moon, in company with a more bewitching
maiden.

"I wish I could be with you during the early part of your
stay here, for I could do much toward reconciling you to
your new life."

"And are you not going to stay with us?" Her voice sounded
somewhat like a restrained cry of pain.

"No Marie, my child, I have to return to the territories."

"But that wicked man will work his vengeance upon you."

"It is just to meet that wicked man upon his own ground
that I go back. It is to thwart him, to cast in my strength
on the side of peace, in the interest of those fertile
plains, that I return. You do not suppose that this
licentious fanatic can ultimately prevail against the
will of the people of Canada, against the military force
of the Empire of Great Britain. The sovereign of our
mighty realm tolerates in no land any dispute of her
authority, and this mad uprising will be crushed as I
might stamp put the feeble splutter of a bed-room taper.
There are without the intervention of outside force at
all, enough of brave and loyal whitemen to overthrow this
scurvy miscreant; and my immediate task is to do the
little that lies in my power to incite them to their
duty. When my work is done, when the plains are cleared
of the mutinous, blind, unreasoning hordes whom this
cunning, vainglorious upstart has called away from their
peaceful homesteads, I will return, my darling little
girl, with the tidings; and I shall bring you back to
the spot where you grew up pure and artless as the lily
that brightens the pond upon which we have so often
paddled our birch together. What the days after that may
have in store for us I know not."

"Ah, I shall be very dreary in your absence, Monsieur
Scott."

"And I, my dear girl, shall be not less dreary without
you. I believe you have regarded yourself as a mere
plaything in my eyes. Why, ma chere, all of my heart you
have wholly and irrevocably. One of your dear hands is
more precious, more sacred to me, than any other girl
whom mine eyes have ever seen. Do you remember the
definition of love that I tried to give you? Well, I gave
it from my own experience. With such a love, my prairie
flower, do I love you. It is fit now, that we are so soon
to part, that I should tell you this: and you will, know
that every blow I strike, every noble deed I do shall be
for the approbation of the dear heart distant from me in
American territory. I have said that the hours of absence
will be dreary;