told him so. That afternoon he took his leave, alleging that he had to
return to Montreal early the next morning. Yet when he had quitted the
house his heart smote him, and when he passed Madame de Rocheval's the
next day he stopped his cariole and went in just to ask if Marguerite
had any message for her guardian, the Baron de Valricour, at Montreal.
She was alone, and the fact that she had been in tears was so
unmistakably apparent that Isidore was led to express a hope that no
misfortune had occurred to distress her.

"I was mourning over the loss of a friend," said she; "I have so few in
the world that I can scarce afford to lose one, and least of all such
an one as Monsieur de Beaujardin has been to me."

Isidore felt that he had been guilty of a very mean but common fault in
visiting on Marguerite the ill-humour he had felt at something, in
which not she but some one else was to blame.

"Forgive me," said he, at once; "I am, indeed, ashamed to think that I
behaved like a fool, or even worse, in giving just cause of offence to
one who has every claim to very different treatment at my hands. I was
an idiot--I was not myself, or----"

"Yes, yes, let it be so," exclaimed Marguerite, smiling through her
tears and extending her hand to him. "Let it be so; you were indeed
not your own self, so I will forget the stranger of yesterday, and only
remember the courteous Colonel Beaujardin to whom I owe so much."

The entrance of Madame de Rocheval here brought this brief colloquy to
an end, and Isidore once more bade adieu and took his departure.
Perhaps he would have altered his arrangements and remained still
longer at Quebec; but this he could not well do with any show of
self-respect, and he was soon on his road to Montreal. It is, however,
most certainly the fact that he gave up the intention, which he had
formed on the previous evening, of throwing up his commission and
returning to France, and he now once more made up his mind to stay in
Canada, and see out the campaign of 1757.

The opening of the new year found the British Government resolved to
prosecute the war in Canada with unprecedented vigour. An attack on
Louisburg was to be the great feature of the campaign. Upwards of
twenty thousand regular troops from England co-operating with immense
levies raised in America, and large bodies of allied Indians,
constituted the force to be arrayed against France in the New World,
whilst a splendid fleet, cou