of snow. Beyond this was the black, open
water, bearing the floating ice backward and forward with the
changing tides, never at rest, grinding ceaselessly against the
frozen barrier between it and the shore, and heralding a coming
change of weather with strange, hollow explosions and moanings.
The shortness of the days, the desolation of the sweeping storms
which imprisoned us, the unbroken isolation, and the disappointment
of long delay told heavily on my spirits, which might have failed
me had it not been for the constant care demanded by Lucy.

Before she gained strength to be about once more, the feeling of
spring was in the air, crows were calling to one another, here and
there a rounded hill-top showed a dun, sodden patch under the
strengthening sun, and a trickling and gurgling told that, underneath
the snow, the waters were gathering to free the rivers and send
their burthen of ice sweeping into the St. Lawrence.

M. de Sarennes had come and gone with promises of return. He won
my gratitude by his forbearance to me as well as by his unlooked-for
gentleness towards poor Lucy, whose heart he filled with admiration
by kindly words of her boy, and assurances of his safety.

She, poor thing, had not recovered her full mental condition with
her strength, and was possessed of an idea that Christopher was at
Quebec, and that she should be on her way there to meet him. This
idea I did my utmost to dissipate, but M. de Sarennes, possibly to
quiet or please her, had let fall something which she had taken as
an assurance that the English troops were there, and her son with
them, and however successfully I might persuade her at the moment
of the truth, she would as regularly come back to her delusion when
alone.

Distressing as this was as an indication of her condition, it was
the more disturbing to me as it was the last blow to my hopes for
Louisbourg. It would be sheer madness to trust myself to M. de
Sarennes without her protection; a protection which had vanished
now, in the complete ascendency he had gained over her by his ready
acquiescence in her imaginings, and I could not but feel he was
skilfully withdrawing her affections from me.

However, he was called away to his post so suddenly that I was
spared the difficulty of a decision, and I had almost determined
that I would go on to Quebec and place myself under the care of M.
de Montcalm, when, towards the end of May, he returned, unexpected
by any of us, eve