ppeared she cried out to him--

"Oh, Father--Father Beret! help me! help me!"

When Farnsworth recovered from the breath-expelling shock of the jab in
his side and got himself once more in a vertical position, both girl
and priest were gone. He looked this way and that, rapidly becoming
sober, and beginning to wonder how the thing could have happened so
easily. His ribs felt as if they had been hit with a heavy hammer.

"By Jove!" he muttered all to himself, "the old prayer-singing heathen!
By Jove!" And with this very brilliant and relevant observation he
rubbed his sore side and went his way to the fort.

CHAPTER XI

A SWORD AND A HORSE PISTOL

We hear much about the "days that tried men's souls"; but what about
the souls of women in those same days? Sitting in the liberal geniality
of the nineteenth century's sunset glow, we insist upon having our
grumble at the times and the manners of our generation; but if we had
to exchange places, periods and experiences with the people who lived
in America through the last quarter of the eighteenth century, there
would be good ground for despairing ululations. And if our men could
not bear it, if it would try their souls too poignantly, let us imagine
the effect upon our women. No, let us not imagine it; but rather let us
give full credit to the heroic souls of the mothers and the maidens who
did actually bear up in the center of that terrible struggle and
unflinchingly help win for us not only freedom, but the vast empire
which at this moment is at once the master of the world and the model
toward which all the nations of the earth are slowly but surely tending.

If Alice was an extraordinary girl, she was not aware of it; nor had
she ever understood that her life was being shaped by extraordinary
conditions. Of course it could not but be plain to her that she knew
more and felt more than the girls of her narrow acquaintance; that her
accomplishments were greater; that she nursed splendid dreams of which
they could have no proper comprehension, but until now she had never
even dimly realized that she was probably capable of being something
more than a mere creole lass, the foster daughter of Gaspard
Roussillon, trader in pelts and furs. Even her most romantic visions
had never taken the form of personal desire, or ambition in its most
nebulous stage; they had simply pleased her fresh and natural fancy and
served to gild the hardness and crudeness of her life,--t