All were deeply moved by Madame D'Haberville's story, and some were even in tears. Jules embraced his mother, and left the room to hide his emotion.
"O God," he cried, "guard this life of mine! for if evil should befall me, my loving mother would be as inconsolable as the mother in the story she has just told us."
A day or two later Jules and Archie were tossing upon the Atlantic; and at the end of two months, after a prosperous voyage, they reached the shores of France.
CHAPTER XI.
THE BURNING OF THE SOUTH SHORE.
They came upon us in the night,
And brake my bower and slew my knight:
My servant a' for life did flee
And left us in the extremitie.
They slew my knight, to me so dear;
They slew my knight, and drove his gear;
The moon may set, the sun may rise,
But a deadly sleep has closed his eyes.
Waverley.
The trees were once more clothed in their wonted green after the passing of a northern winter. The woods and fields were enameled in a thousand colors, and the birds were raising their cheerful voices to greet the spring of the year 1759. All Nature smiled; only man seemed sorrowful and cast down; and the laborer no more lifted his gay song, and the greater portion of the lands lay fallow for lack of hands to till them. A cloud hung over all New France, for the mother country, a veritable step-mother, had abandoned her Canadian children. Left to its own resources, the Government had called to arms every able-bodied man to defend the colony against the invasion that menaced it. The English had made vast preparations. Their fleet, consisting of twenty ships of the line, ten frigates, and eighteen smaller vessels, accompanied by a number of transports, and carrying eighteen thousand men, was ascending the St. Lawrence under the command of General Wolfe; while two land armies, yet more numerous, were moving to effect a junction under the very walls of Quebec.