THE SPAN O' LIFE

THE SPAN O' LIFE

A Tale of Louisbourg & Quebec

By WILLIAM McLENNAN
and J. N. McILWRAITH
Illustrations by F. de Myrbach

NEW YORK AND LONDON:
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS

TORONTO:
THE COPP, CLARK COMPANY, LIMITED

Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year 1899, by Harper & Brothers, at the Department of Agriculture.

Copyright, 1899, by HARPER & BROTHERS.

All rights reserved.

PREFACE

The reader familiar with the amusing memoirs of the Chevalier Johnstone will recognise in how far Maxwell was suggested thereby; if he be equally familiar with the detail of Canadian history of the period he will have little difficulty in discovering the originals of Sarennes and some of the secondary characters, and, in the Epilogue, the legend of the death of the celebrated missionary, le R. P. Jean Baptiste de la Brosse. But while the experience of some actual man or woman has suggested a type to be portrayed, it is only as a type, and with no intention of representing the individual in the character of the story. Nor is the attempt to set forth the respective attitude of the Canadian and the old-country Frenchman to be read as a personal expression of the authors', but as their conception of an unfortunate condition between colonist and official that obtained as fully in Canada as it did between the same classes in the English colonies.

Long habit has made the English names of many places and positions so familiar to many in Canada that to adhere to the French form in all instances would be as unnatural as to Anglicise all names throughout—which will explain the lack of uniformity in this particular.

The authors have pleasure in acknowledging their indebtedness to M. l'Abbé Casgrain, of Quebec, for valuable personal assistance in determining local detail, and to Mtre. Joseph Edmond Roy, N.P., of Lévis, for information on the period and the use of his version of the death of the père de la Brosse from his interesting monograph, “Tadoussac.”

W. McL. and J. N. McI.

CONTENTS

PART I

MAXWELL'S STORY

• I. “After High Floods Come Low Ebbs”
• II. I Discover a New Interest in Life
• III. “The Dead and the Absent are Always Wrong”
• IV. In Which I Make Acquaintance with One Near to Me
• V. I Assist at an Interview with a Great Man
• VI. How I Take to the Road Again, and of the Company I Fall in With
• VII. How I Come to Take a Great Resolve
• VIII. How I Make Both Friends and Enemies in New France
• IX. “Joy and Sorrow are Next-door Neighbours”
• X. “He who Sows Hatred Shall Gather Rue”
• XI. “A Friend at One's Back is a Safe Bridge”

PART II

MARGARET'S STORY

• XII. What Happened in the Baie des Chaleurs
• XIII. Le Père Jean, Missionary to the Indians
• XIV. I am Directed into a New Path
• XV. The Marquis de Montcalm-Gozon de St. Véran
• XVI. At Beaulieu
• XVII. I Find Myself in a False Position
• XVIII. I am Rescued from a Great Danger
• XIX. On the Isle Aux Coudres
• XX. At Quebec
• XXI. I Awake from my Dream
• XXII. I am Tortured by Myself and Others
• XXIII. The Heights of Quebec
• XXIV. Reconciliation
• XXV. A Forlorn Hope

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