Then suddenly the doors of the church were thrown open, and the crowd which had been waiting patiently outside came flocking up the nave. Soldiers of that poor defeated army, inhabitants of Quebec, Canadians, savages, pressed around to take a last look at the brave General who had so gallantly defended them. In the dim morning light the torches flared, showing the half-ruined church, the roof laid open, through which the sky looked down, shattered pillars, the pavement torn up by bombs which in bursting had made deep holes; and in the centre of all this ruin, surrounded by his officers, lay that still figure wrapped in his black mantle, looking grander in death than he had done in life.
In the afternoon of the same day they carried him into the forsaken garden of the Convent of the Ursulines. The bursting of a shell dug his grave, and there they laid him, all who had known and loved him grieving, not for the hero so much as for the man.
Throughout that night two women knelt and prayed beside that lonely grave.
CHAPTER XXXI
WEARY WAITING
“No news of the lads yet, Martha! Will they never come home?” said Nathaniel impatiently, as he sat in the wide porch of Alpha Marsh one bright autumn day.
“No, there be no news,” answered Martha sadly; “and yet they say the fighting’s over for the present. I’m minded, if they’ve not both been killed, they’ll be here before long.”
“Both killed! Our bonnie lads, Martha? Nay, I cannot think God would have spared my life and taken them. I’m not of much account now,” and he looked at his arm, which hung helpless in his coatsleeve.
“You’ve no need to fret; you’re wonderfully better,” said Martha. “And as for the lads, it isn’t likely they’re together; they’ll be dropping in when we least expect them, one after the other.”
“God grant it,” said Nat; “but somehow I always see them together;” and he rose from his chair, and went and stood by the wicket gate, looking down the road which skirted the forest and led to the village.
During the year which had elapsed since the Indians invaded Marshwood, it had gradually resumed its former appearance of happy prosperity. Most of the houses destroyed by the fire had been rebuilt; a fresh harvest had been gathered in; and if some hearts still ached for those who had fallen, time was gradually softening the horrors of that terrible night, and casting a halo over the memory of the lost.