trader's daughter.

"What about this new name?" said the mother at length; "they have given
you a title in France?"

"Not at all, mother," he replied.

"But they call you 'Monsieur de Lincy,' you say."

"It is not a new name; it is the real one of the family--you are
entitled to it as well as I."

"What does that mean, son Germain? Have we been ignorant of our own
name?"

"It means that we are gentlepeople--and that in my father there, you
behold the real or principal Chevalier de Lincy. I am but the younger
Chevalier."

The family, at this announcement, gave voice to a mutual cry. The father
looked up and said soberly--

"You mistake, my son."

"In no respect, dear father. I have learnt our descent in France, and am
glad to inform you that you are what you deserve to be--a noble."

"There, Francois Xavier!" exclaimed the wife. "You are not going to deny
it."

"Many good stocks forget their origin in going out to the colonies,"
added Germain. "You, sir, crossed the sea at a very early age."

"At twelve years old," asserted the merchant.

"You were too young to make those inquiries which I have completed. You
knew little of your parents."

"My father was a butcher of Paris; I know that."

"That is an error, sir. Those you regarded as your parents were but
foster-parents, though they bore the same name."

"Who, then, do you pretend was my father?" cried the merchant in
amazement. "There was no question of that matter before I left France."

"Because your mother had died, and your father, who was a poor man,
though a gentleman, had departed for service in the East Indies, and
there was heard of no more."

"In any event I do not care about these things. I shall always remain
the Merchant Lecour," the old man said, with steady-going pride.

"But Francois Xavier!" cried his wife. "Have you no care about your
children and me? Is it nothing to us if we are _noblesse_? Will you be
forever turning over skins and measuring groceries when you ought to
have a grand house and a grand office, like the gentry of the North-West
Company at Montreal, who dine with the Governor, and are yet no better
off than you? I am sure _they_ are no Chevaliers de Lincy".

"I cannot believe it, wife. I know where I came from, and that I was
nothing but a boy sent out with the troops by the magistrates of
Paris"--Germain started--"then a poor private, and by good conduct at
length a _cantineer_ of the liquor. Chevaliers are not