ly man with quick, black
eyes and a tranquil, dark face stood near it; he wore a half-military
coat with brass buttons, and was the chief Picot. At sight of the
colonel he smiled slightly and gave his hand in welcome. Then he sold
such of his wares as the colonel wanted, rather discouraging than
inviting purchase. He talked, upon some urgency, of his people, who, he
said, numbered three hundred, and were a few of them farmers, but were
mostly hunters, and, in the service of the officers of the garrison,
spent the winter in the chase. He spoke fair English, but reluctantly,
and he seemed glad to have his guests go, who were indeed willing enough
to leave him.

Mr. Arbuton especially was willing, for he had been longing to find
himself alone with Kitty, of which he saw no hope while the idling about
the village lasted.

The colonel bought an insane watch-pocket for _une dolleur_ from a
pretty little girl as they returned through the village; but he forbade
the boys any more archery at his expense, with "Pas de grand shoot,
_now_, mes enfans!--Friends," he added to his own party, "we have the
Falls of Lorette and the better part of the afternoon still before us;
how shall we employ them?"

Mrs. Ellison and Kitty did not know, and Mr. Arbuton did not know, as
they sauntered down past the chapel, to the stone mill that feeds its
industry from the beauty of the fall. The cascade, with two or three
successive leaps above the road, plunges headlong down a steep
crescent-shaped slope, and hides its foamy whiteness in the
dark-foliaged ravine below. It is a wonder of graceful motion, of
iridescent lights and delicious shadows; a shape of loveliness that
seems instinct with a conscious life. Its beauty, like that of all
natural marvels on our continent, is on a generous scale; and now the
spectators, after viewing it from the mill, passed for a different
prospect of it to the other shore, and there the colonel and Fanny
wandered a little farther down the glen, leaving Kitty with Mr. Arbuton.
The affair between them was in such a puzzling phase, that there was as
much reason for as against this: nobody could do anything, not even
openly recognize it. Besides, it was somehow very interesting to Kitty
to be there alone with him, and she thought that if all were well, and
he and she were really engaged, the sense of recent betrothal could be
nowhere else half so sweet as in that wild and lovely place. She began
to imagine a bliss