with mighty bolts and spikes.
The wall here sweeps along the brow of the crag on which the city is
built, and a steep street drops down, by stone-parapeted curves and
angles, from the Upper to the Lower Town, where, in 1775, nothing but a
narrow lane bordered the St. Lawrence. A considerable breadth of land
has since been won from the river, and several streets and many piers
now stretch between this alley and the water; but the old Sault au
Matelot still crouches and creeps along under the shelter of the city
wall and the overhanging rock, which is thickly bearded with weeds and
grass, and trickles with abundant moisture. It must be an ice-pit in
winter, and I should think it the last spot on the continent for the
summer to find; but when the summer has at last found it, the old Sault
au Matelot puts on a vagabond air of Southern leisure and abandon, not
to be matched anywhere out of Italy. Looking from that jutting rock near
Hope Gate, behind which the defeated Americans took refuge from the fire
of their enemies, the vista is almost unique for a certain scenic
squalor and gypsy luxury of color: sag-roofed barns and stables, and
weak-backed, sunken-chested workshops of every sort lounge along in
tumble-down succession, and lean up against the cliff in every
imaginable posture of worthlessness and decrepitude; light wooden
galleries cross to them from the second stories of the houses which back
upon the alley; and over these galleries flutters, from a labyrinth of
clothes-lines, a variety of bright-colored garments of all ages, sexes,
and conditions; while the footway underneath abounds in gossiping women,
smoking men, idle poultry, cats, children, and large, indolent
Newfoundland dogs.

"It was through this lane that Arnold's party advanced almost to the
foot of Mountain Street, where they were to be joined by Montgomery's
force in an attempt to surprise Prescott Gate," said the colonel, with
his unerring second-hand history.

"'You that will follow me to this attempt,'

'Wait till you see the whites of their eyes, and then fire low,' and so
forth. By the way, do you suppose anybody did that at Bunker Hill, Mr.
Arbuton? Come, you're a Boston man. My experience is that recruits
chivalrously fire into the air without waiting to see the enemy at all,
let alone the whites of their eyes. Why! aren't you coming?" he asked,
seeing no movement to follow in Kitty or Mr. Arbuton.

"It doesn't look very pleasant under fo