ice went back joyfully into the house. Here was a clue. Now, oh, to
be off and able to make use of it!

CHAPTER VII.

Before going to bed on the very night of his arrival, Maurice found the
list of steamers, and with his father's approbation fixed upon one which
was advertised to sail in a few days over a fortnight from that time. It
happened to be a vessel the comfortable accommodation of which had been
specially praised by some experienced travellers, his fellow-passengers
in the 'India,' and the advantages of going by it being quite evident,
served to satisfy what small scruples of conscience Mr. Bellairs had
been able to awaken. He wrote, therefore, to secure berths and put his
letter ready to be taken into Cacouna next morning, when he should go to
pay his promised visit to Mrs. Bellairs.

It was early when Maurice awoke; he did so with a sense of having much
to do, but the aspect of his own old room, so strange now and yet so
familiar, kept him dreaming for a few minutes before that important
day's work could be begun. How bare and angular it seemed, how shabby
and poor the furniture! It never had been anything but a boy's room of
the simplest sort, and yet it had many happy and some few sad
associations, such as no other room could ever have for him. He recalled
the long ago days when his brother and he had shared it together, and
their mother used to come in softly at night to look that her two sons
were safe and well,--the later years, when mother and brother were both
gone, and he himself sat there alone reading or writing far into the
night. He thought of the many summer mornings when he had opened his
window to watch for the movement of Lucia's curtain, or for the glimpse
of her girlish figure moving about under the light shadows of the
acacias in the Cottage garden.

But when he came to that point in his meditation, he sprang up
impatiently, and the uncomfortable irritating feeling that he had been
unfairly dealt with, tricked, in fact, began to take possession of him
again. However, it only acted as a stimulant. He began to feel that he
had entered into the lists with Mrs. Costello, and, regarding her as a
faithless ally, was not a little disposed to do battle with her _a
l'outrance_, and carry off Lucia for revenge as well as for love.

Directly after breakfast he had out the little red sleigh in which last
winter he had so often driven his old playfellow to and from Cacouna,
and started alon