again; but where are the familiar faces? Where the brave soldier of
Inkerman and Balaklava? Where the jolly old Captain of the native rifles?
Where the Colonel, with his little meerschaum pipe he was so intent upon
coloring? Where the party of salmon-fishermen, the Solomons of
piscatology? Where the passengers by the "Canada?" And where is Picton?
Gone, like last year's birds!

"A glass of ale, Henry, and one cigar, only _one_; I wish to be solitary."

I like this bed-room of mine at the Waverley, with its blue and white
striped curtain at the window, through which the gas-lights of Halifax
streets appear in lucid spots, as I wait for Henry, with the candles. Now
I am no longer alone. I shut my chamber door, as it were, upon one world,
only that I may enjoy another. So I trim the candles, and spread out the
writing materials, and at once the characters of two centuries ago awake,
and their life to me is as the life of to-day.

There is nothing more captivating in literature, than the narrative of
some heroic deed of woman. Very few such are recorded; how many might be,
if the actors themselves had not shunned notoriety, and "uncommended
died," rather than encounter the ordeal of public praise? Of such the poet
has written:

"Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air."

Of such, many have lived and died, to live again only in fiction; whereas
their own true histories would have been greater than the inventions of
authors. We read of heroes laden with the "glittering spoils of empire,"
but the heroic deeds of woman are oftentimes, all in all, as great,
without the glitter; without the pomp and pageantry of triumphal
processions; without the pealing trumpet of renown. Boadicea, chained to
the car of Suetonius, is the too common memorial of heroic womanity.

The story I relate is but a transcript, a mere episode in the sad history
of Acadia: yet the record will be pleasing to those who estimate the
merits of brave women. This, then, is the legend of

MARIE DE LA TOUR.

In the year 1621, Sir William Alexander, afterwards Earl of Sterling,[B] a
romantic poet, and favorite of King James I., was presented by that
monarch with a patent to all the land known as Acadia, in the Americas.
Royalty in those days made out its parchment deeds for a province, without
taking the trouble to search the record office, to see if there were any
prior liens