"

"Maybe. I don't say. If I knew more about the world, perhaps I shouldadmire it. But now, you see, "--and here Kitty's laugh grew more natural, and she gave a subtle caricature of Mr. Arbuton's air and tone as shespoke, --"I can't help feeling that it's a little--vulgar. "

Mrs. Ellison could not quite make out how much Kitty really meant ofwhat she had said. She gasped once or twice for argument; then she satup, and beat the sofa-pillows vengefully in composing herself anew, andfinally, "Well, Kitty, I'm sure I don't know what to make of it all, "she said with a sigh. 

"Why, we're not obliged to make anything of it, Fanny, there's thatcomfort, " replied Kitty; and then there was a silence, while she broodedover the whole affair of her acquaintance with Mr. Arbuton, which thistalk had failed to set in a more pleasant or hopeful light. It had begunlike a romance; she had pleased her fancy, if not her heart, with thepoetry of it; but at last she felt exiled and strange in his presence. She had no right to a different result, even through any deep feeling inthe matter; but while she owned, with her half-sad, half-comicalconsciousness, that she had been tacitly claiming and expecting toomuch, she softly pitied herself, with a kind of impersonal compassion, as if it wore some other girl whose pretty dream had been broken. Itsruin involved the loss of another ideal; for she was aware that therehad been gradually rising in her mind an image of Boston, differentalike from the holy place of her childhood, the sacred city of theantislavery heroes and martyrs, and from the jesting, easy, sympatheticBoston of Mr. And Mrs. March. This new Boston with which Mr. Arbutoninspired her was a Boston of mysterious prejudices and loftyreservations; a Boston of high and difficult tastes, that found itssocial ideal in the Old World, and that shrank from contact with thereality of this; a Boston as alien as Europe to her simple experiences, and that seemed to be proud only of the things that were unlike otherAmerican things; a Boston that would rather perish by fire and swordthan be suspected of vulgarity; a critical, fastidious, and reluctantBoston, dissatisfied with the rest of the hemisphere, and gelidlyself-satisfied in so far as it was not in the least the Boston of herfond preconceptions. It was, doubtless, no more the real Boston we knowand love, than either of the others: and it perplexed her more than itneed, even if it had not been mere phantasm. It made her suspicious ofMr. Arbuton's behavior towards her, and observant of little things thatmight very well have otherwise escaped her. The bantering humor, thelight-hearted trust and self-reliance with which she had once met himdeserted her, and only returned fitfully when some accident called herout of herself, and made her forget the differences that she now tooplainly saw in their ways of thinking and feeling. It was a greater andgreater effort to place herself in sympathy with him; she relaxed into alanguid self-contempt, as if she had been playing a part, when shesucceeded. "Sometimes, Fanny, " she said, now, after a long pause, speaking in behalf of that other girl she had been thinking of, "itseems to me as if Mr. Arbuton were all gloves and slim umbrella, --themere husk of well dressed culture and good manners. His looks _do_promise everything; but O dear me! I should be sorry for any one thatwas in love with him. Just imagine some girl meeting with such a man, and taking a fancy to him! I suppose she never would quite believe butthat he must somehow be what she first thought him, and she would godown to her grave believing that she had failed to understand him. Whata curious story it would make!"

"Then, why don't you write it, Kitty?" asked Mrs. Ellison. "No one coulddo it better. "

Kitty flushed quickly; then she smiled: "O, I don't think I could do itat all. It wouldn't be a very easy story to work out. Perhaps he mightnever do anything positively disagreeable enough to make anybody condemnhim. The only way you could show his character would be to have her doand say hateful things to him, when she couldn't help it, and thenrepent of it, while he was impassively perfect through everything. Andperhaps, after all, he might be regarded by some stupid people as theinjured one. Well, Mr. Arbuton has been very polite to us, I'm sure, Fanny, " she said after another pause, as she rose from her chair, "andmaybe I'm unjust to him. I beg his pardon of you; and I wish, " she addedwith a dull disappointment quite her own, and a pang of surprise atwords that seemed to utter themselves, "that he would go away. "

"Why, Kitty, I'm shocked, " said Mrs. Ellison, rising from her cushions. 

"Yes; so am I, Fanny. "

"Are you really tired of him, then?"

Kitty did not answer, but turned away her face a little, where she stoodbeside the chair in which she had been sitting. 

Mrs. Ellison put out her hand towards her. "Kitty, come here, " she saidwith imperious tenderness. 

"No, I won't, Fanny, " answered the young girl, in a trembling voice. Sheraised the glove that she had been nervously swinging back and forth, and bit hard upon the button of it. "I don't know whether I'm tired of_him_, --though he isn't a person to rest one a great deal, --but I'mtired of _it_. I'm perplexed and troubled the whole time, and I don'tsee any end to it. Yes, I wish he would go away! Yes, he _is_ tiresome. What is he staying here for? If he thinks himself so much better thanall of us, I wonder he troubles himself with our company. It's quitetime for him to go. No, Fanny, no, " cried Kitty with a little brokenlaugh, still rejecting the outstretched hand, "I'll be flat in private, if you please. " And dashing her hand across her eyes, she flitted out ofthe room. At the door she turned and said, "You needn't think it's what you think it is, Fanny. "

"No indeed, dear; you're just overwrought. "

"For I really wish he'd go. "

But it was on this very day that Mr. Arbuton found it harder than everto renew his resolution of quitting Quebec, and cutting short at oncehis acquaintance with these people. He had been pledging himself to thisin some form every day, and every morrow had melted his resolution away. Whatever was his opinion of Colonel and Mrs. Ellison, it is certainthat, if he considered Kitty merely in relation to the present, he couldnot have said how, by being different, she could have been better thanshe was. He perceived a charm, that would be recognized anywhere, in hermanner, though it was not of his world; her fresh pleasure in all shesaw, though he did not know how to respond to it, was very winning; herespected what he thought the good sense running through her transports;he wondered at the culture she had somewhere, somehow got; and he was sogood as to find that her literary enthusiasms had nothing offensive, butwere as pretty and naive as a girl's love of flowers. Moreover, heapproved of some personal attributes of hers: a low, gentle voice, tender long-lashed eyes; a trick of drooping shoulders, and of idlehands fallen into the lap, one in the other's palm; a serene repose offace; a light and eager laugh. There was nothing so novel in thosetraits, and in different combination he had seen them a thousand times;yet in her they strangely wrought upon his fancy. She had that soft, kittenish way with her which invites a caressing patronage, but, as helearned, she had also the kittenish equipment for resentingover-condescension; and she never took him half so much as when sheshowed the high spirit that was in her, and defied him most. 

For here and now, it was all well enough; but he had a future to whichhe owed much, and a conscience that would not leave him at rest. Thefascination of meeting her so familiarly under the same roof, thesorcery of the constant sight of her, were becoming too much; it wouldnot do on any account; for his own sake he must put an end to it. Butfrom hour to hour he lingered upon his unenforced resolve. The passingdays, that brought him doubts in which he shuddered at the greatdifference between himself and her and her people, brought him alsomoments of blissful forgetfulness in which his misgivings were lost inthe sweetness of her looks, or the young grace of her motions. Passing, the days rebuked his delay in vain; a week and two weeks slipped fromunder his feet, and still he had waited for fate to part him and hisfolly. But now at last he would go and in the evening, after his cigaron Durham Terrace, he knocked at Mrs. Ellison's door to say that on theday after to-morrow he should push on to the White Mountains. 

He found the Ellisons talking over an expedition for the next morning, in which he was also to take part. Mrs. Ellison had already borne herfull share in the preparation; for, being always at hand there in herroom, and having nothing to do, she had been almost a willing victim tothe colonel's passion for information at second-hand, and had probablycome to know more than any other American woman of Arnold's expeditionagainst Quebec in 1775. She know why the attack was planned, and withwhat prodigious hazard and heroical toil and endurance it was carriedout; how the dauntless little army of riflemen cut their way through theuntrodden forests of Maine and Canada, and beleaguered the gray oldfortress on her rock till the red autumn faded into winter, and, on thelast bitter night of the year, flung themselves against her defences, and fell back, leaving half their number captive, Montgomery dead, andArnold wounded, but haplessly destined to survive. 

"Yes, " said the colonel, "considering the age in which they lived, andtheir total lack of modern improvements, mental, moral, and physical, wemust acknowledge that they did pretty well. It wasn't on a very largescale; but I don't see how they could have been braver, if every man hadbeen multiplied by ten thousand. In fact, as it's going to be all thesame thing a hundred years from now, I don't know but I'd as soon be oneof the men that tried to take Quebec as one of the men that did takeAtlanta. Of course, for the present, and on account of my afflictedfamily, Mr. Arbuton, I'm willing to be what and where I am; but just seewhat those fellows did. " And the colonel drew from his glowing memory ofMrs. Ellison's facts a brave historical picture of Arnold's expedition. "And now we're going to-morrow morning to look up the scene of theattack on the 31st of December. Kitty, sing something. "

At another time Kitty might have hesitated; but that evening she was soat rest about Mr. Arbuton, so sure she cared nothing for his liking ordisliking anything she did, that she sat down at the piano, and sang anumber of songs, which I suppose were as unworthy the cultivated ear asany he had heard. But though they were given with an untrained voice anda touch as little skilled as might be, they pleased, or else the singerpleased. The simple-hearted courage of the performance would alone havemade it charming; and Mr. Arbuton had no reason to ask himself how heshould like it in Boston, if he were married, and should hear it fromhis wife there. Yet when a young man looks at a young girl or listens toher, a thousand vagaries possess his mind, --formless imaginations, lawless fancies. The question that presented itself remotely, like painin a dream, dissolved in the ripple of the singer's voice, and left hisrevery the more luxuriously untroubled for having been. 

He remembered, after saying good-night, that he had forgotten something:it was to tell them he was going away. 

VIII. 

NEXT MORNING. 

Quebec lay shining in the tender oblique light of the northern sun whenthey passed next morning through the Upper Town market-place and tooktheir way towards Hope Gate, where they were to be met by the colonel alittle later. It is easy for the alert tourist to lose his course inQuebec, and they, who were neither hurried nor heedful, went easilyastray. But the street into which they had wandered, if it did not leadstraight to Hope Gate, had many merits, and was very characteristic ofthe city. Most of the houses on either hand were low structures of onestory, built heavily of stone or stuccoed brick, with twodormer-windows, full of house-plants, in each roof; the doors were eachpainted of a livelier color than the rest of the house, and eachglistened with a polished brass knob, a large brass knocker, or anintricate bell-pull of the same resplendent metal, and a plate bearingthe owner's name and his professional title, which if not _avocat_ wassure to be _notaire_, so well is Quebec supplied with those ministers ofthe law. At the side of each house was a _porte-cochère_, and in this asmaller door. The thresholds and doorsteps were covered with the neatestand brightest oil-cloth; the wooden sidewalk was very clean, like thesteep, roughly paved street itself; and at the foot of the hill downwhich it sloped was a breadth of the city wall, pierced for musketry, and, past the corner of one of the houses, the half-length of cannonshowing. It had the charm of those ancient streets, dear to Old-Worldtravel, in which the past and the present, decay and repair, peace andwar, have made friends in an effect that not only wins the eye, but, however illogically, touches the heart; and over the top of the wall ithad a stretch of such landscape as I know not what Old-World street cancommand: the St. Lawrence, blue and wide; a bit of the white village ofBeauport on its bank; then a vast breadth of pale-green, upward-slopingmeadows; then the purple heights; and the hazy heaven over them. Half-way down this happy street sat the artist whom they had seen beforein the court of the Hôtel Dieu; he was sketching something, and evokingthe curious life of the neighborhood. Two schoolboys in the uniform ofthe Seminary paused to look at him as they loitered down the pavement; agroup of children encircled him; a little girl with her hair in blueribbons talked at a window about him to some one within; a young ladyopened her casement and gazed furtively at him; a door was set quietlyajar, and an old grandam peeped out, shading her eyes with her hand; awoman in deep mourning gave his sketch a glance as she passed; a calashwith a fat Quebecker in it ran into a cart driven by a broad-hattedpeasant-woman, so eager were both to know what he was drawing; a manlingered even at the head of the street, as if it were any use to stopthere. 

As Kitty and Mr. Arbuton passed him, the artist glanced at her with thesmile of a man who believes he knows how the case stands, and shefollowed his eye in its withdrawal towards the bit he was sketching: anold roof, and on top of this a balcony, shut in with green blinds; yethigher, a weather-worn, wood-colored gallery, pent-roofed andbalustered, with a geranium showing through the balusters; adormer-window with hook and tackle, beside an Oriental-shaped pavilionwith a shining tin dome, --a picturesque confusion of forms which hadbeen, apparently, added from time to time without design, and yet werefull of harmony. The unreasonable succession of roofs had lifted the topfar above the level of the surrounding houses, into the heart of themorning light, and some white doves circled about the pavilion, ornestled cooing upon the window-sill, where a young girl sat and sewed. 

"Why, it's Hilda in her tower, " said Kitty, "of course! And this is justthe kind of street for such a girl to look down into. It doesn't seemlike a street in real life, does it? The people all look as if they hadstepped out of stories, and might step back any moment; and these queerlittle houses: they're the very places for things to happen in!"

Mr. Arbuton smiled forbearingly, as she thought, at this burst, but shedid not care, and she turned, at the bottom of the street, and lingereda few moments for another look at the whole charming picture; and thenhe praised it, and said that the artist was making a very good sketch. "I wonder Quebec isn't infested by artists the whole summer long, " headded. "They go about hungrily picking up bits of the picturesque, alongour shores and country roads, when they might exchange their famine fora feast by coming here. "

"I suppose there's a pleasure in finding out the small graces andbeauties of the poverty-stricken subjects, that they wouldn't have inbetter ones, isn't there?" asked Kitty. "At any rate, if I were to writea story, I should want to take the slightest sort of plot, and lay thescene in the dullest kind of place, and then bring out all theirpossibilities. I'll tell you a book after my own heart:'_Details_, '--just the history of a week in the life of some youngpeople who happen together in an old New England country-house; nothingextraordinary, little, every-day things told so exquisitely, and allfading naturally away without any particular result, only the fullmeaning of everything brought out. "

"And don't you think it's rather a sad ending for all to fade awaywithout any particular result?" asked the young man, stricken he hardlyknew how or where. "Besides, I always thought that the author of thatbook found too much meaning in everything. He did for men, I'm sure; butI believe women are different, and see much more than we do in a littlespace. "

 "'Why has not man a microscopic eye? For this plain reason, man is not a fly, '

nor a woman, " mocked Kitty. "Have you read his other books?"

"Yes. "

"Aren't they delightful?"

"They're very well; and I always wondered he could write them. Hedoesn't look it. "

"O, have you ever seen him?"

"He lives in Boston, you know. "

"Yes, yes; but--" Kitty could not go on and say that she had notsupposed authors consorted with creatures of common clay; and Mr. Arbuton, who was the constant guest of people who would have thoughtmost authors sufficiently honored in being received among them to meetsuch men as he, was very far from guessing what was in her mind. 

He waited a moment for her, and then said, "He's a very ordinary sort ofman, --not what one would exactly call a gentleman, you know, in hisbelongings, --and yet his books have nothing of the shop, nothingprofessionally literary, about them. It seems as if almost any of usmight have written them. "

Kitty glanced quickly at him to see if he were jesting; but Mr. Arbutonwas not easily given to irony, and he was now very much in earnest aboutdrawing on his light overcoat, which he had hitherto carried on his armwith that scrupulous consideration for it which was not dandyism, butpart of his self-respect; apparently, as an overcoat, ho cared nothingfor it; as the overcoat of a man of his condition he cared everything;and now, though the sun was so bright on the open spaces, in thesenarrow streets the garment was comfortable. 

At another time, Kitty would have enjoyed the care with which hesmoothed it about his person, but this profanation of her dearest idealsmade the moment serious. Her pulse quickened, and she said, "I'm afraidI can't enter into your feelings. I wasn't taught to respect the idea ofa gentleman very much. I've often heard my uncle say that, at the best, it was a poor excuse for not being just honest and just brave and justkind, and a false pretence of being something more. I believe, if I werea man, I shouldn't want to be a gentleman. At any rate, I'd rather bethe author of those books, which any gentleman _might_ have written, than all the gentlemen who didn't, put together. "

In the career of her indignation she had unconsciously hurried hercompanion forward so swiftly that they had reached Hope Gate as shespoke, and interrupted the revery in which Colonel Ellison, loafing upagainst the masonry, was contemplating the sentry in his box. 

