rising sun. From a wide circle surrounding the city the people had come in—many were accompanied by their wives and daughters—to assist in making the bulwark of the Colony impregnable against the rumored attack of the English.

The people of New France, taught by a hundred years of almost constant warfare with the English and with the savage nations on their frontiers, saw as clearly as the Governor that the key of French dominion hung inside the walls of Quebec, and that for an enemy to grasp it was to lose all they valued as subjects of the Crown of France.

CHAPTER II. THE WALLS OF QUEBEC.

Count de la Galissonière, accompanied by his distinguished attendants, proceeded again on their round of inspection. They were everywhere saluted with heads uncovered, and welcomed by hearty greetings. The people of New France had lost none of the natural politeness and ease of their ancestors, and, as every gentleman of the Governor's suite was at once recognized, a conversation, friendly even to familiarity, ensued between them and the citizens and habitans, who worked as if they were building their very souls into the walls of the old city.

"Good morning, Sieur de St. Denis!" gaily exclaimed the Governor to a tall, courtly gentleman, who was super-intending the labor of a body of his censitaires from Beauport. "'Many hands make light work,' says the proverb. That splendid battery you are just finishing deserves to be called Beauport. What say you, my Lord Bishop?" turning to the smiling ecclesiastic. "Is it not worthy of baptism?"

"Yes, and blessing both; I give it my episcopal benediction," replied the Bishop, "and truly I think most of the earth of it is taken from the consecrated ground of the Hôtel Dieu—it will stand fire!"

"Many thanks, my Lord!"—the Sieur de St. Denis bowed very low—"where the Church bars the door Satan will never enter, nor the English either! Do you hear, men?" continued he, turning to his censitaires, "my Lord Bishop christens our battery Beauport, and says it will stand fire!"

"Vive le Roi!" was the response, an exclamation that came spontaneously to the lips of all Frenchmen on every emergency of danger or emotion of joy.

A sturdy habitan came forward, and doffing his red tuque or cap, addressed the Governor: "This is a good battery, my Lord Governor, but there ought to be one as good in our village. Permit us to build one and man it, and we promise your Excellency that no Englishman shall ever get into the back door of Quebec while we have lives to defend it." The old habitan had the eye of a soldier—he had been one. The Governor knew the value of the suggestion, and at once assented to it, adding, "No better defenders of the city could be found anywhere than the brave habitans of Beauport."

The compliment was never forgotten; and years afterwards, when Wolfe besieged the city, the batteries of Beauport repelled the assault of his bravest troops, and well-nigh broke the heart of the young hero over the threatened defeat of his great undertaking, as his brave Highlanders and grenadiers lay slain by hundreds upon the beach of Beauport.

The countenances of the hardy workers were suddenly covered with smiles of welcome recognition at the sight of the well-known Superior of the Recollets.

"Good morning!" cried out a score of voices; "good morning, Father de Berey! The good wives of Beauport send you a thousand compliments. They are dying to see the good Recollets down our way again. The Gray Brothers have forsaken our parish."

"Ah!" replied the Superior, in a tone of mock severity, while his eyes overran with mirthfulness, "you are a crowd of miserable sinners who will die without benefit of clergy—only you don't know it! Who was it boiled the Easter eggs hard as agates, which you gave to my poor brother Recollets for the use of our convent? Tell me that, pray! All the salts and senna in Quebec have not sufficed to restore the digestion of my poor monks since you played that trick upon them down in your misnamed village of Beauport!"

"Pardon, Reverend Father de Berey!" replied a smiling habitan, "it was not we, but the sacrilegious canaille of St. Anne who boiled the Easter eggs! If you don't believe us, send some of the good Gray Friars down to try our love. See if they do not find 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 corvée—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 Amélie 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, Amélie de Repentigny added a figure which, in its perfect symmetry, looked smaller than it really was, for she was a tall girl: it filled the eye and held fast the fancy with the charms of a thousand graces as she moved or stood, suggestive of the beauty of a tame fawn, that in all its movements preserves somewhat of the coyness and easy grace of its free life.

Her hair was very dark and thick, matching her deep liquid eyes, that lay for the most part so quietly and restfully beneath their long shading lashes,—eyes gentle, frank, and modest, looking tenderly on all things innocent, fearlessly on all things harmful; eyes that nevertheless noted every change of your countenance, and read unerringly your meaning more from your looks than from your words. Nothing seemed to hide itself from that pure, searching glance when she chose to look at you.

In their depths you might read the tokens of a rare and noble character—a capability of loving which, once enkindled by a worthy object, might make all things that are possible to devoted womanhood possible to this woman, who would not count her life anything either for the man she loved or the cause she espoused. Amélie de Repentigny