UIE!
--Second ditto--MACRORIE AND MARION!--Colonel Berton and O'Halloran
giving away the brides.--Strange Association of the British Officer and
the Fenian.--Jack and Macrorie, Louie and Marion.--Brides and
Bridegrooms.--Epithalamicm.--Wedding in high life.--Six Officiating
Clergymen.--All the elite of Quebec take part.--All the Clergy, all the
Military, and Everybody who amounts to any thing.--The Band of the
Bobtails Discourse Sweet Music, and all that sort of thing, You Know.

THE LADY OF THE ICE.

CHAPTER I.

CONSISTING MERELY OF INTRODUCTORY MATTER.

This is a story of Quebec. Quebec is a wonderful city.

I am given to understand that the ridge on which the city is built is
Laurentian; and the river that flows past it is the same. On this (not
the river, you know) are strata of schist, shale, old red sand-stone,
trap, granite, clay, and mud. The upper stratum is ligneous, and is
found to be very convenient for pavements.

It must not be supposed from this introduction that I am a geologist. I
am not. I am a lieutenant in her Majesty's 129th Bobtails. The Bobtails
are a gay and gallant set, and I have reason to know that we are well
remembered in every place we have been quartered.

Into the vortex of Quebeccian society I threw myself with all the
generous ardor of youth, and was keenly alive to those charms which the
Canadian ladies possess and use so fatally. It is a singular fact, for
which I will not attempt to account, that in Quebeccian society one
comes in contact with ladies only. Where the male element is I never
could imagine. I never saw a civilian. There are no young men in
Quebec; if there are any, we officers are not aware of it. I've often
been anxious to see one, but never could make it out. Now, of these
Canadian ladies I cannot trust myself to speak with calmness. An
allusion to them will of itself be eloquent to every brother officer. I
will simply remark that, at a time when the tendencies of the Canadians
generally are a subject of interest both in England and America, and
when it is a matter of doubt whether they lean to annexation or British
connection, their fair young daughters show an unmistakable tendency
not to one, but to both, and make two apparently incompatible
principles really inseparable.

You must understand that this is my roundabout way of hinting that the
unmarried British officer who goes to Canada generally finds his
destiny tenderly folding itself a