"You'd better not overheat yourself so early in the day, Kitty, " saidher cousin, serenely, with a glance at her flushed face; "thisexpedition is not going to be any joke. "

Now that Prescott Gate, by which so many thousands of Americans haveentered Quebec since Arnold's excursionists failed to do so, isdemolished, there is nothing left so picturesque and characteristic asHope Gate, and I doubt if anywhere in Europe there is a moremediæval-looking bit of military architecture. The heavy stone gatewayis black with age, and the gate, which has probably never been closed inour century, is of massive frame set thick with mighty bolts and spikes. The wall here sweeps along the brow of the crag on which the city isbuilt, and a steep street drops down, by stone-parapeted curves andangles, from the Upper to the Lower Town, where, in 1775, nothing but anarrow lane bordered the St. Lawrence. A considerable breadth of landhas since been won from the river, and several streets and many piersnow stretch between this alley and the water; but the old Sault auMatelot still crouches and creeps along under the shelter of the citywall and the overhanging rock, which is thickly bearded with weeds andgrass, and trickles with abundant moisture. It must be an ice-pit inwinter, and I should think it the last spot on the continent for thesummer to find; but when the summer has at last found it, the old Saultau Matelot puts on a vagabond air of Southern leisure and abandon, notto be matched anywhere out of Italy. Looking from that jutting rock nearHope Gate, behind which the defeated Americans took refuge from the fireof their enemies, the vista is almost unique for a certain scenicsqualor and gypsy luxury of color: sag-roofed barns and stables, andweak-backed, sunken-chested workshops of every sort lounge along intumble-down succession, and lean up against the cliff in everyimaginable posture of worthlessness and decrepitude; light woodengalleries cross to them from the second stories of the houses which backupon the alley; and over these galleries flutters, from a labyrinth ofclothes-lines, a variety of bright-colored garments of all ages, sexes, and conditions; while the footway underneath abounds in gossiping women, smoking men, idle poultry, cats, children, and large, indolentNewfoundland dogs. 

"It was through this lane that Arnold's party advanced almost to thefoot of Mountain Street, where they were to be joined by Montgomery'sforce in an attempt to surprise Prescott Gate, " said the colonel, withhis unerring second-hand history. 

 "'You that will follow me to this attempt, '

'Wait till you see the whites of their eyes, and then fire low, ' and soforth. By the way, do you suppose anybody did that at Bunker Hill, Mr. Arbuton? Come, you're a Boston man. My experience is that recruitschivalrously fire into the air without waiting to see the enemy at all, let alone the whites of their eyes. Why! aren't you coming?" he asked, seeing no movement to follow in Kitty or Mr. Arbuton. 

"It doesn't look very pleasant under foot, Dick, " suggested Kitty. 

"Well, upon my word! Is this your uncle's niece? I shall never dare toreport this panic at Eriecreek. "

"I can see the whole length of the alley, and there's nothing in it butchickens and domestic animals. "

"Very well, as Fanny says; when Uncle Jack--he's _your_ uncle--asks youabout every inch of the ground that Arnold's men were demoralized over, I hope you'll know what to say. "

Kitty laughed and said she should try a little invention, if her UncleJack came down to inches. 

"All right, Kitty; you can go along St. Paul Street, there, and Mr. Arbuton and I will explore the Sault au Matelot, and come out upon you, covered with glory, at the other end. "

"I hope it'll be glory, " said Kitty, with a glance at the lane, "but Ithink it's more likely to be feathers and chopped straw. --Good by, Mr. Arbuton. "

"Not in the least, " answered the young man; "I'm going with you. "

The colonel feigned indignant surprise, and marched briskly down theSault au Matelot alone, while the others took their way through St. PaulStreet in the same direction, amidst the bustle and business of theport, past the banks and great commercial houses, with the encounter ofthrongs of seafaring faces of many nations, and, at the corner of St. Peter Street, a glimpse of the national flag thrown out from theAmerican Consulate, which intensified for untravelled Kitty her sense ofremoteness from her native land. At length they turned into the streetnow called Sault au Matelot, into which opens the lane once bearing thatname, and strolled idly along in the cool shadow, silence, and solitudeof the street. She was strangely released from the constraint which Mr. Arbuton usually put upon her. A certain defiant ease filled her heart;she felt and thought whatever she liked, for the first time in manydays; while he went puzzling himself with the problem of a young ladywho despised gentlemen, and yet remained charming to him. 

A mighty marine smell of oakum and salt-fish was in the air, and "O, "sighed Kitty, "doesn't it make you long for distant seas? Shouldn't youlike to be shipwrecked for half a day or so, Mr. Arbuton?"

"Yes; yes, certainly, " he replied absently, and wondered what shelaughed at. The silence of the place was broken only by the noise ofcoopering which seemed to be going on in every other house; the solituderelieved only by the Newfoundland dogs that stretched themselves uponthe thresholds of the cooper-shops. The monotony of these shops and dogstook Kitty's humor, and as they went slowly by she made a jest of them, as she used to do with things she saw. 

"But here's a door without a dog!" she said, presently. "This can't be agenuine cooper-shop, of course, without a dog. O, that accounts for it, perhaps!" she added, pausing before the threshold, and glancing up at asign--"_Académie commerciale et littéraire_"--set under an upper window. "What a curious place for a seat of learning! What do you suppose is theconnection between cooper-shops and an academical education, Mr. Arbuton?"

She stood looking up at the sign that moved her mirth, and swinging hershut parasol idly to and fro, while a light of laughter played over herface. 

Suddenly a shadow seemed to dart betwixt her and the open doorway, Mr. Arbuton was hurled violently against her, and, as she struggled to keepher footing under the shock, she saw him bent over a furious dog, thathung from the breast of his overcoat, while he clutched its throat withboth his hands. 

He met the terror of her face with a quick glance. "I beg your pardon;don't call out please, " he said. But from within the shop came loudcries and maledictions, "O nom de Dieu c'est le boule-dogue du capitaineanglais!" with appalling screams for help; and a wild, uncouth littlefigure of a man, bareheaded, horror-eyed came flying out of the opendoor. He wore a cooper's apron, and he bore in one hand a red-hot iron, which, with continuous clamor, he dashed against the muzzle of thehideous brute. Without a sound the dog loosed his grip, and, dropping tothe ground, fled into the obscurity of the shop as silently as he hadlaunched himself out of it, while Kitty yet stood spell-bound, andbefore the crowd that the appeal of Mr. Arbuton's rescuer had summonedcould see what had happened. 

Mr. Arbuton lifted himself, and looked angrily round upon the gapingspectators, who began, one by one, to take in their heads from theirwindows and to slink back to their thresholds as if they had been guiltyof something much worse than a desire to succor a human being in peril. 

"Good heavens!" said Mr. Arbuton, "what an abominable scene!" His facewas deadly pale, as he turned from these insolent intruders to hisdeliverer, whom he saluted, with a "Merci bien!" spoken in a cold, steady voice. Then he drew off his overcoat, which had been torn by thedog's teeth and irreparably dishonored in the encounter. He looked at itshuddering, with a countenance of intense disgust, and made a motion asif to hurl it into the street. But his eye again fell upon the cooper'ssqualid little figure, as he stood twisting his hands into his apron, and with voluble eagerness protesting that it was not his dog, but thatof the English ship-captain, who had left it with him, and whom he hadmany a time besought to have the beast killed. Mr. Arbuton, who seemednot to hear what he was saying, or to be so absorbed in something elseas not to consider whether he was to blame or not, broke in upon him inFrench: "You've done me the greatest service. I cannot repay you, butyou must take this, " he said, as he thrust a bank-note into the littleman's grimy hand. 

"O, but it is too much! But it is like a monsieur so brave, so--"

"Hush! It was nothing, " interrupted Mr. Arbuton again. Then he threw hisovercoat upon the man's shoulder. "If you will do me the pleasure toreceive this also? Perhaps you can make use of it. "

"Monsieur heaps me with benefits;--monsieur--" began the bewilderedcooper; but Mr. Arbuton turned abruptly away from him toward Kitty, whotrembled at having shared the guilt of the other spectators, and seizingher hand, he placed it on his arm, where he held it close as he strodeaway, leaving his deliverer planted in the middle of the sidewalk andstaring after him. She scarcely dared ask him if he were hurt, as shefound herself doing now with a faltering voice. 

"No, I believe not, " he said with a glance at the frock-coat, which wasbuttoned across his chest and was quite intact; and still he strode on, with a quick glance at every threshold which did not openly declare aNewfoundland dog. 

It had all happened so suddenly, and in so brief a time, that she mightwell have failed to understand it, even if she had seen it all. It wasbarely intelligible to Mr. Arbuton himself, who, as Kitty had loiteredmocking and laughing before the door of the shop, chanced to see the dogcrouched within, and had only time to leap forward and receive the cruelbrute on his breast as it flung itself at her. 

He had not thought of the danger to himself in what he had done. He knewthat he was unhurt, but he did not care for that; he cared only that shewas safe; and as he pressed her hand tight against his heart, therepassed through it a thrill of inexpressible tenderness, a quick, passionate sense of possession, a rapture as of having won her and madeher his own forever, by saving her from that horrible risk. The maze inwhich he had but now dwelt concerning her seemed an obsolete frivolityof an alien past; all the cold doubts and hindering scruples which hehad felt from the first were gone; gone all his care for his world. Hisworld? In that supreme moment, there was no world but in the tender eyesat which he looked down with a glance which she knew not how tointerpret. 

She thought that his pride was deeply wounded at the ignominy of hisadventure, --for she was sure he would care more for that than for thedanger, --and that if she spoke of it she might add to the angry pain hefelt. As they hurried along she waited for him to speak, but he did not;though always, as he looked down at her with that strange look, heseemed about to speak. 

Presently she stopped, and, withdrawing her hand from his arm, shecried, "Why, we've forgotten my cousin!"

"O--yes!" said Mr. Arbuton with a vacant smile. 

Looking back they saw the colonel standing on the pavement near the endof the old Sault au Matelot, with his hands in his pockets, andsteadfastly staring at them. He did not relax the severity of his gazewhen they returned to join him, and appeared to find little consolationin Kitty's "O Dick, I forgot all about you, " given with a sudden, inexplicable laugh, interrupted and renewed as some ludicrous imageseemed to come and go in her mind. 

"Well, this may be very flattering, Kitty, but it isn't altogethercomprehensible, " said he, with a keen glance at both their faces. "Idon't know what you'll say to Uncle Jack. It's not forgetting me alone:it's forgetting the whole American expedition against Quebec. "

The colonel waited for some reply; but Kitty dared not attempt anexplanation, and Mr. Arbuton was not the man to seem to boast of hisshare of the adventure by telling what had happened, even if he hadcared at that moment to do so. Her very ignorance of what he had daredfor her only confirmed his new sense of possession; and, if he could, hewould not have marred the pleasure he felt by making her grateful yet, sweet as that might be in its time. Now he liked to keep his knowledge, to have had her unwitting compassion, to hear her pour out her unwittingrelief in this laugh, while he superiorly permitted it. 

"I don't understand this thing, " said the colonel, through whose dense, masculine intelligence some suspicions of love-making were beginning topierce. But he dismissed them as absurd, and added, "However, I'mwilling to forgive, and you've done the forgetting; and all that I asknow is the pleasure of your company on the spot where Montgomery fell. Fanny'll never believe I've found it unless you go with me, " heappealed, finally. 

"O, we'll go, by all means, " said Mr. Arbuton, unconsciously speaking, as by authority, for both. 

They came into busier streets of the Port again, and then passed throughthe square of the Lower Town Market, with the market-house in the midst, the shops and warehouses on either side, the long row of tented boothswith every kind of peasant-wares to sell, and the wide stairway droppingto the river which brought the abundance of the neighboring country tothe mart. The whole place was alive with country-folk in carts andcitizens on foot. At one point a gayly painted wagon was drawn up in themidst of a group of people to whom a quackish-faced Yankee was hawking, in his own personal French, an American patent-medicine, and making hisaudience giggle. Because Kitty was amused at this, Mr. Arbuton found itthe drollest thing imaginable, but saw something yet droller when shemade the colonel look at a peasant, standing in one corner beside abasket of fowls, which a woman, coming up to buy, examined as if theprovision were some natural curiosity, while a crowd at once gatheredround. 

"It requires a considerable population to make a bargain, up here, "remarked the colonel. "I suppose they turn out the garrison when theysell a beef. " For both buyer and seller seemed to take advice of thebystanders, who discussed and inspected the different fowls as ifnothing so novel as poultry had yet fallen in their way. 

At last the peasant himself took up the fowls and carefully scrutinizedthem. 

"_Those_ chickens, it seems, never happened to catch his eye before, "interpreted Kitty; and Mr. Arbuton, who was usually very restive duringsuch banter, smiled as if it were the most admirable fooling, or themost precious wisdom, in the world. He made them wait to see the bargainout, and could, apparently, have lingered there forever. 

But the colonel had a conscience about Montgomery, and he hurried themaway, on past the Queen's Wharf, and down the Cove Road to that pointwhere the scarped and rugged breast of the cliff bears the sign, "Herefell Montgomery, " though he really fell, not half-way up the height, butat the foot of it, where stood the battery that forbade his juncturewith Arnold at Prescott Gate. 

A certain wildness yet possesses the spot: the front of the crag, toppedby the high citadel-wall, is so grim, and the few tough evergreens thatcling to its clefts are torn and twisted by the winter blasts, and thehouses are decrepit with age, showing here and there the scars of thefrequent fires that sweep the Lower Town. 

It was quite useless: neither the memories of the place nor theirsetting were sufficient to engage the wayward thoughts of thesecuriously assorted pilgrims; and the colonel, after some attempts tobring the matter home to himself and the others, was obliged to abandonMr. Arbuton to his tender reveries of Kitty, and Kitty to her puzzlingover the change in Mr. Arbuton. His complaisance made her uncomfortableand shy of him, it was so strange; it gave her a little shiver, as if hewere behaving undignifiedly. 

"Well, Kitty, " said the colonel, "I reckon Uncle Jack would have mademore out of this than we've done. He'd have had their geology out ofthese rocks, any way. "

IX. 

MR. ARBUTON'S INFATUATION. 

Kitty went as usual to Mrs. Ellison's room after her walk, but shelapsed into a deep abstraction as she sat down beside the sofa. 

"What are you smiling at?" asked Mrs. Ellison, after briefly supportingher abstraction. 

"Was I smiling?" asked Kitty, beginning to laugh. "I didn't know it. "

"What _has_ happened so very funny?"

"Why, I don't know whether it's so very funny or not. I believe it isn'tfunny at all. "

"Then what makes you laugh?"

"I don't know. Was I--"

"Now _don't_ ask me if you were laughing, Kitty. It's a little too much. You can talk or not, as you choose; but I don't like to be turned intoridicule. "

"O Fanny, how can you? I was thinking about something very different. But I don't see how I can tell you, without putting Mr. Arbuton in aludicrous light, and it isn't quite fair. "

"You're very careful of him, all at once, " said Mrs. Ellison. "Youdidn't seem disposed to spare him yesterday so much. I don't understandthis sudden conversion. "

Kitty responded with a fit of outrageous laughter. "Now I see I musttell you, " she said, and rapidly recounted Mr. Arbuton's adventure. 

"Why, I never knew anything so cool and brave, Fanny, and I admired himmore than ever I did; but then I couldn't help seeing the other side ofit, you know. "

"What other side? I _don't_ know. "

"Well, you'd have had to laugh yourself, if you'd seen the lordly way hedismissed the poor people who had come running out of their houses tohelp him, and his stateliness in rewarding that little cooper, and hisheroic parting from his cherished overcoat, --which of course he can'treplace in Quebec, --and his absent-minded politeness in taking my handunder his arm, and marching off with me so magnificently. But the worstthing, Fanny, "--and she bowed herself under a tempest of long-pentmirth, --"the worst thing was, that the iron, you know, was the cooper'sbranding-iron, and I had a vision of the dog carrying about on his nose, as long as he lived, the monogram that marks the cooper's casks asholding a certain number of gallons--"

"Kitty, don't be--sacrilegious!" cried Mrs. Ellison. 

