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head of the boat pointed toward it, and they glided rapidly on.

"I see an object passing before it," cried the lieutenant, who was watching the light.'

"What is it like, Mr. Stevens?" asked one of the men at the oar.

"I cannot say, only that it is an opaque body moving about the fire, and I frequently see it obscuring the light. It seems to be a person or persons heaping fuel on a fire."

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He came to this conclusion from the great flashing blazes which shot up into the sky, as if the flames were being fed with fresh fuel. As they bore nearer, doubts gave way to certainty. man had kindled a fire as a beacon light on the shore, and no doubt with the intention to guide them to land. Was he a friend or a foe? The chances were that the builder of the beacon fire was the former and they steadily but cautiously pulled to shore. It was a rocky, dangerous shore, and the tall man came down to the water's edge to caution them. He stood on the stones near the water, holding a firebrand in each hand, directing them where to land, and in a few moments all were safely on shore.

"I feared you would be wrecked," he said, "and so I built a fire."

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Do you live here?" asked Lieutenant Stevens.

No; I am a wanderer"

"But what ails you? your head is covered with blood."

"I was wounded to-day. It is but slight," the stranger answered. "Come to my fire; it is all I have to offer you, for. food and shelter I have not known for a long time."

The stranger's voice was hoarse and unnatural from colds and long suffering. His face was partially concealed by the ragged neckcloth with which his wound was bound. The sailors gathered about the fire and regarded their host with some degree of suspicion.

"Zounds! he is an odd one," the lieutenant declared. "I cannot make him out.

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Though he offered to stand guard while they slept, they would not trust him, and one of their own number remained awake all night. The stranger who had kindled the beacon light sat apart from the others most of the time in silence, holding his wounded face, which still bled, in his hands. He occasionally gazed strangely at the officer, and several times seemed on the point of asking him some question, but did not do so.

⠀ When morning came, the remnant of the fleet could be seen several miles out in the bay. The fog rolled away and revealed the wretched condition of the English ships. The Lieutenant and

his men determined to go to them.

The stranger

of the beacon light borrowed a gun and some ammunition at daybreak to go out into the forest for game.

He had not returned, and they decided not to wait on him, so, when their benefactor returned with a fat buck on his shoulder, they were a mile away pulling toward the fleet.

"Gone! deserted again!" the wanderer groaned, and, sinking down upon the ground, he wept.

For a few days after the disaster, the fleet of Sir Hovenden Walker continued to linger about the mouth of the St. Lawrence. Then a council of war was held, and it was concluded best to abandon the expedition. The disheartened admiral returned to England with his ships, while the provincial troops were sent to Boston. Hearing of the calamity and the result, Nicholson unwillingly returned with his land force to Albany and left Montreal unmolested. Walker, after falsely charging the disaster to the incompetency of Elmer Stevens and other New England pilots, claimed credit for himself in retreating. In his correspondence with Bolingbroke, he, among other things, stated:

"Had we arrived safe at Quebec, ten or twelve thousand men must have been left to perish of cold and hunger. By the loss of a part, Providence saved all the rest."

The admiral was very much disappointed in not receiving the public honors which he thought due him for assisting Providence.

Preparations were being made by New England and other American colonies to take matters in their own hand, when in the spring of 1713, the war was ended by a treaty concluded at Utrecht, by which England obtained the privilege of being the chief trader of the world in African slaves, and received large accessions of territory from France. The eastern Indians, wearied with the war, sent delegates to Boston to sue for peace; and at Portsmouth the governors of Massachusetts and New Hampshire made a solemn treaty of amity with the chiefs of those tribes, on the 24th day of July, 1713.

Elmer Stevens had given up his brother for dead, as it was now almost ten years since he had heard of him. At the close of the war he abandoned a seafaring life, married a Boston girl and returned to Virginia to assist his father in managing his large plantation.

CHAPTER IV.

ADELE AND THE STRANGER.

O, faithful love, thy poverty embraced!
Thy heart is fire, amid a wintry waste;
Thy joys are roses, born on Hecla's brow;
Thy home is eden warm amid the snow:
And she, thy mate, when coldest blows the storm,
Clings then most fondly to thy guardian form.

-ELLIOTT.

THOUGH Acadia, by the capture of Port Royal, in 1710, became an English province, it was not, according to the strictest sense of the term, conquered. The Acadians at Grand Pre and other places preserved their language, religion and manners. They offered no physical resistance, yet they refused that obedience of the spirit, which English conquest demands.

At Grand Pre lived Monsieur De Vere hoping day by day that his countrymen would rally to the rescue of his beloved peninsula, and free them from the dominion of the hated English. He had returned shortly after the escape of the prisoner from Quebec; but so busily was he engaged with

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