who was already famed upon the frontier, and who, seven years later,
in the forests of the Monongahela, crowned a life of honor by a
soldier's death on the bloody field won from the unfortunate
Braddock, defeating an army ten times more numerous than his own.

Talking gayly with De Beaujeu were two gallant-looking young men of
a Canadian family which, out of seven brothers, lost six slain in
the service of their King--Jumonville de Villiers, who was
afterwards, in defiance of a flag of truce, shot down by order of
Colonel Washington, in the far-off forests of the Alleghenies,
and his brother, Coulon de Villiers, who received the sword of
Washington when he surrendered himself and garrison prisoners of
war, at Fort Necessity, in 1754.

Coulon de Villiers imposed ignominious conditions of surrender upon
Washington, but scorned to take other revenge for the death of his
brother. He spared the life of Washington, who lived to become the
leader and idol of his nation, which, but for the magnanimity of the
noble Canadian, might have never struggled into independence.

There stood also the Sieur de Lery, the King's engineer, charged
with the fortification of the Colony, a man of Vauban's genius in
the art of defence. Had the schemes which he projected, and vainly
urged upon the heedless Court of Versailles, been carried into
effect, the conquest of New France would have been an impossibility.

Arm in arm with De Lery, in earnest conversation, walked the
handsome Claude de Beauharnais,--brother of a former Governor of the
Colony,--a graceful, gallant-looking soldier. De Beauharnais was
the ancestor of a vigorous and beautiful race, among whose posterity