"No, I'm not, " she retorted, gasping and panting. "I never respected Mr. Arbuton so much, and you say yourself I haven't shown myself so carefulof him before. But I never was so glad to see Dick in my life, and tohave some excuse for laughing. I didn't dare to speak to Mr. Arbutonabout it, for he couldn't, if he had tried, have let me laugh it out andbe done with it. I trudged demurely along by his side, and neither of usmentioned the matter to Dick, " she concluded breathlessly. Then, "Idon't know why I should tell you now; it seems wicked and cruel, " shesaid penitently, almost pensively. 

Mrs. Ellison had not been amused. She said, "Well, Kitty, in _some_girls I should say it was quite heartless to do as you've done. "

"It's heartless in _me_, Fanny; and you needn't say such a thing. I'msure I didn't utter a syllable to wound him, and just before that he'dbeen _very_ disagreeable, and I forgave him because I thought he wasmortified. And you needn't say that I've no feeling"; and thereupon sherose, and, putting her hands into her cousin's, "Fanny, " she cried, vehemently, "I _have_ been heartless. I'm afraid I haven't shown anysympathy or consideration. I'm afraid I must have seemed dreadfullycallous and hard. I oughtn't to have thought of anything but the dangerto him; and it seems to me now I scarcely thought of that at all. O, howrude it was of me to see anything funny in it! What _can_ I do?"

"Don't go crazy, at any rate, Kitty. _He_ doesn't know that you've beenlaughing about him. You needn't do anything. "

"O yes, I need. He doesn't know that I've been laughing about him toyou; but, don't you see, I laughed when we met Dick; and what can hethink of that?"

"He just thinks you were nervous, I suppose. "

"O, do you suppose he does, Fanny? O, I _wish_ I could believe that! O, I'm so horribly ashamed of myself! And here yesterday I was criticisinghim for being unfeeling, and now I've been a thousand times worse thanhe has ever been, or ever could be! O dear, dear, dear!"

"Kitty! hush!" exclaimed Mrs. Ellison; "you run on like a wild thing, and you're driving me distracted, by not being like yourself. "

"O, it's very well for _you_ to be so calm; but if you didn't know whatto do, you wouldn't. "

"Yes, I would; I don't, and I am. "

"But what shall I do?" And Kitty plucked away the hands which Fanny hadbeen holding and wrung them. "I'll tell you what I can do, " she suddenlyadded, while a gleam of relief dawned upon her face: "I can bear all hisdisagreeable ways after this, as long as he stays, and not say anythingback. Yes, I'll put up with everything. I'll be as _meek_! He maypatronize me and snub me and put me in the wrong as much as he pleases. And then he won't be _approaching_ my behavior. O Fanny!"

Upon this, Mrs. Ellison said that she was going to give her a goodscolding for her nonsense, and pulled her down and kissed her, and saidthat she had not done anything, and was, nevertheless, consoled at herresolve to expiate her offence by respecting thenceforward Mr. Arbuton'sfoibles and prejudices. 

It is not certain how far Kitty would have succeeded in her goodpurposes: these things, so easily conceived, are not of such facileexecution; she passed a sleepless night of good resolutions and schemesof reparation; but, fortunately for her, Mr. Arbuton's foibles andprejudices seemed to have fallen into a strange abeyance. The changethat had come upon him that day remained; he was still Mr. Arbuton, butwith a difference. He could not undo his whole inherited and educatedbeing, and perhaps no chance could deeply affect it without destroyingthe man. He continued hopelessly superior to Colonel and Mrs. Ellison;but it is not easy to love a woman and not seek, at least beforemarriage, to please those dear to her. Mr. Arbuton had contested hispassion at every advance; he had firmly set his face against the fancythat, at the beginning, invested this girl with a charm; he had onlydone the things afterwards that mere civilization required; he hadsuffered torments of doubt concerning her fitness for himself and hisplace in society; he was not sure yet that her unknown relations werenot horribly vulgar people; even yet, he was almost wholly ignorant ofthe circumstances and conditions of her life. But how he saw her only inthe enrapturing light of his daring for her sake, of a self-devotionthat had seemed to make her his own; and he behaved toward her with alover's self-forgetfulness, --or something like it: say a perfecttolerance, a tender patience, in which it would have been hard to detectthe lurking shadow of condescension. 

He was fairly domesticated with the family. Mrs. Ellison's hurt, inspite of her many imprudences, was decidedly better, and sometimes shemade a ceremony of being helped down from her room to dinner; but shealways had tea beside her sofa, and he with the others drank it there. Few hours of the day passed in which they did not meet in that easyrelation which establishes itself among people sojourning in summeridleness under the same roof. In the morning he saw the young girl freshand glad as any flower of the garden beneath her window, while the sweetabstraction of her maiden dreams yet hovered in her eyes. At night hesat with her beside the lamp whose light, illuming a little worldwithin, shut out the great world outside, and seemed to be the softeffulgence of her presence, as she sewed, or knit, or read, --a heavenlyspirit of home. Sometimes he heard her talking with her cousin, orlightly laughing after he had said good night; once, when he woke, sheseemed to be looking out of her window across the moonlight in theUrsulines' Garden while she sang a fragment of song. To meet her on thestairs or in the narrow entries; or to encounter her at the doors, andmake way for her to pass with a jest and blush and flutter; to sit downat table with her three times a day, --was a potent witchery. There was arapture in her shawl flung over the back of a chair; her gloves, lyinglight as fallen leaves on the table, and keeping the shape of her hands, were full of winning character; and all the more unaccountably theytouched his heart because they had a certain careless, sweet shabbinessabout the finger-tips. 

He found himself hanging upon her desultory talk with Fanny about theset of things and the agreement of colors. There was always more or lessof this talk going on, whatever the main topic was, for continualquestion arose in the minds of one or other lady concerning thoseadaptations of Mrs. Ellison's finery to the exigencies of Kitty's dailylife. They pleased their innocent hearts with the secrecy of the affair, which, in the concealments it required, the sudden difficulties itpresented, and the guiltless equivocations it inspired, had theexcitement of intrigue. Nothing could have been more to the mind of Mrs. Ellison than to deck Kitty for this perpetual masquerade; and, since thethings were very pretty, and Kitty was a girl in every motion of herbeing, I do not see how anything could have delighted her more than towear them. Their talk effervesced with the delicious consciousness thathe could not dream of what was going on, and babbled over withmysterious jests and laughter, which sometimes he feared to be at hisexpense, and so joined in, and made them laugh the more at hismisconception. He went and came among them at will; he had but to tap atMrs. Ellison's door, and some voice of unaffected cordiality welcomedhim in; he had but to ask, and Kitty was frankly ready for any of thosestrolls about Quebec in which most of their waking hours were dreamedaway. 

The gray Lady of the North cast her spell about them, --the freshness ofher mornings, the still heat of her middays, the slant, pensive radianceof her afternoons, and the pale splendor of her auroral nights. Neverwas city so faithfully explored; never did city so abound in objects ofinterest; for Kitty's love of the place was boundless, and his love forher was inevitable friendship with this adoptive patriotism. 

"I didn't suppose you Western people cared for these things, " he oncesaid; "I thought your minds were set on things new and square. "

"But how could you think so?" replied Kitty, tolerantly. "It's becausewe have so many new and square things that we like the old crooked ones. I do believe I should enjoy Europe even better than you. There's aforsaken farm-house near Eriecreek, dropping to pieces amongst itswild-grown sweetbriers and quince-bushes, that I used to think a wonderof antiquity because it was built in 1815. Can't you imagine how I mustfeel in a city like this, that was founded nearly three centuries ago, and has suffered so many sieges and captures, and looks like pictures ofthose beautiful old towns I can never see?"

"O, perhaps you will see them some day!" he said, touched by her fervor. 

"I don't ask it at present: Quebec's enough. I'm in love with the place. I wish I never had to leave it. There isn't a crook, or a turn, or atin-roof, or a dormer-window, or a gray stone in it that isn'tprecious. "

Mr. Arbuton laughed. "Well, you shall be sovereign lady of Quebec forme. Shall we have the English garrison turned out?"

"No; not unless you can bring back Montcalm's men to take their places. "

This might be as they sauntered out of one of the city gates, andstrayed through the Lower Town till they should chance upon some poor, bare-interiored church, with a few humble worshippers adoring theirSaint, with his lamps alight before his picture; or as they passed somehigh convent-wall, and caught the strange, metallic clang of the nuns'voices singing their hymns within. Sometimes they whiled away the hourson the Esplanade, breathing its pensive sentiment of neglect andincipient decay, and pacing up and down over the turf athwart the slimshadows of the poplars; or, with comfortable indifference to the localobservances, sat in talk on the carriage of one of the burly, uncared-for guns, while the spider wove his web across the mortar'smouth, and the grass nodded above the tumbled pyramids of shot, and thechildren raced up and down, and the nursery-maids were wooed of thedapper sergeants, and the red-coated sentry loitered lazily to and frobefore his box. On the days of the music, they listened to the band inthe Governor's Garden, and watched the fine world of the old capital inflirtation with the blond-whiskered officers; and on pleasant nightsthey mingled with the citizen throng that filled the Durham Terrace, while the river shaped itself in the lights of its shipping, and theLower Town, with its lamps, lay, like a nether firmament, two hundredfeet below them, and Point Levis glittered and sparkled on the thithershore, and in the northern sky the aurora throbbed in swift pulsationsof violet and crimson. They liked to climb the Break-Neck Steps atPrescott Gate, dropping from the Upper to the Lower Town, which remindedMr. Arbuton of Naples and Trieste, and took Kitty with the unassociatedpicturesqueness of their odd shops and taverns, and their lofty windowsgreen with house-plants. They would stop and look up at the geraniumsand fuchsias, and fall a thinking of far different things, and thefriendly, unbusy people would come to their doors and look up with them. They recognized the handsome, blond young man, and the pretty, gray-eyedgirl; for people in Quebec have time to note strangers who linger there, and Kitty and Mr. Arbuton had come to be well-known figures, differentfrom the fleeting tourists on their rounds; and, indeed, as sojournersthey themselves perceived their poetic distinction from mere birds ofpassage. 

Indoors they resorted much to the little entry-window looking out on theUrsulines' Garden. Two chairs stood confronted there, and it was hardfor either of the young people to pass them without sinking a momentinto one of them, and this appeared always to charm another presenceinto the opposite chair. There they often lingered in the softforenoons, talking in desultory phrase of things far and near, orwatching, in long silences, the nuns pacing up and down in the gardenbelow, and waiting for the pensive, slender nun, and the stout, jollynun whom Kitty had adopted, and whom she had gayly interpreted to him asan allegory of Life in their quaint inseparableness; and they playedthat the influence of one or other nun was in the ascendant, accordingas their own talk was gay or sad. In their relation, people are not sodifferent from children; they like the same thing over and over again;they like it the better the less it is in itself. 

At times Kitty would come with a book in her hand (one finger shut in tokeep the place), --some latest novel, or a pirated edition of Longfellow, recreantly purchased at a Quebec bookstore; and then Mr. Arbuton mustask to see it; and he read romance or poetry to her by the hour. Heshowed to as much advantage as most men do in the serious follies ofwooing; and an influence which he could not defy, or would not, shapedhim to all the sweet, absurd demands of the affair. From time to time, recollecting himself, and trying to look consequences in the face, hegently turned the talk upon Eriecreek, and endeavored to possess himselfof some intelligible image of the place, and of Kitty's home andfriends. Even then, the present was so fair and full of content, thathis thoughts, when they reverted to the future, no longer met theobstacles that had made him recoil from it before. Whatever her past hadbeen, he could find some way to weaken the ties that bound her to it; ayear or two of Europe would leave no trace of Eriecreek; without effortof his, her life would adapt itself to his own, and cease to be a partof the lives of those people there; again and again his amiableimaginations--they were scarcely intents--accomplished themselves inmany a swift, fugitive revery, while the days went by, and the shadow ofthe ivy in the window at which they sat fell, in moonlight and sunlight, upon Kitty's cheeks, and the fuchsia kissed her hair with its purple andcrimson blossom. 

X. 

MR. ARBUTON SPEAKS. 

Mrs. Ellison was almost well; she had already been shopping twice in theRue Fabrique, and her recovery was now chiefly retarded by thedress-maker's delays in making up a silk too precious to be risked inthe piece with the customs officers, at the frontier. Moreover, althoughthe colonel was beginning to chafe, she was not loath to linger yet afew days for the sake of an affair to which her suffering had been awilling sacrifice. In return for her indefatigable self-devotion, Kittyhad lately done very little. She ungratefully shrunk more and more fromthose confidences to which her cousin's speeches covertly invited; sheopenly resisted open attempts upon her knowledge of facts. If she wasnot prepared to confess everything to Fanny, it was perhaps because itwas all so very little, or because a young girl has not, or ought not tohave, a mind in certain matters, or else knows it not, till it is askedher by the one first authorized to learn it. The dream in which shelived was flattering and fair; and it wholly contented her imaginationwhile it lulled her consciousness. It moved from phase to phase withoutthe harshness of reality, and was apparently allied neither to thefuture nor to the past. She herself seemed to have no more fixity orresponsibility in it than the heroine of a romance. 

As their last week in Quebec drew to its close, only two or three thingsremained for them to do, as tourists; and chief among the few unvisitedshrines of sentiment was the site of the old Jesuit mission at Sillery. 

"It won't do not to see that, Kitty, " said Mrs. Ellison, who, as usual, had arranged the details of the excursion, and now announced them. "It'sone of the principal things here, and your Uncle Jack would never besatisfied if you missed it. In fact, it's a shame to have left it solong. I can't go with you, for I'm saving up my strength for our picnicat Château-Bigot to-morrow; and I want you, Kitty, to see that thecolonel sees everything. I've had trouble enough, goodness knows, getting the facts together for him. " This was as Kitty and Mr. Arbutonsat waiting in Mrs. Ellison's parlor for the delinquent colonel, who hadjust stepped round to the Hôtel St. Louis and was to be back presently. But the moment of his return passed; a quarter-hour of grace; ahalf-hour of grim magnanimity, --and still no colonel. Mrs. Ellison beganby saying that it was perfectly abominable, and left herself, in agreater extremity, with nothing more forcible to add than that it wastoo provoking. "It's getting so late now, " she said at last, "that it'sno use waiting any longer, if you mean to go at all, to-day; and to-day'sthe only day you _can_ go. There, you'd better drive on without him. Ican't bear to have you miss it. " And, thus adjured, the younger peoplerose and went. 

When the high-born Noël Brulart de Sillery, Knight of Malta and courtierof Marie de Medicis, turned from the vanities of this world and became apriest, Canada was the fashionable mission of the day, and the nobleneophyte signalized his self-renunciation by giving of his great wealthfor the conversion of the Indian heathen. He supplied the Jesuits withmoney to maintain a religious establishment near Quebec; and thesettlement of red Christians took his musical name, which the regionstill keeps. It became famous at once as the first residence of theJesuits and the nuns of the Hôtel Dieu, who wrought and suffered forreligion there amidst the terrors of pestilence, Iroquois, and winter. It was the scene of miracles and martyrdoms, and marvels of many kinds, and the centre of the missionary efforts among the Indians. Indeed, fewevents of the picturesque early history of Quebec left it untouched; andit is worthy to be seen, no less for the wild beauty of the spot thanfor its heroical memories. About a league from the city, where theirregular wall of rock on which Quebec is built recedes from the river, and a grassy space stretches between the tide and the foot of the woodysteep, the old mission and the Indian village once stood; and to thisday there yet stands the stalwart frame of the first Jesuit Residence, modernized, of course, and turned to secular uses, but firm as of old, and good for a century to come. All round is a world of lumber, andrafts of vast extent cover the face of the waters in the amplecove, --one of many that indent the shore of the St. Lawrence. A carelessvillage straggles along the roadside and the river's margin; hugelumber-ships are loading for Europe in the stream; a town shines out ofthe woods on the opposite shore; nothing but a friendly climate isneeded to make this one of the most charming scenes the heart couldimagine. 

Kitty and Mr. Arbuton drove out towards Sillery by the St. Louis Road, and already the jealous foliage that hides the pretty villas and statelyplaces of that aristocratic suburb was tinged in here and there a boughwith autumnal crimson or yellow; in the meadows here and there a vineran red along the grass; the loath choke-cherries were ripening in thefence corners; the air was full of the pensive jargoning of the cricketsand grasshoppers, and all the subtle sentiment of the fading summer. Their hearts were open to every dreamy influence of the time; theirdriver understood hardly any English, and their talk might safely bemade up of those harmless egotisms which young people exchange, --thosestrains of psychological autobiography which mark advancing intimacy andin which they appear to each other the most uncommon persons that everlived, and their experiences and emotions and ideas are the moresurprisingly unique because exactly alike. 

