"And now, my dear Archie," continued Jules, "let us come to terms. I am a kindly potentate, and my conditions shall be most easy. To please you, I undertake, on the word of a gentleman, to diminish by one third those tricks of mine which you lack the good taste to appreciate. Come, now, you ought to be satisfied with that if you are not utterly unreasonable, for you see, my dear boy, I love you. I would not have made peace with any one else on such advantageous terms."
Lochiel could not help laughing as he shook the irrepressible lad. It was from this conversation that the friendship between the two boys took its beginning – on Archie's part with a truly Scottish restraint, on the side of Jules with the passionate warmth of which the French heart is capable.
A few weeks later, about a month before the vacation, which began then on the 15th of August, Jules seized his friend's arm and whispered:
"Come into my room. I have just had a letter from father which concerns you."
"Concerns me!" exclaimed the other in astonishment.
"Why are you surprised?" retorted D'Haberville. "Do you think you are not of sufficient importance for any one to concern himself about you? Why, all New France is talking about the handsome Scotchman. The mammas, fearing your influence on the inflammable hearts of their daughters, talk seriously of petitioning our principal never to let you appear in public except with a veil on, like the women of the East."
"Come, stop your fooling, and let me go on with my reading."
"But I am very much in earnest," said Jules. And, dragging his friend along with him, he read him part of a letter from his father, which ran as follows:
"What you tell me about your young friend, Master de Lochiel, interests me very much. I grant your request with the greatest pleasure. Give him my compliments, and beg him to come and spend his next vacation with us, and all his vacations so long as he is attending college. If he does not consider this invitation sufficiently formal, I will write to him myself. His father sleeps upon a glorious field. Soldiers are brothers everywhere; so should their sons be likewise. Let him come to our own hearth-stone, and our hearts shall open to him as to one of our own blood."
Archie was so affected by the warmth of this invitation that for some moments he could not answer.
"Come, my haughty Scotlander, will you do us the honor?" said his friend. "Or must my father send, on a special embassy, his chief butler, José Dubé, with the bagpipes slung on his back in the form of a St. Andrew's cross – as is the custom, I believe, among your Highland chiefs – to present you his invitation with all due formality?"
"As, fortunately, I am no longer in my Highlands," said Archie, laughing, "we can dispense with these formalities. I shall write at once to Captain D'Haberville, and thank him with my whole heart for his noble generosity to the exiled orphan."
"Then, let us speak reasonably for once," said Jules, "if only for the novelty of the thing. You think me very light, silly, and scatter-brained. I acknowledge that there is a little of all that in me, which does not prevent me from being in earnest more often than you think. I have long been seeking a friend, a true and high-hearted friend. I have watched you very closely, and I find you all I could wish. Lochiel, will you be my friend?"
"Without a moment's question, my dear boy," answered Archie, "for I have always felt strongly attracted toward you."
"Well, then," cried Jules, grasping his hand warmly, "it is for life and death with us Lochiel!"
Thus, between a boy of twelve and a boy of fourteen, was ratified a friendship which in the sequel will be exposed to the crudest tests.
"Here's a letter from mother," said Jules, "in which there is a word for you":
"I hope your friend, Master de Lochiel, will do us the pleasure of accepting your father's invitation. We are all eager to meet him. His room is ready, alongside of your own. In the box which José will hand you there is a parcel for him which he would grieve me greatly by refusing. In sending it I am thinking of the mother he has lost."
The box contained equal shares for the two boys of cakes, sweetmeats, jams, and other dainties.
The friendship between the two boys grew stronger day by day. They became inseparable. Their college-mates dubbed them variously Damon and Pythias, Orestes and Pylades, Nisus and Euryalus. At last they called them the brothers.
All the time Lochiel was at college he spent his vacations with the D'Habervilles, who made no difference between the two boys unless to lavish the more marked attentions upon the young Scotchman who had become as it were a son of the house. It was most natural, then, that Archie, before sailing for Europe, should accompany Jules on his farewell visit to his father's house.
The friendship between the two young men, as we have already said, is destined to be put to the bitterest trial, when that code of honor which has been substituted by civilization for the truest sentiments of the human heart, shall come to teach them the obligations of men who are fighting under hostile flags. But why anticipate the dark future? Have they not enjoyed during almost ten years of college life the passing griefs, the little jealousies, the eager pleasures, the differences and ardent reconciliations which characterize a boyish friendship?
CHAPTER II.
A NIGHT WITH THE SORCERERS
Angels and ministers of grace, defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damned,
Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from hell.
Ecoute comme les bois crient. Les hiboux fuient épouvantés… Entends-tu ces voix dans les hauteurs, dans le lointain, ou près de nous?.. Eh! oui! la montagne retentit, dans toute sa longueur, d'un furieux chant magique.
Lest bogles catch him unawares…
Where ghaits and howlets nightly cry…
When out the hellish legion sallied.
As soon as our young travelers, crossing the St. Lawrence opposite Quebec, have reached Point Lévis, José makes haste to harness a splendid Norman horse into one of those low sledges which furnish the only means of transport at this season, when the roads are only covered here and there with snow or ice, and when overflowing streams intercept the way at intervals. When they come to one of these obstacles José unharnesses the horse, all three mount, and the brook is speedily forded. It is true that Jules, who clasps José around the waist, tries every now and then to throw him off, at the risk of partaking with him the luxury of a bath at a little above zero. He might as well have tried to throw Cape Tourmente into the St. Lawrence. José, who, in spite of his comparatively small stature, is as strong as an elephant, laughs in his sleeve and pretends not to notice it. The brook forded, José goes back for the sledge, reharnesses the horse, climbs into the sledge with the baggage in front of him lest he should get it wet, and speedily overtakes his fellow-travelers, who have not halted a moment in their march.
Thanks to Jules, the conversation never flags during the journey. Archie does nothing but laugh over the witticisms that Jules perpetrates at his expense. He has long given up attempting any retort.
"We must hurry," exclaimed D'Haberville; "it is thirty-six miles from here to St. Thomas. My uncle De Beaumont takes supper at seven. If we get there too late, we shall probably make a poor meal. The good things will be all gobbled up. You know the proverb, tarde venientibus ossa."
"Scotch hospitality is proverbial," exclaimed Archie. "With us the welcome is the same day or night. That is the cook's business."
"Verily,"