uch
curiosity.

"As friends. I am thankful to say that our wearied men received shelter
and provisions from the French inhabitants who freely accepted our
Continental scrip which they regarded as good money. But for their aid
we should all have perished."

"The rest of the army did not follow at once?"

"It could not. We had to wait for provisions from our commander, else we
should all have perished. We ate roots raw which we had to dig out of
the sand on the river bank. We killed all our dogs for food. We washed
our moose-skin moccasins, scraped away the dirt and sand, boiled them in
the kettle and drank the mucilage which they produced. When the first
flour and cattle reached us from Sertigan, the most of us had been
forty-eight hours without eating. Refreshed in this way, encouraged by
the friendship of the French inhabitants, and reinforced by a band of
forty Norridgewocks, under their chiefs Natanis and Sabatis, to serve as
guides for the remainder of the journey, we took up our march again and
reached Levis two months after our departure from Cambridge."

"It was an epic march!" cried Zulma rising from her seat and pouring out
wine into the glasses on the table. Sieur Sarpy pledged his guest in a
bumper of Burgundy. And the compliment was deserved. That march of the
Continental army was one of the most remarkable and heroic on record.

XVII.

O GIOVENTU PRIMAVERA DELLA VITA.

In the fortnight that followed, Zulma and Cary met nearly every day,
sometimes more than once a day. It was impossible that it should be
otherwise. There is no power on this earth that can restrain two
youthful hearts thrilling and surging with the first impulses of love.
When the imagination is all aglow with the purple pictures of destiny;
when the soul throbs with the unspeakably delicious sentiments of an
affection that is requited; when the nerves are in tension and quiver
like the strings of a harp; when the hot blood runs wild through the
veins, suffusing lip and cheek and brow; and the eyes look out upon the
roseate world through a mist of tears that are pleasureable pain and
painful pleasure inexplicably blended, then there is no force of cold
conventionality to check the outcomes of the spirit, no bolts or bars or
chains to fetter the bounding limbs that go forth rejoicing through the
enchanted landscape which the good God has opened to all of us, at least
once in life, as an exquisite foretaste of Paradise.

What