It seemed a very short league to Sillery when they left the St. LouisRoad, and the driver turned his horses' heads towards the river, downthe winding sylvan way that descended to the shore; and they had not somuch desire, after all, to explore the site of the old mission. Nevertheless, they got out and visited the little space once occupied bythe Jesuit chapel, where its foundations may yet be traced in the grass, and they read the inscription on the monument lately raised by theparish to the memory of the first Jesuit missionary to Canada, who diedat Sillery. Then there seemed nothing more to do but admire the mightyrafts and piles of lumber; but their show of interest in the localcelebrity had stirred the pride of Sillery, and a little French boyentered the chapel-yard, and gave Kitty a pamphlet history of the place, for which he would not suffer himself to be paid; and a sweet-facedyoung Englishwoman came out of the house across the way, andhesitatingly asked if they would not like to see the Jesuit Residence. She led them indoors, and showed them how the ancient edifice had beenencased by the modern house, and bade them note, from the deep shelvingwindow-seats, that the stone walls were three feet thick. The rooms werelow-ceiled and quaintly shaped, but they borrowed a certain grandeurfrom this massiveness; and it was easy to figure the priests in blackand the nuns in gray in those dim chambers, which now a life sodifferent inhabited. Behind the house was a plot of grass, and thencethe wooded hill rose steep. 

"But come up stairs, " said the ardent little hostess to Kitty, when herhusband came in, and had civilly welcomed the strangers, "and I'll showyou my own room, that's as old as any. "

They left the two men below, and mounted to a large room carpeted andfurnished in modern taste. "We had to take down the old staircase, " shecontinued, "to get our bedstead up, "--a magnificent structure which sheplainly thought well worth the sacrifice; and then she pointed outdivers remnants of the ancient building. "It's a queer place to live in;but we're only here for the summer"; and she went on to explain, with apretty _naïveté_, how her husband's business brought him to Sillery fromQuebec in that season. They were descending the stairs, Kitty foremost, as she added, "This is my first housekeeping, you know, and of course itwould be strange anywhere; but you can't think how funny it is here. Isuppose, " she said, shyly, but as if her confidences merited somereturn, while Kitty stepped from the stairway face to face with Mr. Arbuton, who was about to follow them, with the lady's husband, --"Isuppose this is your wedding-journey. "

A quick alarm flamed through the young girl, and burned out of herglowing cheeks. This pleasant masquerade of hers must look to otherslike the most intentional love-making between her and Mr. Arbuton, --nodreams either of them, nor figures in a play, nor characters in aromance; nay, on one spectator, at least, it had shed the soft lustre ofa honeymoon. How could it be otherwise? Here on this fatal line ofwedding-travel, --so common that she remembered Mrs. March halfapologized for making it her first tour after marriage, --how could ithappen but that two young people together as they were should be takenfor bride and bridegroom? Moreover, and worst of all, he must have heardthat fatal speech!

He was pale, if she was flushed, and looked grave, as she fancied; buthe passed on up the stairs, and she sat down to wait for his return. 

"I used to notice so many couples from the States when we lived in thecity, " continued the hospitable mistress of the house, "but I don'tthink they often came out to Sillery. In fact, you're the only pairthat's come this summer; and so, when you seemed interested about themission, I thought you wouldn't mind if I spoke to you, and asked you into see the house. Most of the Americans stay long enough to visit thecitadel, and the Plains of Abraham, and the Falls at Montmorenci, andthen they go away. I should think they'd be tired always doing the samethings. To be sure, they're always different people. "

It was unfair to let her entertainer go on talking for quantity in thisway; and Kitty said how glad she was to see the old Residence, and thatshe should always be grateful to her for asking them in. She did notdisabuse her of her error; it cost less to leave it alone; and when Mr. Arbuton reappeared, she took leave of those kind people with a sort ofremote enjoyment of the wife's mistakenness concerning herself. Yet, asthe young matron and her husband stood beside the carriage repeatingtheir adieux, she would fain have prolonged the parting forever, so muchshe dreaded to be left alone with Mr. Arbuton. But, left alone with him, her spirits violently rose; and as they drove along under the shadow ofthe cliff, she descanted in her liveliest strain upon the variousinterests of the way; she dwelt on the beauty of the wide, still river, with the ships at anchor in it; she praised the lovely sunset-light onthe other shore; she commented lightly on the village, through whichthey passed, with the open doors and the suppers frying on the greatstoves set into the partition-walls of each cleanly home; she made himlook at the two great stairways that climb the cliff from thelumber-yards to the Plains of Abraham, and the army of laborers, eachwith his empty dinner-pail in hand, scaling the once difficult heightson their way home to the suburb of St. Roch; she did whatever she couldto keep the talk to herself and yet away from herself. Part of the waythe village was French and neat and pleasant, then it grovelled withIrish people, and ceased to be a tolerable theme for discourse; and soat last the silence against which she had battled fell upon them anddeepened like a spell that she could not break. 

It would have been better for Mr. Arbuton's success just then if he hadnot broken it. But failure was not within his reckoning; for he had solong regarded this young girl _de haut en bas_, to say it brutally, thathe could not imagine she should feel any doubt in accepting him. Moreover, a magnanimous sense of obligation mingled with his confidentlove, for she must have known that he had overheard that speech at theResidence. Perhaps he let this feeling color his manner, howeverfaintly. He lacked the last fine instinct; he could not forbear; and hespoke while all her nerves and fluttering pulses cried him mercy. 

XI. 

KITTY ANSWERS. 

It was dimmest twilight when Kitty entered Mrs. Ellison's room and sankdown on the first chair in silence. 

"The colonel met a friend at the St. Louis, and forgot about theexpedition, Kitty, " said Fanny, "and he only came in half an hour ago. But it's just as well; I know you've had a splendid time. Where's Mr. Arbuton?"

Kitty burst into tears. 

"Why, has anything happened to him?" cried Mrs. Ellison, springingtowards her. 

"To him? No! What should happen to _him_?" Kitty demanded with anindignant accent. 

"Well, then, has anything happened to _you_?"

"I don't know if you can call it _happening_. But I suppose you'll besatisfied now, Fanny. He's offered himself to me. " Kitty uttered thelast words with a sort of violence, as if since the fact must be stated, she wished it to appear in the sharpest relief. 

"O dear!" said Mrs. Ellison, not so well satisfied as the successfulmatch-maker ought to be. So long as it was a marriage in the abstract, she had never ceased to desire it; but as the actual union of Kitty andthis Mr. Arbuton, of whom, really, they knew so little, and of whom, ifshe searched her heart, she had as little liking as knowledge, it wasanother affair. Mrs. Ellison trembled at her triumph, and began to thinkthat failure would have been easier to bear. Were they in the leastsuited to each other? Would she like to see poor Kitty chained for lifeto that impassive egotist, whose very merits were repellent, and whosemodesty even seemed to convict and snub you? Mrs. Ellison was not ableto put the matter to herself with moderation, either way; doubtless shedid Mr. Arbuton injustice now. "Did you accept him?" she whispered, feebly. 

"Accept him?" repeated Kitty. "No!"

"O dear!" again sighed Mrs. Ellison, feeling that this was scarcelybetter, and not daring to ask further. 

"I'm dreadfully perplexed, Fanny, " said Kitty, after waiting for thequestions which did not come, "and I wish you'd help me think. "

"I will, darling. But I don't know that I'll be of much use. I begin tothink I'm not very good at thinking. "

Kitty, who longed chiefly to get the situation more distinctly beforeherself, gave no heed to this confession, but went on to rehearse thewhole affair. The twilight lent her its veil; and in the kindlyobscurity she gathered courage to face all the facts, and even to findwhat was droll in them. 

"It was very solemn, of course, and I was frightened; but I tried tokeep my wits about me, and _not_ to say yes, simply because that was theeasiest thing. I told him that I didn't know, --and I don't; and that Imust have time to think, --and I must. He was very ungenerous, and saidhe had hoped I had already had time to think; and he couldn't seem tounderstand, or else I couldn't very well explain, how it had been withme all along. "

"He might certainly say you had encouraged him, " Mrs. Ellison remarked, thoughtfully. 

"Encouraged him, Fanny? How can you accuse me of such indelicacy?"

"Encouraging isn't indelicacy. The gentlemen _have_ to be encouraged, orof course they'd never have any courage. They're so timid, naturally. "

"I don't think Mr. Arbuton is very timid. He seemed to think that he hadonly to ask as a matter of form, and I had no business to say anything. What has he ever done for me? And hasn't he often been intenselydisagreeable? He oughtn't to have spoken just after overhearing what hedid. It was horrid to do so. He was very obtuse, too, not to see thatgirls can't always be so certain of themselves as men, or, if they are, don't know they are as soon as they're asked. "

"Yes, " interrupted Mrs. Ellison, "that's the way with girls. I dobelieve that most of them--when they're young like you, Kitty--neverthink of marriage as the end of their flirtations. They'd just like theattentions and the romance to go on forever, and never turn intoanything more serious; and they're not to blame for that, though they_do_ get blamed for it. "

"Certainly, " assented Kitty, eagerly, "that's it; that's just what I wassaying; that's the very reason why girls must have time to make up theirminds. _You_ had, I suppose. "

"Yes, two minutes. Poor Dick was going back to his regiment, and stoodwith his watch in his hand. I said no, and called after him to correctmyself. But, Kitty, if the romance had happened to stop without hissaying anything, you wouldn't have liked that either, would you?"

"No, " faltered Kitty, "I suppose not. "

"Well, then, don't you see? That's a great point in his favor. How muchtime did you want, or did he give you?"

"I said I should answer before we left Quebec, " answered Kitty, with aheavy sigh. 

"Don't you know what to say now?"

"I can't tell. That's what I want you to help me think out. "

Mrs. Ellison was silent for a moment before she said, "Well, then, Isuppose we shall have to go back to the very beginning. "

"Yes, " assented Kitty, faintly. 

"You did have a sort of fancy for him the first time you saw him, didn'tyou?" asked Mrs. Ellison, coaxingly, while forcing herself to besystematic and coherent, by a mental strain of which no idea can begiven. 

"Yes, " said Kitty, yet more faintly, adding, "but I can't tell just whatsort of a fancy it was. I suppose I admired him for being handsome andstylish, and for having such exquisite manners. "

"Go on, " said Mrs. Ellison. "And after you got acquainted with him?"

"Why, you know we've talked that over once already, Fanny. "

"Yes, but we oughtn't to skip anything now, " replied Mrs. Ellison, in atone of judicial accuracy which made Kitty smile. 

But she quickly became serious again, and said, "Afterwards I couldn'ttell whether to like him or not, or whether he wanted me to. I think heacted very strangely for a person in--love. I used to feel so troubledand oppressed when I was with him. He seemed always to be making himselfagreeable under protest. "

"Perhaps that was just your imagination, Kitty. "

"Perhaps it was; but it troubled me just the same. "

"Well, and then?"

"Well, and then after that day of the Montgomery expedition, he seemedto change altogether, and to try always to be pleasant, and to doeverything he could to make me like him. I don't know how to account forit. Ever since then he's been extremely careful of me, and behaved--ofcourse without knowing it--as if I belonged to him already. Or maybeI've imagined that too. It's very hard to tell what has really happenedthe last two weeks. "

Kitty was silent, and Mrs. Ellison did not speak at once. Presently sheasked, "Was his acting as if you belonged to him disagreeable?"

"I can't tell. I think it was rather presuming. I don't know why he didit. "

"Do you respect him?" demanded Mrs. Ellison. 

"Why, Fanny, I've always told you that I did respect some things inhim. "

Mrs. Ellison had the facts before her, and it rested upon her to sumthem up, and do something with them. She rose to a sitting posture, andconfronted her task. 

"Well, Kitty, I'll tell you: I don't really know what to think. But Ican say this: if you liked him at first, and then didn't like him, andafterwards he made himself more agreeable, and you didn't mind hisbehaving as if you belonged to him, and you respected him, but after alldidn't think him fascinating--"

"He _is_ fascinating--in a kind of way. He was, from the beginning. In astory his cold, snubbing, putting-down ways would have been perfectlyfascinating. "

"Then why didn't you take him?"

"Because, " answered Kitty, between laughing and crying, "it isn't astory, and I don't know whether I like him. "

"But do you think you might get to like him?"

"I don't know. His asking brings back all the doubts I ever had of him, and that I've been forgetting the past two weeks. I can't tell whether Ilike him or not. If I did, shouldn't I trust him more?"

"Well, whether you are in love or not, I'll tell you what you _are_, Kitty, " cried Mrs. Ellison, provoked with her indecision, and yetrelieved that the worst, whatever it was, was postponed thereby for aday or two. 

"What!"

"You're--"

But at this important juncture the colonel came lounging in, and Kittyglided out of the room. 

"Richard, " said Mrs. Ellison, seriously, and in a tone implying that itwas the colonel's fault, as usual, "you know what has happened, Isuppose. "

"No, my dear, I don't; but no matter: I will presently, I dare say. "

"O, I wish for once you wouldn't be so flippant. Mr. Arbuton has offeredhimself to Kitty. "

Colonel Ellison gave a quick, sharp whistle of amazement, but trustedhimself to nothing more articulate. 

"Yes, " said his wife, responding to the whistle, "and it makes meperfectly wretched. "

"Why, I thought you liked him. "

"I didn't _like_ him; but I thought it would be an excellent thing forKitty. "

"And won't it?"

"She doesn't know. "

"Doesn't know?"

"No. "

The colonel was silent, while Mrs. Ellison stated the case in full, andits pending uncertainty. Then he exclaimed vehemently, as if hisamazement had been growing upon him, "This is the most astonishing thingin the world! Who would ever have dreamt of that young iceberg being inlove?"

"Haven't I _told_ you all along he was?"

"O yes, certainly; but that might be taken either way, you know. Youwould discover the tender passion in the eye of a potato. "

"Colonel Ellison, " said Fanny with sternness, "why do you suppose he'sbeen hanging about us for the last four weeks? Why should he have stayedin Quebec? Do you think he pitied _me_, or found _you_ so veryagreeable?"

"Well, I thought he found us just tolerable, and was interested in theplace. "

Mrs. Ellison made no direct reply to this pitiable speech, but looked ascorn which, happily for the colonel, the darkness hid. Presently shesaid that bats did not express the blindness of men, for any bat couldhave seen what was going on. 

"Why, " remarked the colonel, "I did have a momentary suspicion that dayof the Montgomery business; they both looked very confused, when I sawthem at the end of that street, and neither of them had anything to say;but that was accounted for by what you told me afterwards about hisadventure. At the time I didn't pay much attention to the matter. Theidea of his being in love seemed too ridiculous. "

"Was it ridiculous for you to be in love with me?"

"No; and yet I can't praise my condition for its wisdom, Fanny. "

"Yes! that's _like_ men. As soon as one of them is safely married, hethinks all the love-making in the world has been done forever, and hecan't conceive of two young people taking a fancy to each other. "

"That's something so, Fanny. But granting--for the sake of argumentmerely--that Boston has been asking Kitty to marry him, and she doesn'tknow whether she wants him, what are we to do about it? _I_ don't likehim well enough to plead his cause; do you? When does Kitty think she'llbe able to make up her mind?"

"She's to let him know before we leave. "

The colonel laughed. "And so he's to hang about here on uncertaintiesfor two whole days! That _is_ rather rough on him. Fanny, what made youso eager for this business?"

"Eager? I _wasn't_ eager. "

"Well, then, --reluctantly acquiescent?"

"Why, she's so literary and that. "

"And what?"

