"My poor, late father thought that the end of the world had come, and the Day of Judgment.
"The tall devil with the sauce-pan struck three blows; and a silence most profound succeeded the hellish hubbub. He stretched out his arm toward my late father, and cried with a voice of thunder: 'Will you make haste, you lazy dog? will you make haste, you cur of a Christian, and ferry our friend across? We have only fourteen thousand four hundred times more to prance around the island before cock-crow. Are you going to make her lose the best of the fun?'
"'Go to the devil, where you all belong,' answered my late father, losing all patience.
"'Come, my dear Francis,' said La Corriveau, 'be a little more obliging. You are acting like a child about a mere trifle. Moreover, see how the time is flying. Come, now, one little effort!'
"'No, no, my wench of Satan,' said my late father. 'Would to Heaven you still had on the fine collar which the hangman put around your neck two years ago. You wouldn't have so clear a wind-pipe.'
"During this dialogue the goblins on the island resumed their chorus:
"'Here we go all round,
Hands all round,
Here we go all round.'"
"'My dear Francis,' said the witch, 'if your body and bones won't carry me over, I'm going to strangle you. I will straddle your soul and ride over to the festival.' With these words, she seized him by the throat and strangled him."
"What," exclaimed the young men, "she strangled your poor, late father, now dead?"
"When I said strangled, it was very little better than that," answered José, "for the dear man lost his consciousness."
"When he came to himself he heard a little bird, which cried Qué-tu? (Who art thou?)
"'Oh, ho!' said my late father, 'it's plain I'm not in hell, since I hear the dear Lord's birds!' He opened first one eye, then the other, and saw that it was broad daylight. The sun was shining right in his face; the little bird, perched on a neighboring branch, kept crying qué-tu?'
"'My dear child,' said my late father, 'it is not very easy to answer your question, for I'm not very certain this morning just who I am. Only yesterday I believed myself to be a brave, honest, and God-fearing man; but I have had such an experience this night that I can hardly be sure that it is I, Francis Dubé, here present in body and soul. Then the dear man began to sing:
'Here we go all round,
Hands all round,
Here we go all round.'
"In fact, he was half bewitched. At last, however, he perceived that he was lying full length in a ditch where, happily, there was more mud than water; but for that my poor, late father, who now sleeps with the saints, surrounded by all his relations and friends, and fortified by all the holy sacraments, would have died without absolution, like a monkey in his old tree, begging your pardon for the comparison, young gentlemen. When he had got his face clear from the mud of the ditch, in which he was stuck fast as in a vise, the first thing he saw was his flask on the bank above him. At this he plucked up his courage and stretched out his hand to take a drink. But no such luck! The flask was empty! The witch had drained every drop."
"My dear José," said Lochiel, "I think I am about as brave as the next one. Nevertheless, if such an adventure had happened to me, never again would I have traveled alone at night."
"Nor I either," said D'Haberville.
"To tell you the truth, gentlemen," said José, "since you are so discriminating, I will confess that my late father, who before this adventure would not have turned a hair in the graveyard at midnight, was never afterward so bold; he dared not even go alone after sunset to do his chores in the stable."
"And very sensible he was; but finish your story," said Jules.
"It is finished," said José. "My late father harnessed his horse, who appeared, poor brute, to have noticed nothing unusual, and made his way home fast as possible. It was not till a fortnight later that he told us his adventure."
"What do you say to all that, my self-satisfied skeptic who would refuse to Canada the luxury of witches and wizards?" inquired D'Haberville.
"I say," answered Archie, "that our Highland witches are mere infants compared with those of New France, and, what's more, if ever I get back to my Scottish hills, I'm going to imprison all our hobgoblins in bottles, as Le Sage did with his wooden-legged devil, Asmodeus."
"Hum-m-m!" said José. "It would serve them just right, accursed blackguards; but where would you get bottles big enough? There'd be the difficulty."
CHAPTER IV.
THE BREAKING UP OF THE ICE
On entendit du côté de la mer un bruit epouvantable, comme si des torrents d'eau, mêlés à des tonnerres, eussent roulé du haut des montagnes; tout le monde s'écria: voilà l'ouragan.
Though aged, he was so iron of limb
Few of your youths could cope with him.
Que j'aille à son secours, s'écria-t-il, ou que je meure.
Les vents et les vagues sont toujours du côté du plus habile nageur.
The travelers merrily continued their journey. The day drew to a close, and they kept on for a time by starlight. At length the moon rose and shone far over the still bosom of the Saint Lawrence. At the sight of her, Jules broke out into rhapsodies, and cried:
"I feel myself inspired, not by the waters of Hippocrene, which I have never tasted and which, I trust, I never shall taste, but by the kindly juice of Bacchus, dearer than all the fountains in the world, not even excepting the limpid wave of Parnassus. Hail to thee, fair moon! Hail to thee, thou silvern lamp, that lightest the steps of two men free as the children of our mighty forests, two men but now escaped from the shackles of college! How many times, O moon, as thy pale rays pierced to my lonely couch, how many times have I longed to break my bonds and mingle with the joyous throngs at balls and routs, while a harsh and inexorable decree condemned me to a sleep which I abhorred! Ah, how many times, O moon, have I sighed to traverse, mounted upon thy crescent at the risk of breaking my neck, the regions thou wast illuminating in thy stately course, even though it should take me to another hemisphere! Ah, how many times – "
"Ah, how many times in thy life hast thou talked nonsense!" exclaimed Archie. "But, since frenzy is infectious, listen now to a true poet, and abase thyself, proud spirit. O moon, thou of the threefold essence, thou whom the poets of old invoked as Artemis the Huntress, how sweet it must be to thee to forsake the dark realms of Pluto, and not less the forests wherein, with thy baying pack, thou raisest a din enough to deafen all the demons of Canada! How sweet it must be to thee, O moon, to journey now in tranquil dominance, in stupendous silence, the ethereal spaces of heaven! Repent of thy work, I beseech thee! Restore the light of reason to this poor afflicted one, my dearest friend, who – "
"O Phoebe, patron of fools," interrupted Jules, "not for my friend have I any prayer to make thee. Thou art all guiltless of his infirmity, for the mischief was done – "
"I say, gentlemen," exclaimed José, "when you are done your conversation with my lady moon – I don't know how you find so much to say to her – would it please you to notice what a noise they are making in St. Thomas yonder?"
All listened intently. It was the church bell pealing wildly.
"It is the Angelus," exclaimed Jules D'Haberville.
"Oh, yes," exclaimed José, "the Angelus at eight o'clock in the evening."
"Then it's a fire," said Archie.
"But we don't see any flames," answered José. "Whatever it is let's make haste. There is something unusual going on yonder."
Driving