se unfailing hope saw its fulfilment
almost within touch when I told her of the certain coming of the
English. Gay parties of chattering women were made up to go out to
the camp and encourage the workers, but my heart ached too wearily
even at my own distance to wish for any nearer approach.

I stood with Angelique one evening in the garden of the Hotel-Dieu,
and even here the engineers had erected a battery overhanging the
steep cliff. Looking up towards the left, we could see the bridge
of boats, at the far end of which a hive of busy workers toiled at
a fortification, called a hornwork, while immediately below us
others were building a boom to be floated across the wide mouth of
the St. Charles to protect the bridge, and from this point on, down
the banks of the St. Lawrence, lay our main defences.

There the white coats of the regulars mingled with the blue and
grey of the Canadians and volunteers. Indians stalked or squatted
about, taking no part in a labour they could not understand; officers
moved to and fro, directing and encouraging the men, and from the
manor of Beauport floated the General's flag, marking his
headquarters.

Before this restless, toiling mass swept the great empty river,
changing its colour with every change of sky which floated over
it, while behind stretched the beautiful valley of the St. Charles,
its gentle upward sweep of woods broken only by the green fields
and white walls of Charlesbourg until it met the range of blue and
purple hills which guards it to the north. At a point opposite
where we were standing the nearer mountains opened out and shewed
a succession of golden hills which seemed, in the tender evening
light, as the gates of some heavenly country where all was peace,
and the rumour of war could never enter.

At length all preparations were complete, and we waited impatiently
for the drama to begin.

Towards the end of June the first English ships were reported, and
on the evening of the twenty-second an excited group of ladies
gathered on the Battery of the Hotel-Dieu, and through a storm
which swept down over the hills, amid the flashing of lightning
and to the roar of thunder, we watched their fleet silently file
into view in the South Channel, and come to anchor under shelter
of the Isle of Orleans. In the chapel the nuns were singing:

"Soutenez, grande Reine,
Notre pauvre pays:
Il est votre domaine.
Faites fleurir nos lis.

"L'Anglois sur n