"How insulting!--Intellectual, and so on; and I thought she would bejust fit to live in a place where everybody is literary andintellectual. That is, I thought that, if I thought anything. "

"Well, " said the colonel, "you may have been right on the whole, but Idon't think Kitty is showing any particular force of mind, just now, that would fit her to live in Boston. My opinion is, that it'sridiculous for her to keep him in suspense. She might as well answer himfirst as last. She's putting herself under a kind of obligation by herdelay. I'll talk to her--"

"If you do, you'll kill her. You don't know how she's wrought up aboutit. "

"O well, I'll be careful of her sensibilities. It's my duty to speakwith her. I'm here in the place of a parent. Besides, don't I knowKitty? I've almost brought her up. "

"Maybe you're right. You're all so queer that perhaps you're right. Only, do be careful, Richard. You must approach the matter verydelicately, --indirectly, you know. Girls are different, remember, fromyoung men, and you mustn't be blunt. Do maneuver a little, for once inyour life. "

"All right, Fanny; you needn't be afraid of my doing anything awkward orsudden. I'll go to her room pretty soon, after she is quieted down, andhave a good, calm old fatherly conversation with her. "

The colonel was spared this errand; for Kitty had left some of herthings on Fanny's table, and now came back for them with a lamp in herhand. Her averted face showed the marks of weeping; the corners of herfirm-set lips were downward bent, as if some resolution which she hadtaken were very painful. This the anxious Fanny saw; and she made agesture to the colonel which any woman would have understood to enjoinsilence, or, at least, the utmost caution and tenderness of speech. Thecolonel summoned his _finesse_ and said, cheerily, "Well, Kitty, what'sBoston been saying to you?"

Mrs. Ellison fell back upon her sofa as if shot, and placed her handover her face. 

Kitty seemed not to hear her cousin. Having gathered up her things, shebent an unmoved face and an unseeing gaze full upon him, and glided fromthe room without a word. 

"Well, upon my soul, " cried the colonel, "this is a pleasant, nightmarish, sleep-walking, Lady-Macbethish little transaction. Confoundit, Fanny this comes of your wanting me to maneuver. If you'd let mecome straight _at_ the subject, --like a _man_--"

"_Please_, Richard, don't say anything more now, " pleaded Mrs. Ellisonin a broken voice. "You can't help it, I know; and I must do the best Ican, under the circumstances. Do go away for a little while, darling! Odear!"

As for Kitty, when she had got out of the room in that phantasmalfashion, she dimly recalled, through the mists of her own trouble, thecolonel's dismay at her so glooming upon him, and began to think thatshe had used poor Dick more tragically than she need, and so began tolaugh softly to herself; but while she stood there at the entry window amoment, laughing in the moonlight, that made her lamp-flame thin, andpainted her face with its pale lustre, Mr. Arbuton came down the atticstairway. He was not a man of quick fancies; but to one of even slowerimagination and of calmer mood, she might very well have seemed unreal, the creature of a dream, fantastic, intangible, insensible, arch, notwholly without some touch of the malign. In his heart he groaned overher beauty as if she were lost to him forever in this elfishtransfiguration. 

"Miss Ellison!" he scarcely more than whispered. 

"You ought not to speak to me now, " she answered, gravely. 

"I know it; but I could not help it. For heaven's sake, do not let ittell against me. I wished to ask if I should not see you to-morrow; tobeg that all might go on as had been planned, and as if nothing had beensaid to-day. "

"It'll be very strange, " said Kitty. "My cousins know everything now. How can we meet before them!"

"I'm not going away without an answer, and we can't remain here withoutmeeting. It will be less strange if we let everything take its course. "

"Well. "

"Thanks. "

He looked strangely humbled, but even more bewildered than humbled. 

She listened while he descended the steps, unbolted the street door, andclosed it behind him. Then she passed out of the moonlight into her ownroom, whose close-curtained space the lamp filled with its ruddy glow, and revealed her again, no malicious sprite, but a very puzzled, conscientious, anxious young girl. 

Of one thing, at least, she was clear. It had all come about throughmisunderstanding, through his taking her to be something that she wasnot; for she was certain that Mr. Arbuton was of too worldly a spirit tochoose, if he had known, a girl of such origin and lot as she was onlytoo proud to own. The deception must have begun with dress; and shedetermined that her first stroke for truth and sincerity should be mostsublimely made in the return of Fanny's things, and a rigid fidelity toher own dresses. "Besides, " she could not help reflecting, "mytravelling-suit will be just the thing for a picnic. " And here, if thecynical reader of another sex is disposed to sneer at the method of herself-devotion, I am sure that women, at least, will allow it was mostnatural and highly proper that in this great moment she should firstthink of dress, upon which so great consequences hang in matters of theheart Who--to be honest for once, O vain and conceited men!--can denythat the cut, the color, the texture, the stylish set of dresses, hasnot had everything to do with the rapture of love's young dream? Are notcertain bits of lace and knots of ribbon as much a part of it as anysmile or sidelong glance of them all? And hath not the long experienceof the fair taught them that artful dress is half the virtue of theirspells? Full well they know it; and when Kitty resolved to profit nolonger by Fanny's wardrobe, she had won the hardest part of the battlein behalf of perfect truth towards Mr. Arbuton. She did not, indeed, stop with this, but lay awake, devising schemes by which she shoulddisabuse him of his errors about her, and persuade him that she was nowife for him. 

XII. 

THE PICNIC AT CHATEAU-BIGOT. 

"Well, " said Mrs. Ellison, who had slipped into Kitty's room, in themorning, to do her back hair with some advantages of light which her ownchamber lacked, "it'll be no crazier than the rest of the performance;and if you and he can stand it, I'm sure that _we_'ve no reason tocomplain. "

"Why, I don't see how it's to be helped, Fanny. He's asked it; and I'mrather glad he has, for I should have hated to have the conventionalheadache that keeps young ladies from being seen; and at any rate Idon't understand how the day could be passed more sensibly than just aswe originally planned to spend it. I can make up my mind a great dealbetter with him than away from him. But I think there never was a moreridiculous situation: now that the high tragedy has faded out of it, andthe serious part is coming, it makes me laugh. Poor Mr. Arbuton willfeel all day that he is under my mercilessly critical eye, and that hemustn't do this and he mustn't say that, for fear of me; and he can'trun away, for he's promised to wait patiently for my decision. It's amost inglorious position for him, but I don't think of anything to doabout it. I could say no at once, but he'd rather not. "

"What have you got that dress on for?" asked Mrs. Ellison, abruptly. 

"Because I'm not going to wear your things any more, Fanny. It's a caseof conscience. I feel like a guilty creature, being courted in another'sclothes; and I don't know but it's for a kind of punishment of my deceitthat I can't realize this affair as I ought, or my part in it. I keepfeeling, the whole time, as if it were somebody else, and I have anabsurd kind of other person's interest in it. "

Mrs. Ellison essayed some reply, but was met by Kitty's steadfastresolution, and in the end did not prevail in so much as a ribbon forher hair. 

It was not till well into the forenoon that the preparations for thepicnic were complete and the four set off together in one carriage. Inthe strong need that was on each of them to make the best of the affair, the colonel's unconsciousness might have been a little overdone, butMrs. Ellison's demeanor was sublimely successful. The situation gavefull play to her peculiar genius, and you could not have said that anyact of hers failed to contribute to the perfection of her design, thatany tone or speech was too highly colored. Mr. Arbuton, of whom she tookpossession, and who knew that she knew all, felt that he had never donejustice to her, and seconded her efforts with something like cordialadmiration; while Kitty, with certain grateful looks and aversions ofthe face, paid an ardent homage to her strokes of tact, and after a fewmiserable moments, in which her nightlong trouble gnawed at her heart, began, in spite of herself, to enjoy the humor of the situation. 

It is a lovely road out to Château-Bigot. First you drive through theancient suburbs of the Lower Town, and then you mount the smooth, hardhighway, between pretty country-houses, toward the village ofCharlesbourg, while Quebec shows, to your casual backward-glance, like awondrous painted scene, with the spires and lofty roofs of the UpperTown, and the long, irregular wall wandering on the verge of the cliff;then the thronging gables and chimneys of St. Roch, and again manyspires and convent walls; lastly the shipping in the St. Charles, which, in one direction, runs, a narrowing gleam, up into its valley, and inthe other widens into the broad light of the St. Lawrence. Quiet, elmyspaces of meadow land stretch between the suburban mansions and thevillage of Charlesbourg, where the driver reassured himself as to hisroute from the group of idlers on the platform before the church. Thenhe struck off on a country road, and presently turned from this againinto a lane that grew rougher and rougher, till at last it lapsed to amere cart-track among the woods, where the rich, strong odors of thepine, and of the wild herbs bruised under the wheels, filled the air. Apeasant and his black-eyed, open-mouthed boy were cutting withes to bindhay at the side of the track, and the latter consented to show thestrangers to the château from a point beyond which they could not gowith the carriage. There the small habitant and the driver took up thepicnic-baskets, and led the way through pathless growths of underbrushto a stream, so swift that it is said never to freeze, so deeply sprungthat the summer never drinks it dry. A screen of water-growths borderedit; and when this was passed, a wide open space revealed itself, withthe ruin of the château in the midst. 

The pathos of long neglect lay upon the scene; for here were evidencesof gardens and bowery aisles in other times, and now, for many a year, desolation and the slow return of the wilderness. The mountain risingbehind the château grounds showed the dying flush of the deciduousleaves among the dark green of the pines that clothed it to the crest; acry of innumerable crickets filled the ear of the dreaming noon. 

The ruin itself is not of impressive size, and it is a château by graceof the popular fancy rather than through any right of its own; for itwas, in truth, never more than the hunting-lodge of the king'sIntendant, Bigot, a man whose sins claim for him a lordly considerationin the history of Quebec, He was the last Intendant before the Britishconquest, and in that time of general distress he grew rich byoppression of the citizens, and by peculation from the soldiers. Hebuilt this pleasure-house here in the woods, and hither he rode out fromQuebec to enjoy himself in the chase and the carouses that succeed thechase. Here, too, it is said, dwelt in secret the Huron girl who lovedhim, and who survives in the memory of the peasants as the murdered_sauragesse_; and, indeed, there is as much proof that she was murderedas that she ever lived. When the wicked Bigot was arrested and sent toFrance, where he was tried with great result of documentary record, hischâteau fell into other hands; at last a party of Arnold's men winteredthere in 1775, and it is to our own countrymen that we owe theconflagration and the ruin of Château-Bigot. It stands, as I said, inthe middle of that open place, with the two gable walls and the stonepartition-wall still almost entire, and that day showing veryeffectively against the tender northern sky. On the most weatherwardgable the iron in the stone had shed a dark red stain under the lash ofmany winter storms, and some tough lichens had incrusted patches of thesurface; but, for the rest, the walls rose in the univied nakedness ofall ruins in our climate, which has no clinging evergreens wherewith topity and soften the forlornness of decay. Out of the rubbish at the footof the walls there sprang a wilding growth of syringas and lilacs; andthe interior was choked with flourishing weeds, and with the briers ofthe raspberry, on which a few berries hung. The heavy beams, left wherethey fell a hundred years ago, proclaimed the honest solidity with whichthe château had been built, and there was proof in the cut stone of thehearths and chimney-places that it had once had at least the ambition ofluxury. 

While its visitors stood amidst the ruin, a harmless garden-snakeslipped out of one crevice into another; from her nest in some hiddencorner overhead a silent bird flew away. For the moment, --so slight isthe capacity of any mood, so deeply is the heart responsive to a littleimpulse, --the palace of the Cæsars could not have imparted a keenersense of loss and desolation. They eagerly sought such particulars ofthe ruin as agreed with the descriptions they had read of it, and wereas well contented with a bit of cellar-way outside as if they had reallyfound the secret passage to the subterranean chamber of the château, orthe hoard of silver which the little habitant said was buried under it. Then they dispersed about the grounds to trace out the borders of thegarden, and Mr. Arbuton won the common praise by discovering thefoundations of the stable of the château. 

Then there was no more to do but to prepare for the picnic. They chose agrassy plot in the shadow of a half-dismantled bark-lodge, --a relic ofthe Indians, who resort to the place every summer. In the ashes of thatsylvan hearth they kindled their fire, Mr. Arbuton gathering the sticks, and the colonel showing a peculiar genius in adapting the savage flamesto the limitations of the civilized coffee-pot borrowed of Mrs. Gray. Mrs. Ellison laid the cloth, much meditating the arrangement of theviands, and reversing again and again the relative positions of thesliced tongue and the sardines that flanked the cold roast chicken, anddoubting dreadfully whether to put down the cake and the canned peachesat once, or reserve them for a second course; the stuffed olives droveher to despair, being in a bottle, and refusing to be balanced byanything less monumental in shape. Some wild asters and red leaves andgreen and yellowing sprays of fern which Kitty arranged in a tumblerwere hailed with rapture, but presently flung far away with fiercedisdain because they had ants on them. Kitty witnessed this outburstwith her usual complacency, and then went on making the coffee. Withsuch blissful pain as none but lovers know, Mr. Arbuton saw her breakthe egg upon the edge of the coffee-pot, and let it drop therein, andthen, with a charming frenzy, stir it round and round. It was a pictureof domestic suggestion, a subtle insinuation of home, the unconsciousappeal of inherent housewifery to inherent husbandhood. At the crash ofthe eggshell he trembled; the swift agitation of the coffee and the eggwithin the pot made him dizzy. 

"Sha'n't I stir that for you, Miss Ellison?" he said, awkwardly. 

"O dear, no!" she answered in surprise at a man's presuming to stircoffee; "but you may go get me some water at the creek, if you please. "

She gave him a pitcher, and he went off to the brook, which was but aminute's distance away. This minute, however, left her alone, for thefirst time that day, with both Dick and Fanny, and a silence fell uponall three at once. They could not help looking at one another; and thenthe colonel, to show that he was not thinking of anything, began towhistle, and Mrs. Ellison rebuked him for whistling. 

"Why not?" he asked. "It isn't a funeral, is it?"

"Of course it isn't, " said Mrs. Ellison; and Kitty, who had beenblushing to the verge of tears, laughed instead, and then was consumedwith vexation when Mr. Arbuton came up, feeling that he must suspecthimself the motive of her ill-timed mirth. "The champagne ought to becooled, I suppose, " observed Mrs. Ellison, when the coffee had beenfinally stirred and set to boil on the coals. 

"I'm best acquainted with the brook, " said Mr. Arbuton, "and I know justthe eddy in it where the champagne will cool soonest. "

"Then you shall take it there, " answered the governess of the feast; andMr. Arbuton duteously set off with the bottle in his hand. 

The pitcher of water which he had already brought stood in the grass; bya sudden movement of the skirt, Kitty knocked it over. The colonel madea start forward; Mrs. Ellison arrested him with a touch, while she benta look of ineffable admiration upon Kitty. 

"Now, I'll teach myself, " said Kitty, "that I can't be so clumsy withimpunity. I'll go and fill that pitcher again myself. " She hurried afterMr. Arbuton; they scarcely spoke going or coming; but the constraintthat Kitty felt was nothing to that she had dreaded in seeking to escapefrom the tacit raillery of the colonel and the championship of Fanny. Yet she trembled to realize that already her life had become so farentangled with this stranger's, that she found refuge with him from herown kindred. They could do nothing to help her in this; the trouble wassolely hers and his, and they two must get out of it one way or otherthemselves; the case scarcely admitted even of sympathy, and if it hadnot been hers, it would have been one to amuse her rather than appeal toher compassion. Even as it was, she sometimes caught herself smiling atthe predicament of a young girl who had passed a month in everyappearance of love-making, and who, being asked her heart, was holdingher lover in suspense whilst she searched it, and meantime waspicnicking with him upon the terms of casual flirtation. Of all theheroines in her books, she knew none in such a strait as this. 

But her perplexities did not impair the appetite which she brought tothe sylvan feast. In her whole simple life she had never tastedchampagne before, and she said innocently, as she put the frisking fluidfrom her lips after the first taste, "Why, I thought you had to _learn_to like champagne. "

"No, " remarked the colonel, "it's like reading and writing: it comes bynature. I suppose that even one of the lower animals would likechampagne. The refined instinct of young ladies makes them recognize itsmerits instantly. Some of the Confederate cellars, " added the colonel, thoughtfully, "had very good champagne in them. Green seal was thefavorite of our erring brethren. It wasn't one of their errors. I preferit myself to our own native cider, whether made of apples or grapes. Yes, it's better even than the water from the old chain-pump in the backyard at Eriecreek, though it hasn't so fine a flavor of lubricating oilin it. "

The faint chill that touched Mr. Arbuton at the mention of Eriecreek andits petrolic associations was transient. He was very light of heart, since the advance that Kitty seemed to have made him; and in histemporary abandon he talked well, and promoted the pleasure of the timewithout critical reserves. When the colonel, with the reluctance of oursoldiers to speak of their warlike experiences before civilians, hadsuffered himself to tell a story that his wife begged of him about hislast battle, Mr. Arbuton listened with a deference that flattered poorMrs. Ellison, and made her marvel at Kitty's doubt concerning him; andthen he spoke entertainingly of some travel experiences of his own, which he politely excused as quite unworthy to come after the colonel'sstory. He excused them a little too much, and just gave the modestsoldier a faint, uneasy fear of having boasted. But no one else feltthis result of his delicacy, and the feast was merry enough. When it wasended, Mrs. Ellison, being still a little infirm of foot, remained inthe shadow of the bark-lodge, and the colonel lit his cigar, and loyallystretched himself upon the grass before her. 

