“His name was Dubois,” returned Cecilia. “Pierre Dubois!”
“Dubois? Are you sure? That is very singular” said her father. “And he talked beautifully you say? It must be this one.”
“That is what I think” said Cecilia, seeing her father to the door.
Then ensued a period of hard work for Cecilia. She read the papers assiduously, going up every day to the Parliamentary reading-rooms for that purpose that she might lose no aspect of the affair. She followed every detail of the rebellion, even possessing herself of many of her father's papers bearing on the matter. Those details are well known; how the whisper ran through our peaceful land, breathing of war and battle and blood-shed; how our gallant men marched to the front in as superb a faith and as perfect a manhood as ever troops have shown in this country or the Old; how some fell by the way, and how others were reserved to be clasped again to the bosoms of wife and mother and how some met with the finest fate of all, or at least the most fitting fate for a true soldier—death on the battle-field. For a month the country was in a delirium. Then joy-bells rang, and bonfires blazed, and hands were struck in other hands for very delight that the cause of all the mischief, the rebel chief, the traitor Dubois was taken. Cecilia alone sat in her room in horror.
“What will they do with the prisoner Dubois?” she said with a vehemence that dismayed Sir Robert.
“The prisoner Dubois? Why, they will hang him of course. He has caused too much blood to be shed not to have to give some of his own.” Cecilia writhed as if in extreme pain. Her beauty, her grace, her youth all seemed to leave her in a moment, and she stood faded and old before her father.
“Oh, they will not do that! Imprison him or send him away—anything, anything save that! See, they do not know him—poor Pierre, so kind, so good—they do not know him as I knew him. Father, he could not hurt a thing—he would step aside from the smallest living thing in the path when we walked together that summer, and he helped everybody that wanted help, there was nothing he could not do. And he loves his country—at least he did so then. There is that song, 'O mon cher Canada,' he used to sing, and he told me of the future of his country, and how he had prayed to be allowed to aid it and push it forward. And he does not hate the English, only how can he help loving the French more when he is one of them, and has good French blood in his veins—better than many of the so-called English! And he was born to be a leader and to bring men away from their home into battle and make war for them, and where in that does he differ from other heroes we are taught to love and admire? If you had ever heard him talk, and had seen the people all gathered round him when he spoke of all these things—as for his church and the Virgin, and the priests, it would be well if you and all of us thought as much about our religion, and loved and revered it as he did his!”
Cecilia broke down into incoherent sobs. Sir Robert sat aghast at this startling confession. No need to tell him that it was prompted by love.
“But what if he be insane, my dear?” he asked very quietly.
“Then it is still bad—it is worse,” said Cecilia. “Will hanging an insane man bring back the others that are slain? Will it make foul fair and clean still cleaner? Will it bring peace and friendliness, and right feeling, or will it bring a fiercer fire and a sharper sword than our country has yet seen—a hand-to-hand fight between rival races, a civil war based on national distinction!”