ose little envyings and bickerings among them that pave the way to
strife and disunion in after life.

Catharine Maxwell and her cousin Louis were more like brother and sister
than Hector and Catharine, but Mathilde was gentle and dove-like, and
formed a contrast to the gravity of Hector and the vivacity of Louis and
Catharine.

Hector and Louis were fourteen--strong, vigorous, industrious and hardy,
both in constitution and habits. The girls were turned of twelve. It is
not with Mathilde that our story is connected, but with the two lads
and Catharine. With the gaiety and naivete of the Frenchwoman, Catharine
possessed, when occasion called it into action, a thoughtful and
well-regulated mind, abilities which would well have repaid the care
of mental cultivation; but of book-learning she knew nothing beyond a
little reading, and that but imperfectly, acquired from her father's
teaching. It was an accomplishment which he had gained when in the army,
having been taught by his colonel's son, a lad of twelve years of age,
who had taken a great fancy to him, and had at parting given him a
few of his school-books, among which was a Testament, without cover
or title-page. At parting, the young gentleman recommended its daily
perusal to Duncan. Had the gift been a Bible, perhaps the soldier's
obedience to his priest might have rendered it a dead letter to him,
but as it fortunately happened, he was unconscious of any prohibition
to deter him from becoming acquainted with the truths of the Gospel. He
communicated the power of perusing his books to his children Hector and
Catharine, Duncan and Kenneth, in succession, with a feeling of intense
reverence; even the labour of teaching was regarded as a holy duty in
itself, and was not undertaken without deeply impressing the obligation
he was conferring upon them whenever they were brought to the task. It
was indeed a precious boon, and the children learned to consider it
as the pearl beyond all price in the trials that awaited them in their
eventful career. To her knowledge of religious truths young Catharine
added an intimate acquaintance with the songs and legends of her
father's romantic country, which was to her even as fairyland; often
would her plaintive ballads and old tales, related in the hut or the
wigwam to her attentive auditors, wile away heavy thoughts; Louis and
Mathilde, her cousins, sometimes wondered how Catharine had acquired
such a store of ballads and wild tal