There was nothing else for Kitty and Mr. Arbuton but to stroll offtogether, and she preferred to do this. 

They sauntered up to the château in silence, and peered somewhatlanguidly about the ruin. On a bit of smooth surface in a shelteredplace many names of former visitors were written, and Mr. Arbuton saidhe supposed they might as well add those of their own party. 

"O yes, " answered Kitty, with a half-sigh, seating herself upon a fallenstone, and letting her hands fall into each other in her lap as her wontwas, "you write them. " A curious pensiveness passed from one to theother and possessed them both. 

Mr. Arbuton began to write. Suddenly, "Miss Ellison, " said he, with asmile, "I've blundered in your name; I neglected to put the Miss beforeit; and now there isn't room on the plastering. "

"O, never mind, " replied Kitty, "I dare say it won't be missed!"

Mr. Arbuton neither perceived nor heeded the pun. He was looking in asort of rapture at the name which his own hand had written now for thefirst time, and he felt an indecorous desire to kiss it. 

"If I could speak it as I've written it--"

"I don't see what harm there would be in that, " said the owner of thename, "or what object, " she added more discreetly. 

--"I should feel that I had made a great gain. "

"I never told you, " answered Kitty, evasively, "how much I admire _your_first name, Mr. Arbuton. "

"How did you know it?"

"It was on the card you gave my cousin, " said Kitty, frankly, butthinking he now must know she had been keeping his card. 

"It's an old family name, --a sort of heirloom from the first of us whocame to the country; and in every generation since, some Arbuton has hadto wear it. "

"It's superb!" cried Kitty. "Miles! 'Miles Standish, the Puritancaptain, ' 'Miles Standish, the Captain of Plymouth. ' I should be veryproud of such a name. "

"You have only to take it, " he said, gravely. 

"O, I didn't mean that, " she said with a blush, and then added, "Yoursis a very old family, then, isn't it?"

"Yes, it's pretty well, " answered Mr. Arbuton, "but it's not such a rarething in the East, you know. "

"I suppose not. The Ellisons are _not_ an old family. If we went back ofmy uncle, we should only come to backwoodsmen and Indian fighters. Perhaps that's the reason we don't care much for old families. You thinka great deal of them in Boston, don't you?"

"We do, and we don't. It's a long story, and I'm afraid I couldn't makeyou understand, unless you had seen something of Boston society. "

"Mr. Arbuton, " said Kitty, abruptly plunging to the bottom of thesubject on which they had been hovering, "I'm dreadfully afraid thatwhat you said to me--what you asked of me, yesterday--was all through amisunderstanding. I'm afraid that you've somehow mistaken me and mycircumstances, and that somehow I've innocently helped on your mistake. "

"There is no mistake, " he answered, eagerly, "about my loving you!"

Kitty did not look up, nor answer this outburst, which flattered whileit pained her. She said, "I've been so much mistaken myself, and I'vebeen so long finding it out, that I should feel anxious to have you knowjust what kind of girl you'd asked to be your wife, before I--"

"What?"

"Nothing. But I should want you to know that in many things my life hasbeen very, very different from yours. The first thing I canremember--you'll think I'm more autobiographical than our driver atHa-Ha Bay, even, but I must tell you all this--is about Kansas, where wehad moved from Illinois, and of our having hardly enough to eat or wear, and of my mother grieving over our privations. At last, when my fatherwas killed, " she said, dropping her voice, "in front of our own door--"

Mr. Arbuton gave a start. "Killed?"

"Yes; didn't you know? Or no: how could you? He was shot by theMissourians. "

Whether it was not hopelessly out of taste to have a father-in-law whohad been shot by the Missourians? Whether he could persuade Kitty tosuppress that part of her history? That she looked very pretty, sittingthere, with her earnest eyes lifted toward his. These things flashedwilfully through Mr. Arbuton's mind. 

"My father was a Free-State man, " continued Kitty, in a tone of pride. "He wasn't when he first went to Kansas, " she added simply; while Mr. Arbuton groped among his recollections of that forgotten struggle forsome association with these names, keenly feeling the squalor of it all, and thinking still how very pretty she was. "He went out there topublish a proslavery paper. But when he found out what the BorderRuffians really were, he turned against them. He used to be very bitterabout my uncle's having become an Abolitionist; they had had a quarrelabout it; but father wrote to him from Kansas, and they made it up; andbefore father died he was able to tell mother that we were to go touncle's. But mother was sick then, and she only lived a month afterfather; and when my cousin came out to get us, just before she died, there was scarcely a crust of cornbread in our cabin. It seemed likeheaven to get to Eriecreek; but even at Eriecreek we live in a way thatI am afraid you wouldn't respect. My uncle has just enough, and we arevery plain people indeed. I suppose, " continued the young girl meekly, "that I haven't had at all what you'd call an education. Uncle told mewhat to read, at first, and after that I helped myself. It seemed tocome naturally; but don't you see that it wasn't an education?"

"I beg pardon, " said Mr. Arbuton, with a blush; for he had just thenlost the sense of what she said in the music of her voice, as ithesitated over these particulars of her history. 

"I mean, " explained Kitty, "that I'm afraid I must be very one-sided. I'm dreadfully ignorant of a great many things. I haven't anyaccomplishments, only the little bit of singing and playing that you'veheard; I couldn't tell a good picture from a bad one; I've never been tothe opera; I don't know anything about society. Now just imagine, " criedKitty, with sublime impartiality, "such a girl as that in Boston!"

Even Mr. Arbuton could not help smiling at this comic earnestness, whileshe resumed: "At home my cousins and I do all kinds of things that theladies whom you know have done for them. We do our own work, for onething, " she continued, with a sudden treacherous misgiving that what shewas saying might be silly and not heroic, but bravely stifling herdoubt. "My cousin Virginia is housekeeper, and Rachel does the sewing, and I'm a kind of maid-of-all-work. "

Mr. Arbuton listened respectfully, vainly striving for some likeness ofMiss Ellison in the figure of the different second-girls who, duringlife, had taken his card, or shown him into drawing-rooms, or waited onhim at table; failing in this, he tried her in the character of daughterof that kind of farm-house where they take summer boarders and do theirown work; but evidently the Ellisons were not of that sort either; andhe gave it up and was silent, not knowing what to say, while Kitty, alittle piqued by his silence, went on: "We're not ashamed, youunderstand, of our ways; there's such a thing as being proud of notbeing proud; and that's what we are, or what I am; for the rest are notmean enough ever to think about it, and once I wasn't, either. Butthat's the kind of life I'm used to; and though I've read of other kindsof life a great deal, I've not been brought up to anything different, don't you understand? And maybe--I don't know--I mightn't like orrespect your kind of people any more than they did me. My uncle taughtus ideas that are quite different from yours; and what if I shouldn't beable to give them up?"

"There is only one thing I know or see: I love you!" he said, passionately, and drew nearer by a step; but she put out her hand andrepelled him with a gesture. 

"Sometimes you might be ashamed of me before those you knew to be myinferiors, --really common and coarse-minded people, but regularlyeducated, and used to money and fashion. I should cower before them, andI never could forgive you. "

"I've one answer to all this: I love you!"

Kitty flushed in generous admiration of his magnanimity, and said, withmore of tenderness than she had yet felt towards him, "I'm sorry that Ican't answer you now, as you wish, Mr. Arbuton. "

"But you will, to-morrow. "

She shook her head. "I don't know; O, I don't know! I've been thinkingof something. That Mrs. March asked me to visit her in Boston; but wehad given up doing so, because of the long delay here. If I asked mycousins, they'd still go home that way. It's too bad to put you offagain; but you must see me in Boston, if only for a day or two, andafter you've got back into your old associations there, before I answeryou. I'm in great trouble. You must wait, or I must say no. "

"I'll wait, " said Mr. Arbuton. 

"O, _thank_ you, " sighed Kitty, grateful for this patience, and not forthe chance of still winning him; "you are very forbearing, I'm sure. "

She again put forth her hand, but not now to repel him. He clasped it, and kept it in his, then impulsively pressed it against his lips. 

Colonel and Mrs. Ellison had been watching the whole pantomime, forgotten. 

"Well, " said the colonel, "I suppose that's the end of the play, isn'tit? I don't like it, Fanny; I don't like it. "

"Hush!" whispered Mrs. Ellison. 

They were both puzzled when Kitty and Mr. Arbuton came towards them withanxious faces. Kitty was painfully revolving in her mind what she hadjust said, and thinking she had said not so much as she meant and yet somuch more, and tormenting herself with the fear that she had been atonce too bold and too meek in her demand for longer delay. Did it notgive him further claim upon her? Must it not have seemed a veryaudacious thing? What right had she to make it, and how could she nowfinally say no? Then the matter of her explanation to him: was it in theleast what she meant to say? Must it not give him an idea ofintellectual and spiritual poverty in her life which she knew had notbeen in it? Would he not believe, in spite of her boasts, that she washumiliated before him by a feeling of essential inferiority? O, _had_she boasted? What she meant to do was just to make him understandclearly what she was; but, had she? Could he be made to understand thiswith what seemed his narrow conception of things outside of his ownexperience? Was it worth while to try? Did she care enough for him tomake the effort desirable? Had she made it for his sake, or in theinterest of truth, merely, or in self-defence?

These and a thousand other like questions beset her the whole way hometo Quebec, amid the frequent pauses of the talk, and underneath whatevershe was saying. Half the time she answered yes or no to them, and not towhat Dick, or Fanny, or Mr. Arbuton had asked her; she was distraughtwith their recurrence, as they teased about her like angry bees, and onenow and then settled, and stung and stung. Through the whole night, too, they pursued her in dreams with pitiless iteration and fantastic change;and at dawn she was awakened by voices calling up to her from theUrsulines' Garden, --the slim, pale nun crying out, in a lamentableaccent, that all men were false and there was no shelter save theconvent or the grave, and the comfortable sister bemoaning herself thaton meagre days Madame de la Peltrie ate nothing but choke-cherries fromChâteau-Bigot. 

Kitty rose and dressed herself, and sat at the window, and watched themorning come into the garden below: first, a tremulous flush of theheavens; then a rosy light on the silvery roofs and gables; then littlegolden aisles among the lilacs and hollyhocks. The tiny flower-beds justunder her window were left, with their snap-dragons and larkspurs, indew and shadow; the small dog stood on the threshold, and barkeduneasily when the bell rang in the Ursulines' Chapel, where the nunswere at matins. 

It was Sunday, and a soft tranquillity blest the cool air in which theyoung girl bathed her troubled spirit. A faint anticipative homesicknessmingled now with her nightlong anxiety, --a pity for herself that on themorrow she must leave those pretty sights, which had become so dear toher that she could not but feel herself native among them. She must goback to Eriecreek, which was not a walled city, and had not a stonebuilding, much less a cathedral or convent, within its borders; andthough she dearly loved those under her uncle's roof there, yet she hadto own that, beyond that shelter, there was little in Eriecreek to touchthe heart or take the fancy; that the village was ugly, and the villagepeople mortally dull, narrow, and uncongenial. Why was not her lot castsomewhere else? Why should she not see more of the world that she hadfound so fair, and which all her aspirations had fitted her to enjoy?Quebec had been to her a rapture of beautiful antiquity; but Europe, butLondon, Venice, Rome, those infinitely older and more storied cities ofwhich she had lately talked so much with Mr. Arbuton, --why should shenot see them?

Here, for the guilty space of a heat-lightning flash, Kitty wickedlyentertained the thought of marrying Mr. Arbuton for the sake of a bridaltrip to Europe, and bade love and the fitness of things and theincompatibility of Boston and Eriecreek traditions take care ofthemselves. But then she blushed for her meanness, and tried to atonefor it as she could by meditating the praise of Mr. Arbuton. She feltremorse for having, as he had proved yesterday, undervalued andmisunderstood him; and she was willing now to think him even moremagnanimous than his generous words and conduct showed him. It would bea base return for his patience to accept him from a worldly ambition; aman of his noble spirit merited the best that love could give. But sherespected him; at last she respected him fully and entirely, and shecould tell him that at any rate. 

The words in which he had yesterday protested his love for her repeatedthemselves constantly in her revery. If he should speak them again afterhe had seen her in Boston, in the light by which she was anxious to betested, --she did not know what she should say. 

XIII. 

ORDEAL. 

They had not planned to go anywhere that day; but after church theyfound themselves with the loveliest afternoon of their stay at Quebec tobe passed somehow, and it was a pity to pass it indoors, the colonelsaid at their early dinner. They canvassed the attractions of thedifferent drives out of town, and they decided upon that to Lorette. TheEllisons had already been there, but Mr. Arbuton had not, and it wasfrom a dim motive of politeness towards him that Mrs. Ellison chose theexcursion; though this did not prevent her from wondering aloudafterward, from time to time, why she had chosen it. He was restless andabsent, and answered at random when points of the debate were referredto him, but he eagerly assented to the conclusion, and was in haste toset out. 

The road to Lorette is through St. John's Gate, down into the outlyingmeadows and rye-fields, where, crossing and recrossing the swift St. Charles, it finally rises at Lorette above the level of the citadel. Itis a lonelier road than that to Montmorenci, and the scattering cottagesupon it have not the well-to-do prettiness, the operatic repair, ofstone-built Beauport. But they are charming, nevertheless, and thepeople seem to be remoter from modern influences. Peasant-girls, inpurple gowns and broad straw hats, and not the fashions of the yearbefore last, now and then appeared to our acquaintance; near one ancientcottage an old man, in the true habitant's red woollen cap with a longfall, leaned over the bars of his gate and smoked a short pipe. 

By and by they came to Jeune-Lorette, an almost ideally pretty hamlet, bordering the road on either hand with galleried and balconied littlehouses, from which the people bowed to them as they passed, and piouslyenclosing in its midst the village church and churchyard. They soonafter reached Lorette itself, which they might easily have known for anIndian town by its unkempt air, and the irregular attitudes in which theshabby cabins lounged along the lanes that wandered through it, even ifthe Ellisons had not known it already, or if they had not been welcomedby a pomp of Indian boys and girls of all shades of darkness. The girlshad bead-wrought moccasins and work-bags to sell, and the boys bore bowsand arrows and burst into loud cries of "Shoot! shoot! grand shoot!Put-up-pennies! shoot-the-pennies! Grand shoot!" When they recognizedthe colonel, as they did after the party had dismounted in front of thechurch, they renewed these cries with greater vehemence. 

"Now, Richard, " implored his wife, "you're _not_ going to let thoselittle pests go through all that shooting performance again?"

"I must. It is expected of me whenever I come to Lorette; and I wouldnever be the man to neglect an ancient observance of this kind. " Thecolonel stuck a copper into the hard sand as he spoke, and a small stormof arrows hurtled around it. Presently it flew into the air, and afair-faced, blue-eyed boy picked it up: he won most of the succeedingcoins. 

"There's an aborigine of pure blood, " remarked the colonel; "hisancestors came from Normandy two hundred years ago. That's the reason heuses the bow so much better than these coffee-colored impostors. "

They went into the chapel, which stands on the site of the ancientchurch burnt not long ago. It is small, and it is bare and rude inside, with only the commonest ornamentation about the altar, on one side ofwhich was the painted wooden statue of a nun, on the other that of apriest, --slight enough commemoration of those who had suffered so muchfor the hopeless race that lingers and wastes at Lorette in incurablesqualor and wildness. They are Christians after their fashion, this poorremnant of the mighty Huron nation converted by the Jesuits and crushedby the Iroquois in the far-western wilderness; but whatever they are atheart, they are still savage in countenance, and these boys had faces ofwolves and foxes. They followed their visitors into the church, wherethere was only an old woman praying to a picture, beneath which hung avotive hand and foot, and a few young Huron suppliants with very sleekhair, whose wandering devotions seemed directed now at the strangers, and now at the wooden effigy of the House of St. Ann borne by two giltangels above the high-altar. There was no service, and the visitors soonquitted the chapel amid the clamors of the boys outside. Some younggirls, in the dress of our period, were promenading up and down the roadwith their arms about each other and their eyes alert for the effectupon spectators. 

