e whole
country resounded with the voices of men and women preparing for their
work. Zulma Sarpy and Cary Singleton walked alone on the bank of the St.
Lawrence, directly in front of the mansion. They moved along slowly,
frequently stopping to admire the scenery spread out before them, or to
engage in earnest conversation. Cary had entirely recovered from his
illness, appearing stouter and stronger than ever before. He was
clothed in his uniform, a proof that he had resumed active military
duty. Zulma was seemingly in her usual health, and as she stood with her
grey felt Montespan hat and azure plume, and brilliant cashmere shawl
tightly drawn across her shoulders, her beauty shone in its queenliest
aspects. No fitter companion for a soldier could well be pictured. Cary
evidently felt this, as his frequent glances of admiration testified,
and there were moments when to the observer he would have appeared as
making the most ardent declarations of love.

Such, however, was not the fact. The young people had not reached that
limit. Well as they knew each other, often as they had met, exceptional
as were the circumstances which had surrounded their intercourse, they
had never gone beyond a certain point of mutual confidence. They had
often hovered on the edge, but sudden or unforeseen incidents had
intervened, and thrown them back instead of advancing their suits. Zulma
was sure that Cary loved her, but she had never ascertained that fact by
any word of his. Cary could not doubt of Zulma's love for him, as her
deeds and writings had eloquently shown, but she had never given him the
opportunity, or he fancied he had never had the opportunity, of
obtaining a decisive answer from her lips. On this day, their
conversation was earnest and active, but inconsequent. It is often thus
in that game of love which is conducted not in concentric circles, but
in eccentric orbits.

To Cary the situation was becoming pressing, and he told Zulma as much
in words which deeply impressed her. He foresaw that the end was
approaching, that, with the return of the open weather, military
operations must take a decided turn one way or the other. He was
sagacious enough to foresee that there could hardly be other than one
fatal result--the retreat of the Americans. Arnold had been superseded.
Wooster, an aged officer, who had commanded during the winter at
Montreal, doing a great deal of harm to the American cause by his
inefficiency, and his reli