to think it would be this side of the winter season."

"Why, yes; I have been ready and waiting this long while. To tell
the truth, I have had enough of Philadelphia and its Quaker-ridden
Assembly. Why, when once the war had broken out and was raging in
good earnest, I longed for nothing so much as my own youth back
again, that I might fight with the best of them. And the peace
palaver of the Quakers sickened me. I came near to quarrelling with
some of my old friends, and I grew eager to see fresh places, fresh
faces. I turned it over in my mind, and I thought that if Quebec
fell into our hands, English-speaking citizens would surely be
wanted to leaven the French and Canadians who would remain. And if
so, why should not I be one to take up my abode?"

"Why not, indeed?" cried Fritz, whose eyes were eagerly straying
round the room in search of somebody he had not seen as yet. "It
was a happy thought, as our Commander has just told you, I doubt
not."

"He has been a capital friend--he has put me in possession of this
place; and I can see that there will be the making of a fine
business here. And I have not come empty-handed. I sold the old
tavern over yonder, and I have a fine store of wine and ale and
salted provisions stored away on board, enough to set me up for the
winter.

"I must have that old sign down," added Ashley, stepping into the
street and looking up at the battered board crazily hanging from
the beam above; "we must have another one up instead. I'll set up a
wolf's head in its place, in memory of the gallant soldier who fell
on the Plains of Abraham. And I will call my inn the Wolfe of
Quebec."

Fritz laughed, still looking round him with quick glances.

"And what said your wife and daughter to such a move?"

"Oh, the wife is a good wife, and follows her husband; though I
won't say she did not feel the wrench of parting a good bit. As for
the maid, she was wild to come! She has done nothing but think of
the war ever since it began. She is half a soldier already, I tell
her, and is making herself only fit to be a soldier's wife. She
might have had the pick of all the young Quakers in Philadelphia;
but you should have seen her turn up her pretty nose at them. "'A
Quaker indeed!' quoth the little puss; 'I'd as lief marry a
broomstick with a turnip for a head! Give me a man who is a man,
not a puling woman in breeches!'

"The sauciness of the little puss!"

But Ashley's jolly laugh showed that he