have had the honour of
calling myself his friend for above a year."

At that word Madame Drucour looked up and said:

"Ah, let me hear of Monsieur Wolfe! I had hoped to see him again
myself. Such a hero, such a sweet and courteous gentleman!
Frenchwoman though I be, I could have welcomed him as the victor of
Quebec!"

All listened with deep attention as Julian related in considerable
detail the story of the last hours of Wolfe, and Madame Drucour
wiped her eyes many times during the recital.

"Ah! if he had but lived to see the city of his hopes, I would
myself have been his nurse, and would have brought him back to
health and strength.

"You smile, sir; but yet I have seen much of sickness. You will
hear that the doctors themselves give me the credit for saving many
lives."

"I can believe it, Madame; indeed I have seen something of that
skill with mine own eyes. But, alas! I fear that the case of our
friend was beyond human skill. I think that, had he had the choice,
he would have chosen to die as he did in the hour of victory. To
wear out a life of suffering in uncongenial inactivity would have
been sorely irksome to his unquenchable spirit; and yet, after the
hardships through which he had passed, I misdoubt me if he could
ever have taken the field again. He would have endured the peril
and pain of another long voyage only to die upon shipboard, or at
his home if he lived to reach it. The hand of death was surely upon
him."

"And to die in the hour of a glorious victory is surely a fitting
close to a hero's life," said Corinne softly to Julian, when the
tide of talk had recommenced to flow in other quarters. "But tell
me, does he leave behind many to mourn him? Has he parents living,
or sisters and brothers, or one nearer and dearer still? Has he a
wife in England?"

"Not a wife, Mademoiselle, but one who was to have been his wife
had he lived to return, and a mother who loves him as the apple of
the eye. I shall have a sad task before me when I return to tell
them of him whom they have loved and lost."

"Are you then going back to England?" asked Corinne; "are you not
born in these lands of the West?"

"Yes; and I think that my home will be here when my duties to my
friend are done. But first I must return to his home and his
mother, and give to them there his last loving messages, and those
things he wished them to possess of his. Indeed, his body is to be
taken back, embalmed; the officers have de