sing what was in her mind.

He waited a moment for her, and then said, "He's a very ordinary sort of
man,--not what one would exactly call a gentleman, you know, in his
belongings,--and yet his books have nothing of the shop, nothing
professionally literary, about them. It seems as if almost any of us
might have written them."

Kitty glanced quickly at him to see if he were jesting; but Mr. Arbuton
was not easily given to irony, and he was now very much in earnest about
drawing on his light overcoat, which he had hitherto carried on his arm
with that scrupulous consideration for it which was not dandyism, but
part of his self-respect; apparently, as an overcoat, ho cared nothing
for it; as the overcoat of a man of his condition he cared everything;
and now, though the sun was so bright on the open spaces, in these
narrow streets the garment was comfortable.

At another time, Kitty would have enjoyed the care with which he
smoothed it about his person, but this profanation of her dearest ideals
made the moment serious. Her pulse quickened, and she said, "I'm afraid
I can't enter into your feelings. I wasn't taught to respect the idea of
a gentleman very much. I've often heard my uncle say that, at the best,
it was a poor excuse for not being just honest and just brave and just
kind, and a false pretence of being something more. I believe, if I were
a man, I shouldn't want to be a gentleman. At any rate, I'd rather be
the author of those books, which any gentleman _might_ have written,
than all the gentlemen who didn't, put together."

In the career of her indignation she had unconsciously hurried her
companion forward so swiftly that they had reached Hope Gate as she
spoke, and interrupted the revery in which Colonel Ellison, loafing up
against the masonry, was contemplating the sentry in his box.

"You'd better not overheat yourself so early in the day, Kitty," said
her cousin, serenely, with a glance at her flushed face; "this
expedition is not going to be any joke."

Now that Prescott Gate, by which so many thousands of Americans have
entered Quebec since Arnold's excursionists failed to do so, is
demolished, there is nothing left so picturesque and characteristic as
Hope Gate, and I doubt if anywhere in Europe there is a more
mediaeval-looking bit of military architecture. The heavy stone gateway
is black with age, and the gate, which has probably never been closed in
our century, is of massive frame set thick