"Wake up, Jack! Here comes the chief, in all his warpaint, with moccasins and deer-skin hunting-shirt, and with a girdle of scalps hanging from his belt," cried Jamie one morning, rushing into the apartment that served them both for sleeping purposes.
"Hurrah!" cried his friend. "I'm coming. Are the canoes ready?"
"Yes, they're all loaded up and waiting in the river, by the lower town."
"Glad we're leaving Quebec at last, aren't you? By all the preparations that the Governor's pushing forward, there's going to be a dreadful fight here some day, and the side that wins will have Canada for a prize."
"So you want to be out of the fighting, do you, old boy? That isn't a bit like you."
"Ah, don't misunderstand me, old fellow. I mean that I don't want to be cooped up in here when the fighting takes place, because our fellows will be outside. I wouldn't mind a hand in the storming, fighting under the British flag, for although the French have been pretty good to us--at least, some of them--they didn't treat the rest of the Duncan's crew too well, when they shipped them all back to England in that leaky old tub."
They had now reached the lower part of the town, and were approaching the river by one of the narrow steep streets of which Quebec has so many, when Jamie, casting up a look at the frowning, embattled citadel, said--
"That place will want some storming! A handful of brave men, well supplied with ammunition and provisions, might sit tight up there for years, and defy the armies of the world."
"You're right, Jamie, and yet, I confess, I'd like to see another flag up there, wouldn't you?"
Turning to his companion, Jamie looked him full in the face, and replied--