Marie Gourdon | Page 5

make enough to keep body and soul together. Perhaps one of the most sensible things he ever did was to marry Eugenie Laforge, the daughter of the mayor of Rimouski. She was a pretty girl, and had a nice little fortune, for money went further in those days than it does now; and thus the McAllisters were fairly well to do.
Their life for ten years was a happy, uneventful one, most of it spent by the colonel in writing an account of Prince Charlie's adventures. This unfortunate young man, I need hardly remind the reader, had long ago, in the dissipations of various European courts, forgotten that there still existed such a person as Ivan McAllister.
True, the colonel did give certain spare hours to the education of his son, but the Prince was ever first in his mind. One morning,--strangely enough, the anniversary of the battle of Culloden--Ivan McAllister died quietly after a few hours' illness. Even at the last he was true to his idol, for his parting words were not addressed to wife or child, but it seemed that memory, bridging over the gulf of years, brought him back to the old days, and there was something very pathetic in his dying words: "Oh, my Prince, my bonnie Prince, I shall see you soon!"
He was buried, according to a wish he had expressed some years before, in the churchyard of Rimouski, and at the head of his grave was placed a roughly hewn cross, bearing on it this inscription: "Here lies Ivan McAllister, Colonel, of the 200th Regiment of Highlanders, second son of The McAllister of Dunmorton Castle Fife, Scotland. R. I. P."
In his later days Ivan McAllister had, under the influence of the curé of Rimouski, become a devout Roman Catholic.
His son inherited his little savings, and lived on at the farm, situated between Father Point and Rimouski, and the McAllisters continued there from father to son up to the year 1877, when my story opens.
Madame McAllister, sitting at the doorstep this summer afternoon was the widow of a Robert McAllister, who had died two years ago, leaving one son, a promising young man of three-and-twenty. Just now she was waiting for the home-coming of her son No?l, who had been absent on a long fishing expedition to the north shore of the St. Lawrence.
Suddenly the old lady lifted her head, for her quick ear heard the sound of an approaching footstep. She rose hurriedly, as her son drew near, and cried out in her pretty French voice: "Oh, No?l, my son, is that you?--is it indeed you? How long you have been away! and, oh! how I have missed you! No?l, my son, it is good to see you again."
"Yes, my mother, it is I. We landed at Father Point early this morning. We have had such good sport, and very hard work. I am hungry, though, my mother, for the walk up to Rimouski gave me an appetite."
"Yes, my son, you must be. For three days, at this hour I have had a meal prepared for you, and yet you did not come. I was beginning to get anxious, though the Gulf is like glass, and the curé said there were no signs of a storm. To-night also your supper awaits you, so come in."
The old lady led the way into the house, which was small, but exquisitely neat and well kept. The first apartment, which opened from a tiny hall, served as sitting and dining room. Like most other French Canadian houses, Madame McAllister's was carpeted in all the rooms with a rag carpet of three colors--red, white and blue. This carpeting is extensively woven by the good nuns at Rimouski Convent, and is pretty and effective, besides having the advantage of being cheap.
On the walls of Madame McAllister's sitting room hung the inevitable pictures of the Good St. Anne, the mother of the Blessed Virgin, and of Pope Pius IX. Indeed, it would be difficult to find a house in the district which did not possess one or more of these engravings.
Through a half-opened door could be seen a glimpse of madame's bedroom--a dainty interior. The wooden floor was snowy white, with here and there a bright-colored mat spread on it; the brown roughly-hewn bedstead was covered with a quilt of palest pink and blue patchwork, the patient result of the old lady's years of industrious toil.
Madame McAllister busied herself getting supper ready, all the while talking to her son.
"Well, No?l, my son, what did you get this time? I trust a great quantity."
"Yes, my mother, we did very well. The first day we captured a fine porpoise, and after that six large seals."
"Ah! that was good," replied madame.
Both mother and son spoke French in the Lower Canadian patois, rather puzzling to English