CHAPTER XVI

The fight was over. The childish struggle against misrule had come to a
childish end. The little toy loyalists had been broken all to pieces. A
few thousand Frenchmen, with a vague patriotism, had shied some harmless
stones at the British flag-staff on the citadel: that was all. Obeying
the instincts of blood, religion, race, and language, they had made a
haphazard, sidelong charge upon their ancient conquerors, had spluttered
and kicked a little, and had then turned tail upon disaster and defeat.
An incoherent little army had been shattered into fugitive factors, and
every one of these hurried and scurried for a hole of safety into which
he could hide. Some were mounted, but most were on foot.

Officers fared little better than men. It was "Save who can": they were
all on a dead level of misfortune. Hundreds reached no cover, but were
overtaken and driven back to British headquarters. In their terror,
twenty brave rebels of two hours ago were to be captured by a single
British officer of infantry speaking bad French.

Two of these hopeless fugitives were still fortunate enough to get a
start of the hounds of retaliation and revenge. They were both mounted,
and had far to go to reach their destination. Home was the one word in
the mind of each; and they both came from Bonaventure.

The one was a tall, athletic young man, who had borne a captain's
commission in Papineau's patriot army. He rode a sorel horse--a great,
wiry raw-bone, with a lunge like a moose, and legs that struck the ground
with the precision of a piston-rod. As soon as his nose was turned