yourself
are not ashamed, I do not give a rotten nut for the rest of the
world. It is no question of the personal feeling at all; it is the
principle! I have no personal quarrel with Maxwell; on the contrary,
I like him. He was a brother to me in Louisbourg; but, thank God!
I can sink my likings and dislikings, when it comes to a case such
as this. No, no, Peggy; you'd best leave things in my hands."

"No, Archie, I will not! There has been heart-break and misery
enough over this as it is, without adding more."

"But this will wipe it all out. Cannot you understand?" he said,
with a touch of impatience.

"Archie, cannot you understand that, however clearly I regret my
own folly, I cannot in a moment stamp out the feeling in which I
have lived all these years?"

"You don't tell me you care for the fellow yet, Peggy?" he cried,
in a tone of genuine astonishment.

"I am afraid I do."

"God bless my soul! That is beyond me."

"You are not a woman, Archie."

"No, thank God I am not," he answered, without the vestige of a
smile. "Of all the wearisome things in the world, I can imagine
nothing worse than being a woman."

"And yet there are a good many who have to put up with this
weariness."

"The Lord help them! But we must not fall to quarrelling at our
first meeting; that would be altogether too much like boy and girl
again. Peggy, do you remember how we used to fight over the plovers'
nests?" and he laughed merrily at the thought. "Don't be put out
by a little thing like this. I'll not kill the gentleman behind a
hedge or in the dark; he shall have nothing to complain of, rest
assured. But I have sad news for your friends, Margaret. M. de
Montcalm died at daybreak this morning."

"Oh, Archie! We did not even know that he was wounded."

"Nor did we until late last night, for he was seen on his horse
during the retreat. He was a fine soldier."

"He was more than that, Archie. He was a man of honour and the soul
of his army--and he was very good to me," I sobbed, breaking down
at the remembrance of his chivalrous protection.

To my surprise, Archie put his arm about me. "Cry on, Peggy, my
lamb," he said, in the soft endearment of the Gaelic. And the
soldier who had so readily decided on the death of a man a moment
since, now melted at the sight of a woman's grief, and offered her
that best of all consolation, sympathy. Nothing else could so
quickly have revealed to me the wrong I had been guilty of in
hol