now I see," cried Mrs. Eveleigh. "You are like your father
when you come to explanations, Elizabeth; a person can always get at
what you mean. Now tell me about the portrait, how it came there, and
how in the world Mr. Edmonson found it."

"I don't know how it came there," she answered, leading away from the
rest of the question by adding, "I have never asked a word about it."

"Elizabeth! you _are_ odd, that's certain. And if Mr. Archdale is
never coming here any more, you will never have a chance now to ask him.
It's a pity to be so diffident."

Elizabeth smiled a little. "What else did you hear this morning?" she
asked.

"Nothing that will interest you, though of course I thought it would
when I heard it. Stephen Archdale has come back from his expedition up
to the Penobscots with Colonel Pepperell. I wonder how they succeeded?"

"I can tell you that. The Indians have sent word that they will not
fight against their brothers of St. John's and New Brunswick. That means
that they'll fight for them. We shall have an Indian war with the French
one. Think of the horrors of it." She shuddered as she spoke.

"Yes," returned Mrs. Eveleigh, with calm acquiescence. "It will be
dreadful for the people that live in the little villages and in the open
country."

This calmness, as if one were gazing from an impregnable fortress upon
the tortures and deaths of others, silenced Elizabeth. She looked the
speaker over slowly and turned away.

"Any more news?" asked Mrs. Eveleigh in a cheerful tone.

"I can tell you nothing more," returned Elizabeth.

This was literally true. It would not have been true if she had said
that she had heard nothing else, for she had been sitting with her
father for an hour, and had learned of a secret scheme,--a scheme so
daring that the very idea of it made her eyes kindle and her breath come
quickly,--a scheme that if it should fail would be hooted at as the
dream of vain-glorious madmen, and if it should succeed, would be
called a stroke of genius--magnificent. It interested her to know that
among the most eager to carry out the scheme was Major Vaughn, the man
whose valor she had asserted to Sir Temple Dacre a few months before. A
small band of men had pledged themselves to put reality into this dream
of grand achievement. "Its failure means," thought Elizabeth, "that
America is to be French and Jesuit; its success that Englishmen, and
liberty of mind and conscience, rule here." She prayed