us. Our "casualty"
turned out to be the affair of a Catholic priest, of which our informer
spoke only in dark hints and with significant shoulder-shrugs and
eyebrow-elevations, because it was "not exactly the thing to get out,
you know"; but if it wasn't to get out, why did he let it out? and so
from my dark corner I watched him as a cat does a mouse, and the
lamp-light shone full upon him, and I understood every word and shrug,
and I am going to tell it all to the world. I translated that the holy
father had been "skylarking" in a boat, and in gay society had
forgotten his vows of frugality and abstinence and general
mortification of the flesh, and had become, not very drunk, but drunk
enough to be dangerous, when he came ashore and took a horse in his
hands, and so upset his carriage, and gashed his temporal artery, and
came to grief, which is such a casualty as does not happen every day,
and I don't blame people for making the most of it. Then the moral was
pointed, the tale adorned, and the impression deepened, solemnized, and
struck home by the fact that the very horse concerned in the "casualty"
was to be fastened behind our coach, and the whole population came out
with interns and umbrellas to tie him on,--all but one man, who was
deaf, and stood on the piazza, anxious and eager to know everything
that had been and was still occurring, and yet sorry to give trouble,
and so compromising the matter and making it worse, as compromisers
generally do, by questioning everybody with a deprecating, fawning air.

Item. We shall all, if we live long enough, be deaf, but we need not
be meek about it. I for one am determined to walk up to people and
demand what they are saying at the point of the bayonet. Deafness, if
it must be so, but independence at any rate.

And when the fulness of time is come, we alight at Fort-William-Henry
Hotel, and all night long through the sentient woods I hear the booming
of Johnson's cannon, the rattle of Dieskan's guns, and that wild
war-whoop, more terrible than all. Again old Monro watches from his
fortress-walls the steadily approaching foe, and looks in vain for
help, save to his own brave heart. I see the light of conquest shining
in his foeman's eye, darkened by the shadow of the fate that waits his
coming on a bleak Northern hill but, generous in the hour of victory,
he shall not be less noble in defeat,--for to generous hearts all
generous hearts are friendly, whether they st