remnant, but they were animated with the spirit of a conquering
army. With many a hearty wring of the hand and fervent "God bless
you!" and, not without eyes suffused with tears, they took their
leave of one another, and fared forth on their lonely ways to
their remote and arduous fields of toil.




CHAPTER II.

THE EVE OF BATTLE.


The next scene of our story opens on the eve of an eventful day in
the annals of Canada. About sunset in an October afternoon,
Neville Trueman reached The Holms, after a long and weary ride
from the western end of his circuit, which reached nearly to the
head of Lake Ontario. The forest was gorgeous in its autumnal
foliage, like Joseph in his coat of many colours. The corn still
stood thick, in serried ranks, in the fields, no longer plumed and
tasseled like an Indian chief, but rustling, weird-like, as an
army of spectres in the gathering gloom. The great yellow pumpkins
gleamed like huge nuggets of gold in some forest Eldorado. The
crimson patches of ripened buckwheat looked like a blood-stained
field of battle: alas! too true an image of the deeper stains
which were soon to dye the greensward of the neighbouring height.

The change from the bleak moor, over which swept the chill north
wind from the lonely lake, to the genial warmth of Squire