Chapter I: Preface

The reader familiar with the amusing memoirs of the Chevalier Johnstone will recognise in how far Maxwell was suggested thereby; if he be equally familiar with the detail of Canadian history of the period he will have little difficulty in discovering the originals of Sarennes and some of the secondary characters, and, in the Epilogue, the legend of the death of the celebrated missionary, le R. P. Jean Baptiste de la Brosse. But while the experience of some actual man or woman has suggested a type to be portrayed, it is only as a type, and with no intention of representing the individual in the character of the story. Nor is the attempt to set forth the respective attitude of the Canadian and the old-country Frenchman to be read as a personal expression of the authors', but as their conception of an unfortunate condition between colonist and official that obtained as fully in Canada as it did between the same classes in the English colonies.

Long habit has made the English names of many places and positions so familiar to many in Canada that to adhere to the French form in all instances would be as unnatural as to Anglicise all names throughout--which will explain the lack of uniformity in this particular.

The authors have pleasure in acknowledging their indebtedness to M. l'Abbe Casgrain, of Quebec, for valuable personal assistance in determining local detail, and to Mtre. Joseph Edmond Roy, N.P., of Levis, for information on the period and the use of his version of the death of the pere de la Brosse from his interesting monograph, "Tadoussac."

W. McL. and J. N. McI.

CONTENTS

PART I

MAXWELL'S STORY

I. "After High Floods Come Low Ebbs"
II. I Discover a New Interest in Life
III. "The Dead and the Absent are Always Wrong"
IV. In Which I Make Acquaintance with One Near to Me
V. I Assist at an Interview with a Great Man
VI. How I Take to the Road Again, and of the Company
I Fall in With
VII. How I Come to Take a Great Resolve
VIII. How I Make Both Friends and Enemies in New France
IX. "Joy and Sorrow are Next-door Neighbours"
X. "He who Sows Hatred Shall Gather Rue"
XI. "A Friend at One's Back is a Safe Bridge"

PART II

MARGARET'S STORY

XII. What Happened in the Baie des Chaleurs
XIII. Le Pere Jean, Missionary to the Indians
XIV. I am Directed into a New Path
XV. The Marquis de Montcalm-Gozon de St. Veran
XVI. At Beaulieu
XVII. I Find Myself in a False Position
XVIII. I am Rescued from a Great Danger
XIX. On the Isle Aux Coudres
XX. At Quebec
XXI. I Awake from my Dream
XXII. I am Tortured by Myself and Others
XXIII. The Heights of Quebec
XXIV. Reconciliation
XXV. A Forlorn Hope