d everything soft for them at
Beauport, from our hearts to our feather beds, to say nothing of our
eggs and bacon. Our good wives are fairly melting with longing for a
sight of the gray gowns of St. Francis once more in our village."

"Oh! I dare be bound the canaille of St. Anne are lost dogs like
yourselves--catuli catulorum."

The habitans thought this sounded like a doxology, and some crossed
themselves, amid the dubious laughter of others, who suspected Father de
Berey of a clerical jest.

"Oh!" continued he, "if fat Father Ambrose, the cook of the convent,
only had you, one at a time, to turn the spit for him, in place of the
poor dogs of Quebec, which he has to catch as best he can, and set to
work in his kitchen! but, vagabonds that you are, you are rarely set to
work now on the King's corvee--all work, little play, and no pay!"

The men took his raillery in excellent part, and one, their spokesman,
bowing low to the Superior, said,--"Forgive us all the same, good
Father. The hard eggs of Beauport will be soft as lard compared with the
iron shells we are preparing for the English breakfast when they shall
appear some fine morning before Quebec."

"Ah, well, in that case I must pardon the trick you played upon Brothers
Mark and Alexis; and I give you my blessing, too, on condition you send
some salt to our convent to cure our fish, and save your reputations,
which are very stale just now among my good Recollets."

A general laugh followed this sally, and the Reverend Superior went off
merrily, as he hastened to catch up with the Governor, who had moved on
to another point in the line of fortifications.

Near the gate of St. John they found a couple of ladies, encouraging
by their presence and kind words a numerous party of habitans,--one an
elderly lady of noble bearing and still beautiful, the rich and powerful
feudal Lady of the Lordship, or Seigniory, of Tilly; the other her
orphan niece, in the bloom of youth, and of surpassing loveliness, the
fair Amelie de Repentigny, who had loyally accompanied her aunt to the
capital with all the men of the Seigniory of Tilly, to assist in the
completion of its defences.

To features which looked as if chiselled out of the purest Parian
marble, just flushed with the glow of morn, and cut in those perfect
lines of proportion which nature only bestows on a few chosen favorites
at intervals to show the possibilities of feminine beauty, Amelie de
Repentigny added a f