It was scarcely five o'clock in the morning when Jules, who slept like a cat, shouted to Lochiel in the next room that it was high time they were up; but as the latter would make no response, Jules took the surest way of arousing him by getting up himself. Arming himself with a towel dipped in cold water, he entered his friend's bedroom and squeezed the icy fluid in his face. In spite of his aquatic inclinations, Archie found this attention very little to his taste; he snatched the towel, rolled it into a ball, and hurled it at Jules's head. Then he turned over and was preparing to go to sleep again, when Jules snatched off all the bed-clothes. It looked as if the fortress, in this extremity, had nothing to do but surrender at discretion; but the garrison, in the person of Lochiel, was more numerous than the besieging force in the person of Jules, and, shaking the latter fiercely, he asked if sleeping was forbidden at D'Haberville Manor. He was even proceeding to hurl the besieger from the ramparts when Jules, struggling in his adversary's mighty arms, begged him to listen a moment before inflicting such a disgrace upon a future soldier of France. "What have you to say for yourself, you wretched boy?" exclaimed Archie, now thoroughly awake. Is it not enough for you that all day long you give me no peace, but even in the night you must come and torment me?" "I am grieved, indeed," said Jules, "at having interrupted your slumbers; but as our folk have to set up another May-pole at the place of Bélanger of the Cross, a good mile and a half from here, they intend to present my father with his at six o'clock; and if you don't want to lose any of the ceremony it is time for you to dress. I declare, I thought everybody was like myself, wrapped up in everything that can bring us more in touch with our _habitants_. I do not know anything that moves me more than this sympathy between my father and his tenants, between our family and these brave lads; moreover, as my adopted brother, you will have your part to play in the approaching spectacle." As soon as the young men had finished dressing, they passed from their room to one which looked out on the yard, where a lively scene met their view. There were at least a hundred _habitants_ scattered about in groups. With their long guns, their powder-horns suspended from the neck, their tomahawks stuck in the girdle, their inseparable axes, they looked less like peaceful tillers of the soil than a band of desperadoes ready for a foray.