h duties, responsibilities,
risks. John caught himself wondering to what that calm face looked
forward, at the lake-end, where the forests slept upon their shadows
and the mountains descended and closed like fairy gates! For John
himself Fame waited beyond those gates. Although in the last three
or four weeks he had endured more actual hardships than in all his
life before, he had enjoyed them thoroughly and felt that they were
hardening him into a man. He understood now why the tales he had
read at school in his Homer and Ovid--tales of Ulysses, of Hercules
and Perseus--were never sorrowful, however severe the heroes'
labours. For were they not undergone in just such a shining
atmosphere as this?

His mind ran on these ancient tales, and so, memory reverting
to Douai and the seminary class-room in which he had first
construed them, he began unconsciously to set the lines of an old
repetition-lesson to the stroke of the oars.

Angustam amice pauperiem pati
robustus acri militia puer
condiscat et Parthos feroces
vexet eques metuendus hasta:

Vitamque sub divo et trepidis agat
in rebus . . .

--And so on, with halts and breaks where memory failed him.
_Parthos_--these would be the Indians--Abenakis, Algonquins, Hurons,
whomsoever Montcalm might have gathered yonder in the woods with him.
_Dulce et decorum est_--yes, to be sure; in a little while he would
be facing death for his country; but he did not feel in the least
like dying. A sight of Philip Schuyler's face sent him sliding into
the next ode--_Justum et tenacem_ . . . _non voltus instantis
tyranni_. . . . John a Cleeve would have started had the future
opened for an instant and revealed the face of the tyrant Philip
Schuyler was soon to defy: and Schuyler would have started too.

Then John remembered his cousin's letter, and pulled it from his
pocket again. . . .

"And if Abercromby's your Caesar--which is as much as I'll risk
saying in a letter which may be opened before it reaches you--
why, you have Howe to clip his parade wig as he's already docked
the men's coat-tails. So here's five pounds on it, and let it
be a match--Wolfe against Howe, and shall J. a C. or R. M. be
first in Quebec? And another five pounds, if you will, on our
epaulettes: for I repeat to you, this is Pitt's consulship, and
promotion henceforth comes to men as they deserve it. Look at
Wolfe, sir-