Then Rebecca,
with cheeks a-bloom under the hiding of her bonnet, quickens steps to
the meeting-house; but as a matter of course we walk home together, for
behind march the older folk, staidly discoursing of doctrine.

"Rebecca," I say, "you did not take your eyes off the preacher for one
minute."

"How do you know, Ramsay?" retorts Rebecca, turning her face away with
a dimple trembling in her chin, albeit it was the Sabbath.

"That preacher is too handsome to be sound in his doctrine, Rebecca."

Then she grows so mighty prim she must ask which heading of the sermon
pleases me best.

"I liked the last," I declare; and with that, we are at the turnstile.

Hortense became a vision of something lost, a type of what I had known
when great ladies came to our country hall. M. Picot himself took her
on the grand tour of the Continent. How much we had been hoping to see
more of her I did not realize till she came back and we saw less.

Once I encountered M. Picot and his ward on the wharf. Her curls were
more wayward than of old and her large eyes more lustrous, full of
deep, new lights, dark like the flash of a black diamond. Her form
appeared slender against the long, flowing mantilla shot with gold like
any grand dame's. She wore a white beaver with plumes sweeping down on
her curls. Indeed, little Hortense seemed altogether such a great lady
that I held back, though she was looking straight towards me.

"Give you good-e'en, Ramsay," salutes M. Picot, a small, thin man with
pointed beard, eyebrows of a fierce curlicue, and an expression under
half-shut lids like cat's eyes in the dark. "Give you good-e'en! Can
you guess who this is?"

As if any one could forget Hortense! But I did not say so. Instead, I
begged leave to welcome her back by saluting the tips of her gloved
fingers. She asked me if I minded that drowning of Ben long ago. Then
she wanted to know of Jack.

"I hear you are fur trading, Ramsay?" remarks M. Picot with the
inflection of a question.

I told him somewhat of the trade, and he broke out in almost the same
words as Ben Gillam. 'Twas the life for a gentleman of spirit. Why
didn't I join the beaver trade of Hudson Bay? And did I know of any
secret league between Captain Zachariah Gillam and Mr. Stocking to
trade without commission?

"Ah, Hillary," he sighed, "had we been beaver trading like Radisson
instead of pounding pestles, we might have had little Hortense
restored."

"Re