From one of the village lanes came swaggering towards the visitors afigure of aggressive fashion, --a very buckish young fellow, with a heavyblack mustache and black eyes, who wore a jaunty round hat, blue checkedtrousers, a white vest, and a morning-coat of blue diagonals, buttonedacross his breast; in his hand he swung a light cane. 

"That is the son of the chief, Paul Picot, " whispered the driver. 

"Excuse me, " said the colonel, instantly; and the young gentlemannodded. "Can you tell me if we could see the chief to-day?"

"O yes!" answered the notary in English, "my father is chief. You cansee him"; and passed on with a somewhat supercilious air. 

The colonel, in his first hours at Quebec, had bought at a bazaar ofIndian wares the photograph of an Indian warrior in a splendor offactitious savage panoply. It was called "The Last of the Hurons, " andthe colonel now avenged himself for the curtness of M. Picot by stylinghim "The Next to the Last of the Hurons. "

"Well, " said Fanny, who had a wife's willingness to see her husbandoccasionally snubbed, "I don't know why you asked him. I'm sure nobodywants to see that old chief and his wretched bead trumpery again. "

"My dear, " answered the colonel, "wherever Americans go, they like to bepresented at court. Mr. Arbuton, here, I've no doubt has been introducedto the crowned heads of the Old World, and longs to pay his respects tothe sovereign of Lorette. Besides, I always call upon the reigningprince when I come to Lorette. The coldness of the heir-apparent shallnot repel me. "

The colonel led the way up the principal lane of the village. Some ofthe cabins were ineffectually whitewashed, but none of them were souncleanly within as the outside prophesied. At the doors and windows satwomen and young girls working moccasins; here and there stood a well-fedmother of a family with an infant Huron in her arms. They all showed thetraces of white blood, as did the little ones who trooped after thestrangers and demanded charity as clamorously as so many Italians; onlya few faces were of a clear dark, as if stained by walnut-juice, and itwas plain that the Hurons were fading, if not dying out. They respondedwith a queer mixture of French liveliness and savage stolidity to thecolonel's jocose advances. Great lean dogs lounged about the thresholds;they and the women and children were alone visible; there were no men. None of the houses were fenced, save the chief's; this stood behind aneat grass plot, across which, at the moment our travellers came up, twoyoungish women were trailing in long morning-gowns and eye-glasses. Thechief's house was a handsome cottage, papered and carpeted, with a hugestove in the parlor, where also stood a table exposing the bead trumperyof Mrs. Ellison's scorn. A full-bodied elderly man with quick, blackeyes and a tranquil, dark face stood near it; he wore a half-militarycoat with brass buttons, and was the chief Picot. At sight of thecolonel he smiled slightly and gave his hand in welcome. Then he soldsuch of his wares as the colonel wanted, rather discouraging thaninviting purchase. He talked, upon some urgency, of his people, who, hesaid, numbered three hundred, and were a few of them farmers, but weremostly hunters, and, in the service of the officers of the garrison, spent the winter in the chase. He spoke fair English, but reluctantly, and he seemed glad to have his guests go, who were indeed willing enoughto leave him. 

Mr. Arbuton especially was willing, for he had been longing to findhimself alone with Kitty, of which he saw no hope while the idling aboutthe village lasted. 

The colonel bought an insane watch-pocket for _une dolleur_ from apretty little girl as they returned through the village; but he forbadethe boys any more archery at his expense, with "Pas de grand shoot, _now_, mes enfans!--Friends, " he added to his own party, "we have theFalls of Lorette and the better part of the afternoon still before us;how shall we employ them?"

Mrs. Ellison and Kitty did not know, and Mr. Arbuton did not know, asthey sauntered down past the chapel, to the stone mill that feeds itsindustry from the beauty of the fall. The cascade, with two or threesuccessive leaps above the road, plunges headlong down a steepcrescent-shaped slope, and hides its foamy whiteness in thedark-foliaged ravine below. It is a wonder of graceful motion, ofiridescent lights and delicious shadows; a shape of loveliness thatseems instinct with a conscious life. Its beauty, like that of allnatural marvels on our continent, is on a generous scale; and now thespectators, after viewing it from the mill, passed for a differentprospect of it to the other shore, and there the colonel and Fannywandered a little farther down the glen, leaving Kitty with Mr. Arbuton. The affair between them was in such a puzzling phase, that there was asmuch reason for as against this: nobody could do anything, not evenopenly recognize it. Besides, it was somehow very interesting to Kittyto be there alone with him, and she thought that if all were well, andhe and she were really engaged, the sense of recent betrothal could benowhere else half so sweet as in that wild and lovely place. She beganto imagine a bliss so divine, that it would have been strange if she hadnot begun to desire it, and it was with a half reluctant, half-acquiescent thrill that she suffered him to touch upon what wasfirst in both their minds. 

"I thought you had agreed not to talk of that again for the present, "she feebly protested. 

"No; I was not forbidden to tell you I loved you: I only consented towait for my answer; but now I shall break my promise. I cannot wait. Ithink the conditions you make dishonor me, " said Mr. Arbuton, with animpetuosity that fascinated her. 

"O, how can you say such a thing as that?" she asked, liking him for hisresentment of conditions that he found humiliating, while her heartleaped remorseful to her lips for having imposed them. "You know verywell why I wanted to delay; and you know that--that--if--I had doneanything to wound you, I never could forgive myself. "

"But you doubted me, all the same, " he rejoined. 

"Did I? I thought it was myself that I doubted. " She was stricken withsudden misgiving as to what had seemed so well; her words tended rapidlyshe could not tell whither. 

"But why do you doubt yourself?"

"I--I don't know. "

"No, " he said bitterly, "for it's really me that you doubt. I can'tunderstand what you have seen in me that makes you believe anythingcould change me towards you, " he added with a kind of humbleness thattouched her. "I could have borne to think that I was not worthy of you. "

"Not worthy of me! I never dreamed of such a thing. "

"But to have you suspect me of such meanness--"

"O Mr. Arbuton!"

--"As you hinted yesterday, is a disgrace that I ought not to bear. Ihave thought of it all night; and I must have my answer now, whatever itis. "

She did not speak; for every word that she had uttered had only servedto close escape behind her. She did not know what to do; she looked upat him for help. He said with an accent of meekness pathetic from him, "Why must you still doubt me?"

"I don't, " she scarcely more than breathed. 

"Then you are mine, now, without waiting, and forever, " he cried; andcaught her to him in a swift embrace. 

She only said, "Oh!" in a tone of gentle reproach, yet clung to him ahelpless moment as for rescue from himself. She looked at him in blankpallor, striving to realize the tender violence in which his pulseswildly exulted; then a burning flush dyed her face, and tears came intoher eyes. "O, I hope you'll never be sorry, " she said; and then, "Do letus go, " for she had no distinct desire save for movement, for escapefrom that place. 

Her heart had been surprised, she hardly knew how; but at his kiss anovel tenderness had leaped to life in it. She suffered him to put herhand upon his arm, and then she began to feel a strange pride in hisbeing tall and handsome, and hers. But she kept thinking as they walked, "I hope he'll never he sorry, " and she said it again, half in jest. Hepressed her hand against his heart, and met her look with one of protestand reassurance, that presently melted into something sweeter yet. Hesaid, "What beautiful eyes you have! I noticed the long lashes when Isaw you on the Saguenay boat, and I couldn't get away from them. "

"O please, don't speak of that dreadful time!" cried Kitty. 

"No? Why not?"

"O because! I think it was such a bold kind of accident my taking yourarm by mistake; and the whole next day has always been a perfect horrorto me. "

He looked at her in questioning amaze. 

"I think I was very pert with you all day, --and I don't think I'm pertnaturally, --taking you up about the landscape, and twitting you aboutthe Saguenay scenery and legends, you know. But I thought you weretrying to put me down, --you are rather down-putting at times, --and Iadmired you, and I couldn't bear it. "

"Oh!" said Mr. Arbuton. He dimly recollected, as if it had been in someformer state of existence, that there were things he had not approved inKitty that day, but now he met her penitence with a smile and anotherpressure of the hand. "Well, then, " he said, "if you don't like torecall that time, let's go back of it to the day I met you on GoatIsland Bridge at Niagara. "

"O, did you see _me_ there? I thought you didn't; but _I_ saw _you_. Youhad on a blue cravat, " she answered; and he returned with as much theair of coherency as if really continuing the same train of thought, "Youwon't think it necessary to visit Boston, now, I suppose, " and he smiledtriumphantly upon her. "I fancy that I have now a better right tointroduce you there than your South End friends. "

Kitty smiled, too. "I'm willing to wait. But don't you think you oughtto see Eriecreek before you promise too solemnly? I can't allow thatthere's anything serious, till you've seen me at home. "

They had been going, for no reason that they knew, back to the countryinn near which you purchase admittance to a certain view of the falls, and now they sat down on the piazza, somewhat apart from other peoplewho were there, as Mr. Arbuton said, "O, I shall visit Eriecreek soonenough. But I shall not come to put myself or you to the proof. I don'task to see you at home before claiming you forever. "

Kitty murmured, "Ah! you are more generous than I was. "

"I doubt it. "

"O yes, you are. But I wonder if you'll be able to find Eriecreek. "

"Is it on the map?"

"It's on the county map; and so is Uncle Jack's lot on it, and a pictureof his house, for that matter. They'll all be standing on thepiazza--something like this one--when you come up. You'll know UncleJack by his big gray beard, and his bushy eyebrows, and his boots, whichhe won't have blacked, and his Leghorn hat, which we can't get him tochange. The girls will be there with him, --Virginia all red and heatedwith having got supper for you, and Rachel with the family mending inher hand, --and they'll both come running down the walk to welcome you. How will you like it?"

Mr. Arbuton suspected the gross caricature of this picture, and smiledsecurely at it. "I shall like it well enough, " he said, "if you run downwith them. Where shall you be?"

"I forgot. I shall be up stairs in my room, peeping through thewindow-blinds, to see how you take it. Then I shall come down, andreceive you with dignity in the parlor, but after supper you'll have toexcuse me while I help with the dishes. Uncle Jack will talk to you. He'll talk to you about Boston. He's much fonder of Boston than you are, even. " And here Kitty broke off with a laugh, thinking what a verydifferent Boston her Uncle Jack's was from Mr. Arbuton's, andmaliciously diverted with what she conceived of their mutualbewilderment in trying to get some common stand-point. He had risen fromhis chair, and was now standing a few paces from her, looking toward thefall, as if by looking he might delay the coming of the colonel andFanny. 

She checked her merriment a moment to take note of two ladies who werecoming up the path towards the porch where she was sitting. Mr. Arbutondid not see them. The ladies mounted the steps, and turned slowly andlanguidly to survey the company. But at sight of Mr. Arbuton, one ofthem advanced directly toward him, with exclamations of surprise andpleasure, and he with a stupefied face and a mechanical movement turnedto meet her. 

She was a lady of more than middle age, dressed with certain personalaudacities of color and shape, rather than overdressed, and she thrustforward, in expression of her amazement, a very small hand, wonderfullywell gloved; her manner was full of the anxiety of a woman who hadfought hard for a high place in society, and yet suggested a latenthatred of people who, in yielding to her, had made success bitter andhumiliating. 

Her companion was a young and very handsome girl, exquisitely dressed, and just so far within the fashion as to show her already a mistress ofstyle. But it was not the vivid New York stylishness. A peculiarrestraint of line, an effect of lady-like concession to the ruling mode, a temperance of ornament, marked the whole array, and stamped it withthe unmistakable character of Boston. Her clear tints of lip and cheekand eye were incomparable; her blond hair gave weight to the poise ofher delicate head by its rich and decent masses. She had a look ofindependent innocence, an angelic expression of extremely nice youngfellow blending with a subtle maidenly charm. She indicated her surpriseat seeing Mr. Arbuton by pressing the point of her sun-umbrella somewhatnervously upon the floor, and blushing a very little. Then she gave himher hand with friendly frankness, and smiled dazzlingly upon him, whilethe elder hailed him with effusive assertion of familiar acquaintance, heaping him with greetings and flatteries and cries of pleasure. 

"O dear!" sighed Kitty, "these are old friends of his; and will I haveto know them? Perhaps it's best to begin at once, though, " she thought. 

But he made no movement toward her where she sat. The ladies began towalk up and down, and he with them. As they passed her, he did not seemto see her. 

The ladies said they were waiting for their carriage, which they hadleft at a certain point when they went to look at the fall, and hadordered to take them up at the inn. They talked about people and thingsthat Kitty had never heard of. 

"Have you seen the Trailings since you left Newport?" asked the elderwoman. 

"No, " said Mr. Arbuton. 

"Perhaps you'll be surprised then--or perhaps you won't--to hear that weparted with them on the top of Mount Washington, Thursday. And theMayflowers are at the Glen House. The mountains are horribly full. Butwhat are you to do! Now the Continent"--she spoke as if the EnglishChannel divided it from us--"is so common, you can't run over there anymore. "

Whenever they walked towards Kitty, this woman, whose quick eye haddetected Mr. Arbuton at her side as she came up to the inn, bent uponthe young girl's face a stare of insolent curiosity, yet with a front ofsuch impassive coldness that to another she might not have seemed awareof her presence. Kitty shuddered at the thought of being made acquaintedwith her; then she remembered, "Why, how stupid I am! Of course agentleman can't introduce ladies; and the only thing for him to do is toexcuse himself to them as soon as he can without rudeness, and come backto me. " But none the less she felt helpless and deserted. Thoughordinarily so brave, she was so beaten down by that look, that for aglance of not unkindly interest that the young lady gave her she wasabjectly grateful. She admired her, and fancied that she could easily befriends with such a girl as that, if they met fairly. She wondered thatshe should be there with that other, not knowing that society cannotreally make distinctions between fine and coarse, and could not havegiven her a reason for their association. 

Still the three walked up and down before Kitty, and still she made hispeace with herself, thinking, "He is embarrassed; he can't come to me atonce; but he will, of course. "

The elder of his companions talked on in her loud voice of this thingand that, of her summer, and of the people she had met, and of theirplaces and yachts and horses, and all the splendors of theirkeeping, --talk which Kitty's aching sense sometimes caught by fragments, and sometimes in full. The lady used a slang of deprecation and apologyfor having come to such a queer resort as Quebec, and raised her browswhen Mr. Arbuton reluctantly owned how long he had been there. 

"Ah, ah!" she said briskly, bringing the group to a stand-still whileshe spoke, "one doesn't stay in a slow Canadian city a whole month forlove of the _place_. Come, Mr. Arbuton, is she English or French?"

Kitty's heart beat thickly, and she whispered to herself, "O, now!--nowsurely he _must_ do something. "

"Or perhaps, " continued his tormentor, "she's some fair fellow-wandererin these Canadian wilds, --some pretty companion of voyage. "

Mr. Arbuton gave a kind of start at this, like one thrilled for aninstant with a sublime impulse. He cast a quick, stealthy look at Kitty, and then as suddenly withdrew his glance. What had happened to her whowas usually dressed so prettily? Alas! true to her resolution, Kitty hadagain refused Fanny's dresses that morning, and had faithfully put onher own travelling-suit, --the suit which Rachel had made her, and whichhad seemed so very well at Eriecreek that they had called Uncle Jack into admire it when it was tried on. Now she knew that it lookedcountrified, and its unstylishness struck in upon her, and made her feelcountrified in soul. "Yes, " she owned, as she met Mr. Arbuton's glance, "I'm nothing but an awkward milkmaid beside that young lady. " This wasunjust to herself; but truly it was never in her present figure that hehad intended to show her to his world, which he had been sincere enoughin contemning for her sake while away from it. Confronted with goodsociety in these ladies, its delegates, he doubtless felt, as neverbefore, the vastness of his self-sacrifice, the difficulty of hisenterprise, and it would not have been so strange if just then sheshould have appeared to him through the hard cold vision of the bestpeople instead of that which love had illumined. She saw whateverpurpose toward herself was in his eyes, flicker and die out as they fellfrom hers. Then she sat alone while they three walked up and down, upand down, and the skirts of the ladies brushed her garments in passing. 

