“Something to be restored to the sender when he gets out of the trap, that he may bestow it on somebody else.” “I swear I never cared for anybody else.” “Who asked you? If you must needs confess, you should have visited the fathers at the Basin on your way here.” “I’m Puritan enough to desire to confess direct to the one I have offended.” “So you have offended me!” “You know I care for you.” “How should I? From your many messages these last twenty months?” Morton felt vexed and Maggie observed and enjoyed his perplexity. “Come,” she said, “it is wearing on to dinner-time and I know what soldiers’ appetites are. We had some soldier visitors who left us nothing. We will go home.” “Not until I have said what I want to tell you,” he said warmly. “Oh, you have something to tell me! You must have. Soldiers and hunters have always long stories to tell about themselves. Keep them until you have had some of our backwoods fare.” “Tease me no more, Maggie; my heart is yours whether you accept it or not. That I have been neglectful and ungrateful I confess. How much I owe you I did not know until some months after I saw you.” “You owe me nothing.” “I owe you my life.” “You owe it to Hemlock; not to me.” “I know all, brave heart. I met Mrs Scott at Kingston and she told me of your journey to Oka, but for which Hemlock would never have known of my peril. As she spoke, the smouldering love I had for you burst into flame and your image has never been absent from my mind an hour since. When my comrades caroused and spoke loosely, I thought of you and turned away and tried to live worthily of you.” “You know how to praise yourself.” “No, no, my Maggie: I speak it not in praise of myself but in proof of my devotion, for how can a man show his love for a woman better than by forcing himself to live as he knows she would wish him to do?” “And if you so loved this somebody of yours, why did you not write her?” “You forget a soldier’s life is uncertain; I knew not the hour when I might fall. I said to myself a thousand times, if my life is spared I will seek her I love and plead my cause. When the bugle sounded the call to prepare for action I never failed to breathe an ardent prayer that Heaven’s blessing might rest upon you. I have been spared, the supreme hour in my life has come, and I await your answer.” Maggie stood still. Her eyes fell to the ground and her fingers unconsciously plucked to pieces the flowers they held. “Will you not speak?” pleaded Morton. In a low voice she replied, “I cannot marry.” “Why?” “I will never leave my father.” “I do not ask you should. I value his honest worth, and he shall be my father too, for I never saw my own, he died when I was a child. Say you will make me the happiest man on the Chateaugay and we will never part.” “I say it is time to go and get dinner ready. Father, poor man, will be starving. Mr Morton, did you ever hoe potatoes for a forenoon?” “Nonsense; speak the word and end my anxiety.”