about them. The fragrance of the woods breathed
itself over the broad valley. A song sparrow poured his heart out from
a blossoming lilac. The world was large, and free, and very good. And
between the lovers there was nothing but a little gate.

"I understand," said the doctor, smiling, as he tightened up the reins,
"I understand that there is a title in your family, M. de la Motte, in
effect that you are a marquis?"

"It is true," said Jean, turning his head, "at least so I think."

"So do I," said the doctor "But you had better go in, MONSIEUR LE
MARQUIS--you keep MADAME LA MARQUISE waiting."

VIII. THE KEEPER OF THE LIGHT

At long distance, looking over the blue waters of the Gulf of St.
Lawrence in clear weather, you might think that you saw a lonely
sea-gull, snow-white, perching motionless on a cobble of gray rock.
Then, as your boat drifted in, following the languid tide and the soft
southern breeze, you would perceive that the cobble of rock was a rugged
hill with a few bushes and stunted trees growing in the crevices,
and that the gleaming speck near the summit must be some kind of a
building--if you were on the coast of Italy or Spain you would say a
villa or a farm-house. Then, as you floated still farther north and
drew nearer to the coast, the desolate hill would detach itself from
the mainland and become a little mountain-isle, with a flock of smaller
islets clustering around it as a brood of wild ducks keep close to their
mother, and with deep water, nearly two miles wide, flowing between it
and the shore; while the shining speck on the seaward side stood out
clearly as a low, whitewashed dwelling with a sturdy round tower at one
end, crowned with a big eight-sided lantern--a solitary lighthouse.

That is the Isle of the Wise Virgin. Behind it the long blue Laurentian
Mountains, clothed with unbroken forest, rise in sombre ranges toward
the Height of Land. In front of it the waters of the gulf heave and
sparkle far away to where the dim peaks of St. Anne des Monts are traced
along the southern horizon. Sheltered a little, but not completely, by
the island breakwater of granite, lies the rocky beach of Dead Men's
Point, where an English navy was wrecked in a night of storm a hundred
years ago.

There are a score of wooden houses, a tiny, weather-beaten chapel, a
Hudson Bay Company's store, a row of platforms for drying fish, and a
varied assortment of boats and nets, strung along the beach no