n fields where stood a cottage or two, with a herd of
mottled cows grazing down by the brook. On the higher ridges the trees
formed a close phalanx, and with their dark tops cut the horizon into a
long, irregular line of forest, as if offering battle to the woodman's
axe that was threatening to invade their solitudes.

Half an hour's driving brought the company to the Manor House, a stately
mansion, gabled and pointed like an ancient chateau on the Seine.

It was a large, irregular structure of hammered stone, with
deeply-recessed windows, mullioned and ornamented with grotesque
carvings. A turret, loopholed and battlemented, projected from each of
the four corners of the house, enabling its inmates to enfilade every
side with a raking fire of musketry, affording an adequate defence
against Indian foes. A stone tablet over the main entrance of the Manor
House was carved with the armorial bearings of the ancient family of
Tilly, with the date of its erection, and a pious invocation placing the
house under the special protection of St. Michael de Thury, the patron
saint of the House of Tilly.

The Manor House of Tilly had been built by Charles Le Gardeur de Tilly,
a gentleman of Normandy, one of whose ancestors, the Sieur de Tilly,
figures on the roll of Battle Abbey as a follower of Duke William at
Hastings. His descendant, Charles Le Gardeur, came over to Canada with a
large body of his vassals in 1636, having obtained from the King a grant
of the lands of Tilly, on the bank of the St. Lawrence, "to hold in
fief and seigniory,"--so ran the royal patent,--"with the right and
jurisdiction of superior, moyenne and basse justice, and of hunting,
fishing, and trading with the Indians throughout the whole of this royal
concession; subject to the condition of foi et hommage, which he shall
be held to perform at the Castle of St. Louis in Quebec, of which he
shall hold under the customary duties and dues, agreeably to the coutume
de Paris followed in this country."

Such was the style of the royal grants of seignioral rights conceded
in New France, by virtue of one of which this gallant Norman gentleman
founded his settlement and built this Manor House on the shores of the
St. Lawrence.

A broad, smooth carriage road led up to the mansion across a park dotted
with clumps of evergreens and deciduous trees. Here and there an ancient
patriarch of the forest stood alone,--some old oak or elm, whose goodly
proportions and ampli