misgivings were lost in
the sweetness of her looks, or the young grace of her motions. Passing,
the days rebuked his delay in vain; a week and two weeks slipped from
under his feet, and still he had waited for fate to part him and his
folly. But now at last he would go and in the evening, after his cigar
on Durham Terrace, he knocked at Mrs. Ellison's door to say that on the
day after to-morrow he should push on to the White Mountains.

He found the Ellisons talking over an expedition for the next morning,
in which he was also to take part. Mrs. Ellison had already borne her
full share in the preparation; for, being always at hand there in her
room, and having nothing to do, she had been almost a willing victim to
the colonel's passion for information at second-hand, and had probably
come to know more than any other American woman of Arnold's expedition
against Quebec in 1775. She know why the attack was planned, and with
what prodigious hazard and heroical toil and endurance it was carried
out; how the dauntless little army of riflemen cut their way through the
untrodden forests of Maine and Canada, and beleaguered the gray old
fortress on her rock till the red autumn faded into winter, and, on the
last bitter night of the year, flung themselves against her defences,
and fell back, leaving half their number captive, Montgomery dead, and
Arnold wounded, but haplessly destined to survive.

"Yes," said the colonel, "considering the age in which they lived, and
their total lack of modern improvements, mental, moral, and physical, we
must acknowledge that they did pretty well. It wasn't on a very large
scale; but I don't see how they could have been braver, if every man had
been multiplied by ten thousand. In fact, as it's going to be all the
same thing a hundred years from now, I don't know but I'd as soon be one
of the men that tried to take Quebec as one of the men that did take
Atlanta. Of course, for the present, and on account of my afflicted
family, Mr. Arbuton, I'm willing to be what and where I am; but just see
what those fellows did." And the colonel drew from his glowing memory of
Mrs. Ellison's facts a brave historical picture of Arnold's expedition.
"And now we're going to-morrow morning to look up the scene of the
attack on the 31st of December. Kitty, sing something."

At another time Kitty might have hesitated; but that evening she was so
at rest about Mr. Arbuton, so sure she cared nothing for his liking