"O, where can Dick and Fanny be?" she silently bemoaned herself, "andwhy don't they come and save me from these dreadful people?"

She sat in a stony quiet while they talked on, she thought, forever. Their voices sounded in her ears like voices heard in a dream, theirlaughter had a nightmare cruelty. Yet she was resolved to be just to Mr. Arbuton, she was determined not meanly to condemn him; she confessed toherself, with a glimmer of her wonted humor, that her dress must be anordeal of peculiar anguish to him, and she half blamed herself for herconscientiousness in wearing it. If she had conceived of any such chanceas this, she would perhaps, she thought, have worn Fanny's grenadine. 

She glanced again at the group which was now receding from her. "Ah!"the elder of the ladies said, again halting the others midway of thepiazza's length, "there's the carriage at last! But what is that stupidanimal stopping for? O, I suppose he didn't understand, and expects totake us up at the bridge! Provoking! But it's no use; we may as well goto him at once; it's plain he isn't coming to us. Mr. Arbuton, will yousee us on board?"

"Who--I? Yes, certainly, " he answered absently, and for the second timehe cast a furtive look at Kitty, who had half started to her feet inexpectation of his coming to her before he went, --a look of appeal, ordeprecation, or reassurance, as she chose to interpret it, but after alla look only. 

She sank back in blank rejection of his look, and so remained motionlessas he led the way from the porch with a quick and anxious step. Sincethose people came he had not openly recognized her presence, and now hehad left her without a word. She could not believe what she could notbut divine, and she was powerless to stir as the three moved down theroad towards the carriage. Then she felt the tears spring to her eyes:she flung down her veil, and, swept on by a storm of grief and pride andpain, she hurried, ran towards the grounds about the falls. She thrustaside the boy who took money at the gate. "I have no money, " she saidfiercely; "I'm going to look for my friends: they're in here. "

But Dick and Fanny were not to be seen. Instead, as she fluttered wildlyabout in search of them, she beheld Mr. Arbuton, who had missed her onhis return to the inn, coming with a frightened face to look for her. She had hoped, somehow never to see him again in the world; but since itwas to be, she stood still and waited his approach in a strangecomposure; while he drew nearer, thinking how yesterday he had silencedher prophetic doubt of him: "I have one answer to all this; I love you. "Her faltering words, verified so fatally soon, recalled themselves tohim with intolerable accusation. And what should he say now? Ifpossibly, --if by some miracle, --she might not have seen what he fearedshe must! One glance that he dared give her taught him better; and whileshe waited for him to speak, he could not lure any of the phrases, ofwhich the air seemed full, to serve him. 

"I wonder you came back to me, " she said after an eternal moment. 

"Came back?" he echoed, vacantly. 

"You seemed to have forgotten my existence!"

Of course the whole wrong, if any wrong had been done to her, was tacit, and much might be said to prove that she felt needlessly aggrieved, andthat he could not have acted otherwise than as he did; she herself hadowned that it must be an embarrassing position to him. 

"Why, what have I done, " he began, "what makes you think. .. For heaven'ssake listen to me!" he cried; and then, while she turned a muteattentive face to him, he stood silent as before, like one who has losthis thought, and strives to recall what he was going to say. "Whatsense, --what use, " he resumed at last, as if continuing the course ofsome previous argument, "would there have been in making a display ofour acquaintance before them? I did not suppose at first that they sawus together. ". .. But here he broke off, and, indeed, his explanation hadbut a mean effect when put into words. "I did not expect them to stay. Ithought they would go away every moment; and then at last it was toolate to manage the affair without seeming to force it. " This was better;and he paused again, for some sign of acquiescence from Kitty, andcaught her eye fixed on his face in what seemed contemptuous wonder. Hisown eyes fell, and ran uneasily over her dress before he lifted them andbegan once more, as if freshly inspired: "I could have wished you to beknown to my friends with every advantage on your side, " and this hadsuch a magnanimous sound that he took courage; "and you ought to havehad faith enough in me to believe that I never could have meant you aslight. If you had known more of the world, --if your social experiencehad been greater you would have seen. .. . Oh!" he cried, desperately, "isthere nothing you have to say to me?"

"No, " said Kitty, simply, but with a languid quiet, and shrinking fromspeech as from an added pang. "You have been telling me that you wereashamed of me in this dress before those people. But I knew thatalready. What do you want me to do?"

"If you give me time, I can make everything clear to you. "

"But now you don't deny it. "

"Deny what? I--"

But here the whole fabric of Mr. Arbuton's defence toppled to theground. He was a man of scrupulous truth, not accustomed to deceivehimself or others. He had been ashamed of her, he could not deny it, notto keep the love that was now dearer to him than life. He saw it withparalyzing clearness; and, as an inexorable fact that confounded quiteas much as it dismayed him, he perceived that throughout that ignoblescene she had been the gentle person and he the vulgar one. How could ithave happened with a man like him! As he looked back upon it, he seemedto have been only the helpless sport of a sinister chance. 

But now he must act; it could not go so, it was too horrible a thing tolet stand confessed. A hundred protests thronged to his lips, but herefused utterance to them all as worse even than silence; and so, stillmeaning to speak, he could not speak. He could only stand and wait whileit wrung his heart to see her trembling, grieving lips. 

His own aspect was so lamentable, that she half pitied him, halfrespected him for his truth's sake. "You were right; I think it won't benecessary for me to go to Boston, " she said with a dim smile. "Good by. It's all been a dreadful, dreadful mistake. "

It was like him, even in that humiliation, not to have thought of losingher, not to have dreamed but that he could somehow repair his error, andshe would yet willingly be his. "O no, no, no, " he cried, startingforward, "don't say that! It can't be, it mustn't be! You are angry now, but I know you'll see it differently. Don't be so quick with me, withyourself. I will do anything, say anything, you like. "

The tears stood in her eyes; but they were cruel drops. "You can't sayanything that wouldn't make it worse. You can't undo what's been done, and that's only a little part of what couldn't be undone. The best wayis for us to part; it's the only way. "

"No, there are all the ways in the world besides! Wait--think!--Iimplore you not to be so--precipitate. "

The unfortunate word incensed her the more; it intimated that she wasignorantly throwing too much away. "I am not rash now, but I was veryrash half an hour ago. I shall not change my mind again. O, " she cried, giving way, "it isn't what you've done, but what you _are_ and what _I_am, that's the great trouble! I could easily forgive what'shappened, --if you asked it; but I couldn't alter both our whole lives, or make myself over again, and you couldn't change yourself. Perhaps youwould try, and I know that I would, but it would be a wretched failureand disappointment as long as we lived. I've learnt a great deal since Ifirst saw those people. " And in truth he felt as if the young girl whomhe had been meaning to lift to a higher level than her own at his sidehad somehow suddenly grown beyond him; and his heart sank. "It's foolishto try to argue such a thing, but it's true; and you must let me go. "

"I _can't_ let you go, " he said in such a way, that she longed at leastto part kindly with him. 

"You can make it hard for me, " she answered, "but the end will be thesame. "

"I won't make it hard for you, then, " he returned, after a pause, inwhich he grew paler and she stood with a wan face plucking the redleaves from a low bough that stretched itself towards her. 

He turned and walked away some steps; then he came suddenly back. "Iwish to express my regret, " he began formally, and with his old air ofdoing what was required of him as a gentleman, "that I should haveunintentionally done anything to wound--"

"O, better not speak of _that_, " interrupted Kitty with bitterness, "it's all over now. " And the final tinge of superiority in his mannermade her give him a little stab of dismissal. "Good by. I see my cousinscoming. "

She stood and watched him walk away, the sunlight playing on his figurethrough the mantling leaves, till he passed out of the grove. 

The cataract roared with a seven-fold tumult in her ears, and dancedbefore her eyes. All things swam together, as in her blurred sight hercousins came wavering towards her. 

"Where is Mr. Arbuton?" asked Mrs. Ellison. 

Kitty threw her arms about the neck of that foolish woman, whoso lovingheart she could not doubt, and clung sobbing to her. "Gone, " she said;and Mrs. Ellison, wise for once, asked no more. 

She had the whole story that evening, without asking; and whilst sheraged, she approved of Kitty, and covered her with praises andcondolences. 

"Why, of course, Fanny, I didn't care for _knowing_ those people. Whatshould I want to know them for? But what hurt me was that he should sopostpone me to them, and ignore me before them, and leave me without aword, then, when I ought to have been everything in the world to him andfirst of all. I believe things came to me while I sat there, as they doto drowning people, all at once, and I saw the whole affair moredistinctly than ever I did. We were too far apart in what we had beenand what we believed in and respected, ever to grow really together. Andif he gave me the highest position in the world, I should have onlythat. He never could like the people who had been good to me, and whom Iloved so dearly, and he only could like me as far as he could estrangeme from them. If he could coolly put me aside _now_, how would it beafterwards with the rest, and with me too? That's what flashed throughme, and I don't believe that getting splendidly married is as good asbeing true to the love that came long before, and honestly living yourown life out, without fear or trembling, whatever it is. So perhaps, "said Kitty, with a fresh burst of tears, "you needn't condole with me somuch, Fanny. Perhaps if you had seen him, you would have thought he wasthe one to be pitied. _I_ pitied him, though he _was_ so cruel. When hefirst turned to meet them, you'd have thought he was a man sentenced todeath, or under some dreadful spell or other; and while he was walkingup and down listening to that horrible comical old woman, --the younglady didn't talk much, --and trying to make straight answers to her, andto look as if I didn't exist, it was the most ridiculous thing in theworld. "

"How queer you are, Kitty!"

"Yes; but you needn't think I didn't feel it. I seemed to be like twopersons sitting there, one in agony, and one just coolly watching it. But O, " she broke out again while Fanny held her closer in her arms, "how could he have done it, how could he have acted so towards me; andjust after I had begun to think him so generous and noble! It seems toodreadful to be true. " And with this Kitty kissed her cousin and they hada little cry together over the trust so done to death; and Kitty driedher eyes, and bade Fanny a brave good-night, and went off to weep again, upon her pillow. 

But before that, she called Fanny to her door, and with a smile breakingthrough the trouble of her face, she asked, "How do you suppose he gotback? I never thought of it before. "

"_Oh!_" cried Mrs. Ellison with profound disgust, "I hope he had to_walk_ back. But I'm afraid there were only too many chances for him toride. I dare say he could get a calash at the hotel there. "

Kitty had not spoken a word of reproach to Fanny for her part inpromoting this hapless affair; and when the latter, returning to her ownroom, found the colonel there, she told him the story and then began todiscern that she was not without credit for Kitty's fortunate escape, asshe called it. 

"Yes, " said the colonel, "under exactly similar circumstances she'llknow just what to expect another time, if that's any comfort. "

"It's a _great_ comfort, " retorted Mrs. Ellison; "you can't find outwhat the world is, too soon, I can tell you; and if I hadn't maneuvereda little to bring them together, Kitty might have gone off with somelingering fancy for him; and think what a misfortune that would havebeen!"

"Horrible. "

"And now, she'll not have a single regret for him. "

"I should think not, " said the colonel; and he spoke in a tone of suchdejection, that it went to his wife's heart more than any reproach ofKitty's could have done. "You're all right, and nobody blames you, Fanny; but if _you_ think it's well for such a girl as Kitty to find outthat a man who has had the best that the world can give, and has reallysome fine qualities of his own, can be such a poor devil, after all, then _I_ don't. She may be the wiser for it, but you know she won't bethe happier. "

"O _don't_, Dick, don't speak seriously! It's so dreadful from _you_. Ifyou feel so about it, why don't you do something. "

"O yes, there's a fine opening. We know, because we know ever so muchmore, how the case really is; but the way it seems to stand is, thatKitty couldn't bear to have him show civility to his friends, and ranaway, and then wouldn't give him a chance to explain. Besides, whatcould I do under any circumstances?"

"Well, Dick, of course you're right, and I wish I could see things asclearly as you do. But I really believe Kitty's glad to be out of it. "

"What?" thundered the colonel. 

"I think Kitty's secretly relieved to have it all over. But you needn't_stun_ me. "

"You _do_?" The colonel paused as if to gain force enough for a reply. But after waiting, nothing whatever came to him, and he wound up hiswatch. 

"To be sure, " added Mrs. Ellison thoughtfully, after a pause, "she'sgiving up a great deal; and she'll probably never have such anotherchance as long as she lives. "

"I hope she won't, " said the colonel. 

"O, you needn't pretend that a high position and the social advantageshe could have given her are to be despised. "

"No, you heartless worldling; and neither are peace of mind, andself-respect, and whole feelings, and your little joke. "

"O, you--you sickly sentimentalist!"

"That's what they used to call us in the good old abolition days, "laughed the colonel; and the two being quite alone, they made theirpeace with a kiss, and were as happy for the moment as if they hadthereby assuaged Kitty's grief and mortification. 

"Besides, Fanny, " continued the colonel, "though I'm not much onreligion, I believe these things are ordered. "

"Don't be blasphemous, Colonel Ellison!" cried his wife, who representedthe church if not religion in her family. "As if Providence had anythingto do with love-affairs!"

"Well, I won't; but I will say that if Kitty turned her back on Mr. Arbuton and the social advantages he could offer her, it's a sign shewasn't fit for them. And, poor thing, if she doesn't know how much she'slost, why she has the less to grieve over. If she thinks she couldn't behappy with a husband who would keep her snubbed and frightened after helifted her from her lowly sphere, and would tremble whenever she met anyof his own sort, of course it may be a sad mistake, but it can't behelped. She must go back to Eriecreek, and try to worry along withouthim. Perhaps she'll work out her destiny some other way. "

XIV. 

AFTERWARDS. 

Mrs. Ellison had Kitty's whole story, and so has the reader, but for alittle thing that happened next day, and which is perhaps scarcelyworthy of being set down. 

Mr. Arbuton's valise was sent for at night from the Hôtel St. Louis, andthey did not see him again. When Kitty woke next morning, a fine coldrain was falling upon the drooping hollyhocks in the Ursulines' Garden, which seemed stricken through every leaf and flower with sudden autumn. All the forenoon the garden-paths remained empty, but under the porch bythe poplars sat the slender nun and the stout nun side by side, and heldeach other's hands. They did not move, they did not appear to speak. 

The fine cold rain was still falling as Kitty and Fanny drove downMountain Street toward the Railway Station, whither Dick and the baggagehad preceded them, for they were going away from Quebec. Midway, theircarriage was stopped by a mass of ascending vehicles, and their driverdrew rein till the press was over. At the same time Kitty saw advancingup the sidewalk a figure grotesquely resembling Mr. Arbuton. It was he, but shorter, and smaller, and meaner. Then it was not he, but only alight overcoat like his covering a very common little man about whom ithung loosely, --a burlesque of Mr. Arbuton's self-respectful overcoat, orthe garment itself in a state of miserable yet comical collapse. 

"What is that ridiculous little wretch staring at you for, Kitty?" askedFanny. 

"I don't know, " answered Kitty, absently. 

The man was now smiling and gesturing violently. Kitty remembered havingseen him before, and then recognized the cooper who had released Mr. Arbuton from the dog in the Sault au Matelot, and to whom he had givenhis lacerated overcoat. 

The little creature awkwardly unbuttoned the garment, and took from thebreast-pocket a few letters, which he handed to Kitty, talking eagerlyin French all the time. 

"What _is_ he doing, Kitty?"

"What is he saying, Fanny?"

"Something about a ferocious dog that was going to spring upon you, andthe young gentleman being brave as a lion and rushing forward, andsaving your life. " Mrs. Ellison was not a woman to let her translationlack color, even though the original wanted it. 

"Make him tell it again. "

When the man had done so, "Yes, " sighed Kitty, "it all happened that dayof the Montgomery expedition; but I never knew, before, of what he haddone for me. Fanny, " she cried, with a great sob, "may be I'm the onewho has been cruel? But what happened yesterday makes his having savedmy life seem such a very little matter. "

"Nothing at all!" answered Fanny, "less than nothing!" But her heartfailed her. 

The little cooper had bowed himself away, and was climbing the hill, Mr. Arbuton's coat-skirts striking his heels as he walked. 

"What letters are those?" asked Fanny. 

"O, old letters to Mr. Arbuton, which he found in the pocket. I supposehe thought I would give them to him. "

"But how are you going to do it?"

"I ought to send them to him, " answered Kitty. Then, after a silencethat lasted till they reached the boat, she handed the letters to Fanny. "Dick may send them, " she said. 

THE END.