"What I want, is to ask you, Captain Stevens, to accompany Captains Stewart and Mercer and myself to Boston."

I shall certainly be delighted to be one of the party," Noah quickly answered, for he was all eagerness to set out for New York to pay his affianced a visit.

"And will you, Colonel Adam Stevens, be willing to assume command in my absence?"

"I will."

"Then it is all arranged, we will set out. "How soon?" asked Noah.

"Be ready to go within four days."

Accordingly, on the 4th of February, 1756, with his three companions, he set out travelling in Virginia style on horseback. The ground was covered with snow, and the horses sometimes waded through drifts above their knees. They halted a short time at Philadelphia and pushed on for New York.

The road between New York and Philadelphia was considerably travelled. Sledges and horses had frequently traversed the thoroughfare, until there was a well beaten path. At the rivers they found bold, strong boatmen ready to ferry them across the half frozen streams, which, at this season of the year, were nearly filled with floating ice. It required courage, skill and strength to cross those dangerous streams.

They were about half way between New York and Philadelphia, jogging slowly along the beaten thoroughfare. Washington and Captain Stewart rode in the advance. The sun was gleaming like a ball of ice, through a cold, weird mist, on the glittering snow. The trees along the roadside hung thick with snow and ice, and the frost flakes, blown about by a gentle breeze, floated in the air. Suddenly they discovered in advance of them a solitary man. He was on foot, and as he approached they discerned something haggard and agonizing in his features, which touched the great heart of George Washington.

The party met the traveller, and Washington, drawing rein, asked:

"Whither are you going?"

The pedestrian was a young man, but pale and haggard, his clothes faded and worn.

His eyes

betrayed a wildness almost amounting to insanity. He leaned on his long staff and answered:

"I don't know."

66

Don't know where you are going?" asked the general. "Have you no object in view?"

It only needed a glance at the dark eyes and costume, and a sound of the slightly foreign accent

for Washington, keen judge of character as he was, to determine that the stranger was not an Ameri

can.

66 To find whom?" he asked.

"Adrianne," was the answer, in a low, melancholy tone, while the head sank on the chest. They came and drove me away.

66

"Captain Stewart, this man interests me," said Washington.

"Can you not see, general, that he is a madman?" "If he be mad, there is an underlying cause to his madness."

The melancholy stranger, thinly clad as he was, seemed wholly indifferent to the intense cold. He leaned upon his staff, not even shivering as the wind played with his scanty clothing. Washington again asked:

"How long have you been travelling in this manner?"

'Since they drove us away at Grand Pre,” he answered.

"So you are an Acadian?”

He nodded his head mournfully in answer.

"Had you not better go home?-you seem ill." "Home!" he said, looking up. "I have no home now. I tried to return to Grand Pre; but she was gone, the house destroyed and only British bayonets met me everywhere. I have no home!"

At this moment Noah Stevens, with Captain George Mercer, came up. Noah, as the reader may suppose, was anxious to push on to New York, where Anne Montreville was awaiting him. When he found the general loitering away his time with a wayside beggar, the young Virginian became impatient.

"Why wait longer here?" he asked. "Let us press on to New York."

Washington turned his great blue eyes on Noah Stevens and answered:

"We have a man here worthy our sympathy, captain. Be not impatient."

"Who are you?" asked Noah.

"Jean Baptiste De Barre," the wayfarer an

swered.

"Why are you here?"

"I am searching for the maid, who, but for the bayonets of the accursed English, should have been my wife."

Surely he is mad, general," cried Noah.

"Nay, he is an Acadian, one whom General Winslow drove out of the land the 5th of last September."

"Is that true, stranger?" asked Noah Stevens. "It is."

"Where did you live in Acadia?"

"At Grand Pre."

66 And you were evicted with others?"

"With many others. You doubtless think me mad; you think me wicked because, in the land of the English, I heap curses on their heads; but, monsieur, had you suffered as I, even though the blood of the English ran thicker than wine in your veins, you would curse them. Listen; I was born at Grand Pre, in Acadia, and have all my life lived in peace. As to the quarrels of France and England, I cared naught for them. We were French in speech, blood and religion, but English by conquest. We feared not France, for we were Frenchmen, and we hoped for protection from England. Our sympathies went where our hearts were. I grew up beside the little maid that I early learned to love. Our troth was plighted, when we were children, and our love grew with our years. The day fixed for our marriage dawned bright and clear, and the skies never seemed so blue or nature so gay; but, just as we were to go to the church to wed, suddenly the accursed English came down upon us like ravenous wolves and drove me away from her. I was knocked senseless, put on board the ship and borne away. I never saw her again." "Have you had no tidings of her?"

แ "No, "he answered with a sad shake of the head. "Up and down the earth I have wandered, searching far and near, in strange lands, among