of compassion for those poor strollers,--a
pity so delicate and fine and tender that it hardly seemed his own but
rather a sense of the compassion that pities the whole world.

X. HOMEWARD AND HOME.

The travellers all met at breakfast and duly discussed the adventures of
the night; and for the rest, the forenoon passed rapidly and slowly with
Basil and Isabel, as regret to leave Quebec, or the natural impatience
of travellers to be off, overcame them. Isabel spent part of it in
shopping, for she had found some small sums of money and certain odd
corners in her trunks still unappropriated, and the handsome stores on
the Rue Fabrique were very tempting. She said she would just go in and
look; and the wise reader imagines the result. As she knelt over her
boxes, trying so to distribute her purchases as to make them look as if
they were old,--old things of hers, which she had brought all the way
round from Boston with her,--a fleeting touch of conscience stayed her
hand.

"Basil," she said, "perhaps we'd better declare some of these things.
What's the duty on those?" she asked, pointing to certain articles.

"I don't know. About a hundred per cent. ad valorem."

"C'est a dire--?"

"As much as they cost."

"O then, dearest," responded Isabel indignantly, "it can't be wrong to
smuggle! I won't declare a thread!"

"That's very well for you, whom they won't ask. But what if they ask me
whether there's anything to declare?"

Isabel looked at her husband and hesitated. Then she replied in terms
that I am proud to record in honor of American womanhood: "You mustn't
fib about--it, Basil" (heroically); "I couldn't respect you if you did,"
(tenderly); "but" (with decision) "you must slip out of it some way!"

The ladies of the Ellison party, to whom she put the case in the parlor,
agreed with her perfectly. They also had done a little shopping in
Quebec, and they meant to do more at Montreal before they returned to
the States. Mrs. Ellison was disposed to look upon Isabel's compunctions
as a kind of treason to the sex, to be forgiven only because so quickly
repented.

The Ellisons were going up the Saguenay before coming on to Boston, and
urged our friends hard to go with them. "No, that must be for another
time," said Isabel. "Mr. March has to be home by a certain day; and we
shall just get back in season." Then she made them promise to spend
a day with her in Boston, and the Colonel coming to say that he had a