rs to buy new cassocks for myself."

"Come in the morning and tell me what he says," she answered; "and bring
our dear avocat."

As she looked from her window an hour later, she saw bonfires burning,
and up from the village came the old song, that had prefaced a drama in
Pontiac.

But Elise Malboir had a keener interest that night, for Valmond and
Parpon brought her uncle "General Lagroin," in honour to her mother's
cottage; and she sat and listened dreamily, as Valmond and the old man
talked of great things to be done.

CHAPTER VI

Prince or plebeian, Valmond played his part with equal aplomb at the
simple home of Elise Malboir and at the Manoir Hilaire, where Madame
Chalice received him. His dress had nothing of the bizarre on this
occasion. He was in black-long coat, silk stockings, the collar of
his waistcoat faced with white, his neckerchief white and full, his
enamelled shoes adorned with silver buckles. His present repose and
decorum contrasted strangely with the fanciful display at his first
introduction. Madame Chalice approved instantly, for though the costume
was, in itself, an affectation, previous to the time by a generation, it
was in the picture, was sedately refined. She welcomed him in the
salon where many another distinguished man had been entertained--from
Frontenac, and Vaudreuil, down to Sir Guy Carleton. The Manor had
belonged to her husband's people seventy-five years before, and though,
as a banker in New York, Monsieur Chalice had become an American of
the Americans, at her request he had bought back from a kinsman the old
place, unchanged, furniture and all. Bringing the antique plate, china,
and bric-a-brac, made in France when Henri Quatre was king, she fared
away to Quebec, set the rude mansion in order, and was happy for a whole
summer, as was her husband, the best of fishermen and sportsmen. The
Manor House stood on a knoll, behind which, steppe on steppe, climbed
the hills, till they ended in Dalgrothe Mountain. Beyond the mountain
were unexplored regions, hill and valley floating into hill and valley,
lost in a miasmic haze, ruddy, silent, untenanted, save, mayhap, by the
strange people known as the Little Good Folk of the Scarlet Hills.

The house had been built in the seventeenth century, and the walls were
very thick, to keep out both cold and attack. Beneath the high-pointed
roof were big dormer windows, and huge chimneys flanked each side of the
house. The great roof ga