"Then they are of a truer fabric than Penelope's web, for she, I read,
pulled in pieces at night what she had woven through the day," replied
Lady de Tilly. "Give me the friendship that won't unravel."

"But not a thread of my recollections has ever unravelled, or ever
will," replied Pierre, looking at Amelie as she clasped the arm of her
aunt, feeling stronger, as is woman's way, by the contact with another.

"Zounds! What is all this merchant's talk about webs and threads and
thrums?" exclaimed La Corne. "There is no memory so good as a soldier's,
Amelie, and for good reason: a soldier on our wild frontiers is
compelled to be faithful to old friends and old flannels; he cannot
help himself to new ones if he would. I was five years and never saw
a woman's face except red ones--some of them were very comely, by the
way," added the old warrior with a smile.

"The gallantry of the Chevalier La Corne is incontestable," remarked
Pierre, "for once, when we captured a convoy of soldiers' wives from New
England, he escorted them, with drums beating, to Grand Pre, and sent
a cask of Gascon wine for them to celebrate their reunion with their
husbands."

"Frowzy huzzies! not worth the keeping, or I would not have sent them;
fit only for the bobtailed militia of New England!" exclaimed La Corne.

"Not so thought the New Englanders, who had a three days feast when they
remarried their wives--and handsome they were, too," said Philibert;
"the healths they drank to the Chevalier were enough to make him
immortal."

La Corne always brushed aside compliments to himself: "Tut, my Lady!
it was more Pierre's good-nature than mine--he out of kindness let the
women rejoin their husbands; on my part it was policy and stratagem, of
war. Hear the sequel! The wives spoiled the husbands, as I guessed they
would do, taught them to be too late at reveille, too early at tattoo.
They neglected guards and pickets, and when the long nights of winter
set in, the men hugged their wives by the firesides instead of their
muskets by their watch-fires. Then came destruction upon them! In a
blinding storm, amid snow-drifts and darkness, Coulon de Villiers, with
his troops on snow-shoes, marched into the New England camp, and made
widows of the most of the poor wives, who fell into our hands the second
time. Poor creatures! I saw that day how hard it was to be a soldier's
wife." La Corne's shaggy eyelash twinkled with moisture. "But it was the
fortune o