“You forget, Colonel, that speech and origin are not the strongest elements in national sentiment. You meet a woman with a big man supporting her and bearing himself as if he were proud of her, and you wonder at it, and say the man could find plenty whose faces are pleasanter to look upon and which indicate more intelligence. The man will admit all that, but he tells you the woman is his mother, and to him she is better and more beautiful than all the women in the world beside. In the same way, the British government may be inferior in some points to your new Republic, may have made mistakes in the past, and might be better in some regards, but then she is the mother of the Canadians, and they will not desert her for bouncing Miss Columbia.” “That won’t do, Morton; you forget that the British government was once, as you term it, our mother also.” “I did not forget that, and I hope I will not offend you, Colonel, by saying that for that very cause the Canadians dislike Americans. You turned upon your mother, you strove to compass her humiliation; the very base of your patriotic feeling is hatred of her.” “That is putting it strong, Morton.” “I think not; the preamble of your declaration of independence is a tirade of gratuitous charges against Great Britain.” “Then you think Canada will never unite with the Republic?” “I certainly think so, and those who live to see it, will find two great English-speaking communities on this continent, with this radical difference between them, that one reviles and seeks to injure the mother-land from which they sprung and the other succors and honors her.” A commotion in front stopped the conversation and two scouts were seen dragging an old man between them towards the Colonel. “What’s this?” he asked sharply. “We have taken a prisoner!” cried one of the men in an exulting voice. “The divil take you,” interrupted the old man with contentious manner. “Yees had no business wid me.” “We found him hiding behind some brush watching our men. He is a spy,” said the scout. “Behind some brush! An’ whose brush was it? Me own, bedad.” “You had no business there.” “No business to be on my own farrum! Bad scran to ye, if I had yees in Wixford I’d get the constable to arrist every man o’ yees for trispass.” “Come, hold your tongue,” said a scout roughly. “Hould yer own whisht. Ye havn’t mended yer manners since I saw yer backs at Brandywine.” Col. Vanderberg smiled as he said to the scouts, “I am afraid you have been too hasty. We are now in Canada and must not molest its inhabitants. The old man is a non-combatant, and, as he declares, was on his own farm when taken.” “If you had seen him kick and scratch and wriggle when we put hands upon him, you wouldn’t say he was a non-combatant, Colonel. He swore at the United States and said he kept one of our flags for his pocket-handkerchief.” “Tut, tut,” exclaimed the Colonel, “we have not come to fight old men; let him go.”