He struck into a sharp gallop, his bright head above the dark blue military cloak forming a picturesque feature in the woodland, and the flying heels of his spirited horse seeming to add a rattling chorus of applause to his patriotic sentiments. The old retainer ambled along in his wake, but more slowly. His idea of the beautiful was not quite so recklessly defiant. Presently, for he was still jaded from the effects of his long journey on the previous day, he relaxed his attempt at speed, and soon lost sight of his companion altogether. The vision of waving cloak and flying steed vanished in the green aisles of the forest.
Along the Oak Ridges—situate some thirty miles from York—which the two horsemen now neared, a Huguenot settlement had been formed about the close of the eighteenth century. The settlers were French officers of the noblesse order, who, during the French Revolution, when the royalist cause became desperate, emigrated to England, thence to Canada, where, by the bounty of the Crown, they were given grants of land in this portion of the Province of Upper Canada. Here many of these emigres had made clearings on the Ridges, and reared chateaux for themselves and their households after the manner of their ancestral homes in Languedoc and Brittany. Into the grounds of one of these mansions had the younger horseman disappeared to pay his hurried respects to the stately dame who was its owner, and who, with her fair daughter, were intimate friends of the Macleod family.
Almost before the old man had time to wonder what mad freak had kept his young master so long from the beaten road, he was at his side again.
"I have been trying to get a glimpse of my little friend, Helene," he said, in explanation of his absence, "but the DeBerczy mansion is as empty as a church on Monday. They still go to Lake Simcoe in summer, I suppose. But what does this early flight portend?"
"It was caused solely by the serious nature of your mother's illness.
Madame and Mademoiselle have been now five weeks at 'Bellevue.'"
The young man's face darkened, or rather lost the brightness that habitually played upon it, like gleams of sunshine on a stream, which, when disappearing, show the depth of the tide beneath.
"You would scarcely know the young lady now," continued Tredway. "The difference between fifteen and eighteen is the difference between childhood and womanhood."
"I suppose she has grown like a young forest tree, and holds her graceful head almost as high."
"She is well grown, and very beautiful, but not bewitching like your sister Rose."
"Ah! dear little Rose! But she, too, I doubt not, is a bud no longer. It's odd how much easier it is for a girl to be a woman than for a boy to become a man." There was something vaguely suggestive of regret in the gesture with which young Macleod lightly brushed his short upper lip, whose hirsute adornment was not, in its owner's estimation, all that it ought to have been. "I was twenty-one last winter. Do I look very young?" he inquired, with the natural anxiety of a man who has recently escaped the ignominy of being in his teens.
"You look altogether too young," dryly returned the ancient servitor, "to appreciate the worth of a country where old customs, old ideas, and old traditions are respected."
"Then may youth always be mine!" exclaimed Edward, looking round him with the glow in his heart, sure to be felt by the devout worshipper of Nature in the large and beautiful presence of her whom he adores. The region about him, esteemed the epitome of dreariness in winter, held now in its depths a vast luxury of vegetation. The wild vines ran knotted and twisted about the trunks and branches of multitudinous trees, and the fallen logs were draped with moss, lichens, and delicate ferns. Passing through this boundless wilderness, they seemed to look into a succession of woodland chambers, thickly carpeted with wild flowers, gorgeously festooned with creeping and parasitical plants hanging from the branches, and secured in their leafy seclusion by walls of abundant foliage. In one of these natural parlours they paused for their mid-day repast—mid-day in the world without, but here, where only vagrant gleams of the spring sun pierced the forest solitudes, gloomy with spruce and pine, there was a sense of morning in the air. This appearance was heightened by the delicate curtains of cobweb, strung with shining pearls, which still might be seen after the fog at early dawn. There was no sound except sometimes that of an invisible bird, singing in the upper air, or when a partridge, roused by approaching steps, started from the hollow, and rapidly whirring away directly before them was again startled into flight when they overtook it.
The road they followed cut straight through the forest, and, disdaining to enclose the hills in graceful curves, attacked and surmounted them in the direct fashion common to our forefathers, when they encountered obstacles of any serious nature. The absence of human sight or voice gave a strangeness to the sound of their own utterances, and there were frequent lapses into that sad silence which fell upon them as naturally as the gloom from the overshadowing boughs above. The old attendant who viewed every member of the family whom he served and loved just as the first man regarded the world at his first glimpse of it—that is, as an extension of his own consciousness—was deeply moved at the sight of his young master's sombre face. Edward's heart, indeed, ached painfully. The perpetual repetition of this luxuriance of young fresh life in the woods of May was a constant reminder of a life that until lately had been as vigorously beautiful, and now perhaps had passed away from this world forever.
Leaving their weary horses at Holland Landing, they took boat down the river and bay, desiring to hasten their arrival at the family mansion, nearly opposite to what is now the prettily situated town of Barrie. Edward sat apart and gazed long and silently at the waving tree lines, dark against a luminous, cool, gray sky, with its scattered but serene group of clouds. All his desire for home and for her who was the sunshine of it had resolved itself into a yearning that gnawed momentarily at his heart. Instead of the fair sky and landscape and silent waterways of his New World home, he saw or rather felt, the hush of a dim chamber, whose wasted occupant had travelled far into the valley of the shadow of death. His wet eyes, looking abroad upon the outer world, were as the eyes of those who see not. The afternoon sunshine paled and thinned, but beneath the chill of the spring day there lay a warm hint of the untold tenderness of midsummer. Unconsciously to himself the prophecy brought a feeling of comfort to his heart, in its reminder of the glory of that summer to which his mother might even now be passing—"the glory that was to be revealed."
It was early twilight when Edward Macleod reached his beautiful home overlooking Kempenfeldt Bay. The broad, solid-built house, with its commanding position, and spacious verandas, seemed just such a mansion as an old naval officer, who was reduced to the insipid necessity of a life on shore, would choose to dwell in. One might almost be tempted to call it a fine piece of marine architecture, in some of its fanciful reminders of an ocean vessel. Its solitariness, its pointed turrets and gables, its proud position on what might be termed the topmost wave of earth in that region, the flying flag at its summit, and the ample white curtains that fluttered sail-like in the open windows, all heightened the resemblance. From its portal down to the bay, extended a noble avenue of hardwood trees—oak, walnut and elm—never planted by the hand of man. Their gracious lives the woodman had spared, and now, with their outstretched branches, catching the faint evening breeze, they seemed to breathe a sad benediction upon the returning youth, who walked hurriedly and tremblingly beneath them.
As he stepped from their leafy shadow upon the sunset-gilded lawn, he was startled by an apparition which seemed suddenly to take shape from a sweet-scented thicket of lilacs now in profuse bloom at the rear of the house. A dark, lissome creature, beautiful as a young princess, but a princess in the disguise of a savage, darted past him. So sudden was the appearance, and so swift the flight of this dusky Diana, speeding through the blossoming shrubs of spring, that his mind retained only a general impression of a face, perfect-featured and olive-tinted, and a form robed in a brilliant and barbarous admixture of scarlet, yellow, and very dark blue.
But the next moment every sensation and emotion gave way to overwhelming and profound grief, for his sister Rose, hurrying to meet him, threw herself into his arms with an abandon of sorrow that seemed