"Even in the 'Army List?'"
"Yes, and proud was I when first I saw my name there," said Logan.
"Well, whose name is in print now?"
"Yours."
"Mine!" A sickening thought occurred to Roland of the story of the concealed will, Ardgowrie, and the discovered heir or heirs, for though he had schooled himself to face the idea, it was a bitter one; therefore, it was only a relief to his mind to find, that the matter referred to, was the fact that he was favourably mentioned and thanked in General Orders by Sir John Colborne, commanding Her Majesty's forces in Canada. "for his gallantry displayed on the 28th of November last, at the abatis of Point Oliviere."
As he read it he thought of Aurelia, and the pleasure such a notice would afford her; and was carelessly running his eyes over the columns of the paper, when they caught her name—her name—and mentioned in a way that made his blood turn alternately cold as ice, and hot as fire!
When proceeding in her sledge, with her daughter Aurelia, Madame Darnel had been stopped and surrounded near her own seigneury "by a band of rebels under the notorious Colonel Smash, for whose arrest a reward is now offered."
The old lady had been subjected to such violence, that she had fainted and been borne to the house of the curé insensible, while her beautiful daughter was brutally carried off by the "Yankee Sympathiser," and was now, if alive, a helpless prisoner in his hands at St. Eustache.
Roland was petrified with grief and dismay by intelligence, so deplorable—so terrible! Logan, full of just anger and great indignation, was speaking to him, but Roland knew not what he said.
The former was recalling the views "the Colonel" had with regard to Aurelia; he recalled, too, his eavesdropping, his rancorous hatred, threats, and jealousy; he recalled, also, the whole character and bearing of the man, and when he thought of the soft, gentle, and beautiful Aurelia being helpless in his power, at such a time, when the whole of Lower Canada was rent by civil dissension, outrage, and bloodshed, and when the Queen's troops were menaced everywhere, the heart of Roland seemed to die within him!