of maternal solicitude a smart box on the ear. And if the cat did not say "Quelle barbarie!" with an approved French accent, we all know that she thought it.

[10]

"So much better for the soul's health than swearing," Hamish was wont to say, when Odalie showed signs of considering the phrase a bit of ridicule of her and her Frenchy forbears.

Her grandfather had been a Huguenot refugee, driven out of his country by the religious persecution about the time of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, seventy odd years previously. Her father had prospered but indifferently in the more[11] civilized section of the New World, and had died early. There his daughter had met her young Scotchman, who was piqued by her dainty disdain of his French accent, which MacLeod had recklessly placed on exhibition, and was always seeking to redeem the impression, finally feeling that he must needs improve it by having a perfect Mentor at hand. He had brought from the land of his birth, which he had quitted in early years, but few distinctive local expressions, yet a certain burr clung to his speech, and combined as incongruously as might be with his French accent. She evidently considered the latter incurable, intolerable, and always eyed him, when he spoke in that language, with ostentatious wonder that such verbal atrocities could be, and murmured gently in lieu of reply—"Quelle barbarie!" He found his revenge in repeating a similar slogan, one that had often been as a supplement to this more usual phrase,—"Partons pour la France aujourd'hui, pour l'amour de Dieu!" It had been urged by her grandmother in moments of depression, and Odalie, born and reared in the royal province of South Carolina, had always the logic and grace to wince at this ungrateful aspiration to return to France,—the dear France that had been so much too hot to hold them. For the family had rejoiced to escape thence with their lives, even at the forfeiture of all that they possessed.[12]

[11]

[12]

This jesting warfare of words had become established in the MacLeod household, and often recurred, sometimes with a trifle of acrimony. Little they thought how significant it was to be and how it should serve them in their future lives.

The sun was going down. Far, far purple mountains, that they might never have seen but for that great clifty gateway, were bathed in the glory of the last red suffusion of the west; the evening star of an unparalleled whiteness pulsated in the 

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