clouds over his
master's table.

"This is a bachelors' banquet, gentlemen," said the Governor, filling a
pipe to the brim. "We will take fair advantage of the absence of ladies
to-day, and offer incense to the good Manitou who first gave tobacco for
the solace of mankind."

The gentlemen were all, as it chanced, honest smokers. Each one took a
pipe from the stand and followed the Governor's example, except Peter
Kalm, who, more philosophically, carried his pipe with him--a
huge meerschaum, clouded like a sunset on the Baltic. He filled it
deliberately with tobacco, pressed it down with his finger and thumb,
and leaning back in his easy chair after lighting it, began to blow such
a cloud as the portly Burgomaster of Stockholm might have envied on a
grand council night in the old Raadhus of the city of the Goths.

They were a goodly group of men, whose frank, loyal eyes looked
openly at each other across the hospitable table. None of them but had
travelled farther than Ulysses, and, like him, had seen strange cities
and observed many minds of men, and was as deeply read in the book of
human experience as ever the crafty king of Ithaca.

The event of the afternoon--the reading of the royal despatches--had
somewhat dashed the spirits of the councillors, for they saw clearly
the drift of events which was sweeping New France out of the lap of her
mother country, unless her policy were totally changed and the hour
of need brought forth a man capable of saving France herself and her
faithful and imperilled colonies.

"Hark!" exclaimed the Bishop, lifting his hand, "the Angelus is ringing
from tower and belfry, and thousands of knees are bending with the
simplicity of little children in prayer, without one thought of theology
or philosophy. Every prayer rising from a sincere heart, asking pardon
for the past and grace for the future, is heard by our Father in heaven;
think you not it is so, Herr Kalm?"

The sad foreboding of colonists like La Corne St. Luc did not prevent
the desperate struggle that was made for the preservation of French
dominion in the next war. Like brave and loyal men, they did their duty
to God and their country, preferring death and ruin in a lost cause to
surrendering the flag which was the symbol of their native land. The
spirit, if not the words, of the old English loyalist was in them:

"For loyalty is still the same,
Whether it win or lose the game;
True as the dial to th