below, the huddled housetops, the silent wharves, the
lights of the great warships swinging with the tide, the intermittent
ferry-boats plying to and fro, the twinkling lamps of Levis rising
along the dim southern shore and reflected in the lapsing, curling,
seaward-sliding waves of the great river! What city of the New World
keeps so much of the charm of the Old?

The camp which Samuel de Champlain made in the wilderness three hundred
years ago, has become one of the last refuges of the romantic dream and
the courtly illusion, still haunted by the shades of impecunious young
noblemen with velvet cloaks and feathered hats and rapiers at their
hips; of delicate, high-spirited beauties braving the snowy wildwood in
their silks and laces; of missionary monks, tonsured and rope-girdled,
pressing with lean faces and eager eyes to plant the banner of the
Church upon the shores of the West and win the fiery crown of
martyrdom. Other figures follow them--gold-seekers, fur-traders,
empire-builders, admirals and generals of France and England,
strugglers for dominion, soldiers of fortune, makers of cunning plots,
and dreamers of great enterprises--and round them all flows the
confused tide of war and love, of intrigue and daring, of religious
devotion and imperial plot. The massive walls of the old city have been
broken, the rude palaces have vanished in fire or sunken in decay, but
the past is still indomitable on Cape Diamond, and the lovers of
romance can lose themselves in pleasant reveries among the winding
streets and on the lofty, sun-bathed ramparts of Quebec.

It was there, in a shady corner of the Grand Battery, that Ethel
disclosed to her mother and Chichester and the Reverend Father
Bellingham Jenks her plan for the wedding; since, indeed, it was hardly
possible to keep it a secret any longer.

"The day after to-morrow, you know," said she, "we are going to take
the Saguenay boat for Tadousac. Do you know that village curving along
the cliff at the base of the Mamelons; and the half-circle of the bay
opening out into the big St. Lawrence, full of sunshine and blue water;
and the steep, shaggy mountains of the Saguenay in the background; and
the tiny old mission chapel of the Jesuit Fathers where the same bell
has been ringing for nearly three hundred years? I was there the summer
after I graduated; and I've never forgotten it. It's a picture and a
dream. That is where I want to have my wedding. I don't believe that