Young Scott was all the while growing more serious, and even becoming pathetic, which is a sign of something very delicious, and not uncommon, when you are travelling under a bewitching moon, in company with a more bewitching maiden.
"I wish I could be with you during the early part of your stay here, for I could do much toward reconciling you to your new life."
"And are you not going to stay with us?" Her voice sounded somewhat like a restrained cry of pain.
"No Marie, my child, I have to return to the territories."
"But that wicked man will work his vengeance upon you."
"It is just to meet that wicked man upon his own ground that I go back. It is to thwart him, to cast in my strength on the side of peace, in the interest of those fertile plains, that I return. You do not suppose that this licentious fanatic can ultimately prevail against the will of the people of Canada, against the military force of the Empire of Great Britain. The sovereign of our mighty realm tolerates in no land any dispute of her authority, and this mad uprising will be crushed as I might stamp put the feeble splutter of a bed-room taper. There are without the intervention of outside force at all, enough of brave and loyal whitemen to overthrow this scurvy miscreant; and my immediate task is to do the little that lies in my power to incite them to their duty. When my work is done, when the plains are cleared of the mutinous, blind, unreasoning hordes whom this cunning, vainglorious upstart has called away from their peaceful homesteads, I will return, my darling little girl, with the tidings; and I shall bring you back to the spot where you grew up pure and artless as the lily that brightens the pond upon which we have so often paddled our birch together. What the days after that may have in store for us I know not."
"Ah, I shall be very dreary in your absence, Monsieur
Scott."
"And I, my dear girl, shall be not less dreary without you. I believe you have regarded yourself as a mere plaything in my eyes. Why, ma chere, all of my heart you have wholly and irrevocably. One of your dear hands is more precious, more sacred to me, than any other girl whom mine eyes have ever seen. Do you remember the definition of love that I tried to give you? Well, I gave it from my own experience. With such a love, my prairie flower, do I love you. It is fit now, that we are so soon to part, that I should tell you this: and you will, know that every blow I strike, every noble deed I do shall be for the approbation of the dear heart distant from me in American territory. I have said that the hours of absence will be dreary; but there will be beyond the the darkest of them one hope which shall blaze like a star through the night, and that is that I shall soon be able to call my Marie my sweet, sweet bride. Now, my beloved, if that wished for time had come, and I were to say, 'Will you be mine, Marie,' what would you answer?"
"I did not think that it would be necessary for Monsieur to ask me that question," she answered shyly, her beautiful eyes cast down; "I thought he knew."
"My own little hunted pet!" He checked his horse, and seized the bridle of Marie's pony, till the two animals stood close together. Then he kissed the girl upon her sweet virgin lips, murmuring low,