"I cannot sleep."
The old man understood. The white wings of the mother's spirit had hovered over the child.
"Then pray," he said.
And dropping on her knees, little Blanche repeated all the prayers which her godmother, Pauline Belmont, had taught her.
[XII.]
[THREE RIVERS.]
Roderick Hardinge's mission to Three Rivers was completely successful. He found that town and the surrounding country in a state of alarm and excitement consequent on the march of events in the upper part of the province. The whole Richelieu peninsula was overrun with Continental troops and the Montreal district was virtually in their power. The only chance was that the British army might make a stand at Sorel, which commanded the Richelieu and the St. Lawrence, at the confluence of these two rivers, and accordingly around that point concentrated the interest of the war in the first week of November. It was only natural, therefore, that the people of Three Rivers should be in a turmoil of excitement, for if the British were unable to hold their own at Sorel, the whole of the St. Lawrence would be swept by the Americans, and Three Rivers would be the very next place which they would occupy.
The arrival of Hardinge was not calculated to allay the excitement, and the tidings which he brought were spread through the town that very night notwithstanding all attempts at official secrecy. The Commandant of the town was considerably alarmed.
"The news from above was bad enough," he said to his principal secretary, after reading Hardinge's despatches, "but the intelligence from below is not more reassuring. Three Rivers thus finds itself between two fires. Montgomery from the west, and now Arnold from the east. I am very much afraid that we shall have to succumb. And the worst of all is that being masters of the intervening country, with emissaries in all the villages along their route, they improve their opportunity by tampering with our simple-minded farmers. Here in Three Rivers the disaffection among our own people is already quite marked, and I very much fear that this new source of danger will only increase it."