"You can do better, Kate: you can make your country worth brave men dying for," and he fondly kissed her forehead, while something like a tear glistened in his eyes.
For a time Neville Trueman mused without speaking, as if the prey of conflicting emotions. At last he said with solemn emphasis, "My choice is made: I cast in my lot with my adopted country. I believe this invasion of a peaceful territory by an armed host is a wanton outrage and cannot have the smile of Heaven. I daresay I shall encounter obloquy and suspicion from both sides, but I must obey my conscience."
"Young man, I honour your choice," exclaimed the Squire effusively, grasping his hand with energy. "I know what it is to leave home, and kindred, and houses and lands for loyalty to my conscience and my King. I left as fair an estate as there was in the Old Dominion because I could not live under any other flag than the glorious Union Jack under which I was born. It was a dislocating wrench to tear myself away from the home of my childhood and the graves of my parents for an unknown wilderness. Much were we tossed about by sea and land. Our ship was wrecked and its passengers strewn like seaweed on the Nova Scotia coast— some living and some dead—and at last, after months of travel and privation, on foot, in ox carts and in Durham boats, we found our way, I and a few neighbours, to this spot, to hew out new homes in the forest and keep our oath of allegiance to our King."
The old U. E. Loyalist always grew eloquent as he referred to his exile for conscience' sake and to the planting by the conscript fathers of Canada of a new Troy under the aegis of British power.
"I came of regular Yankee stock," said Mr. Trueman. "My mother was a Neville—one of the Nevilles of Boston. She heard Jesse Lee's first sermon on Boston Common, and joined the first Methodist society in the old Bay State. My father was one of Ethan Allen's Green Mountain Boys, and assisted at the capture of Ticonderoga. He was also a volunteer at Bunker Hill. It was then he met my mother, being billeted at her father's house."
"You have rebel blood in you and no mistake," said the Squire.
"I believe the colonists were right in resisting oppression in '76," continued Neville; "but I believe they are wrong in invading Canada now, and I wash my hands of all share in their crime."
"We will not quarrel about the old war," said the veteran loyalist. "The Gazette here says that many of your countrymen agree with you about the new one. At the declaration of hostilities the flags of the shipping at Boston were placed at half-mast and a public meeting denounced the war as ruinous and unjust."
"I foresee a long and bloody strife," said Neville.
"Neither country will yield without a tremendous struggle. It is ungenerous to attack Great Britain now, when, as the champion of human liberty, she is engaged in a death-wrestle with the arch despot Napoleon."