ure
instinct for sincerity--could not remember having been spoken to
sincerely, with heart open to heart. Years later, when in the
seminary at Douai the little worm of scepticism began to stir in his
brain and grow, feeding on the books of M. Voltaire and other
forbidden writings, he wondered if his many tutors had been, one and
all, unconsciously prescient. But he was an honest lad. He threw up
the seminary, returned to Cleeve Court, and announced with tears to
his mother (his father had died two years before) that he could not
be a priest. She told him, stonily, that he had disappointed her
dearest hopes and broken her heart. His brother--the Squire now, and
a prig from his cradle--took him out for a long walk, argued with him
as with a fractious child, and, without attending to his answers,
finally gave him up as a bad job. So an ensigncy was procured, and
John a Cleeve shipped from Cork to Halifax, to fight the French in
America. At Cork he had met and renewed acquaintance with his Irish
cousin, Dick Montgomery. They had met again in Halifax, which they
reached in separate transports, and had passed the winter there in
company. Dick clapped his cousin on the back and laughed impartially
at his doubts and the family distress. Dick had no doubts; always
saw clearly and made up his mind at once; was, moreover, very little
concerned with religion (beyond damning the Pope), and a great deal
concerned with soldiering. He fascinated John, as the practical man
usually fascinates the speculative. So Remus listened to Romulus and
began to be less contrite in his home-letters. To the smallest love
at home (of the kind that understands, or tries to understand) he
would have responded religiously; but he had found such nowhere save
in Dick--who, besides, was a gallant young gentleman, and scrupulous
on all points of honour. He took fire from Dick; almost worshipped
him; and wished now, as the flotilla swept on and the bands woke
louder echoes from the narrowing shore, that Dick were here to see
how the last few weeks had tanned and hardened him.

The troops came to land before nightfall at Sabbath Day Point,
twenty-five miles down the lake; stretched themselves to doze for a
while in the dry undergrowth; re-embarked under the stars and, rowing
on through the dawn, reached the lake-end at ten in the morning.
Here they found the first trace of the enemy--a bridge broken in two
over the river which drains into Lake