After the delay of a week, I found a vessel returning to the lower lakes, and in her I set sail for Quebec. My readers must excuse me for being thus brief in my description of my doings on shore; but it must be remembered that I am writing an account of my sea adventures, and I must defer the former to another opportunity. CHAPTER THIRTEEN. At length I reached Quebec, and hurried to the quay, where I had left the _Mary_. She was not there. I hastened to the dockyard where she was to be repaired; I made inquiries for her of everybody I met. "What, the _Mary_, Captain Dean?" replied a shipwright to whom I spoke; "why, she sailed three weeks ago and better, for the West Indies, or some of them ports to the southward--she's pretty well there by this time." I felt that he was speaking the truth, and my heart sunk within me; but to make sure, I ran on to the house at which Captain Dean and Mary had lodged. The woman, who was a French Canadian, received me very kindly, and seemed to enter into my feelings when she corroborated the account I had heard. She did not know exactly where the ship had gone; but she said that my friends were very sorry when I did not come back at the time appointed. At last Monsieur the captain grew angry, and said he was afraid I was an idle fellow, and preferred the vagabond life of a hunter to the hardier though nobler work of a seaman; but "_ma pauvre petite_," as she called Mary, took my part, and said she was certain some accident had happened to me, or I should have been back when I promised. "Sweet Mary, I knew that she would defend me," I muttered; "and yet how little do I deserve her confidence!" "Ah, she is indeed a sweet child," observed Madame Durand, divining my thoughts; "she cried very much indeed when the ship had to sail away without you, and nothing would comfort the poor dear." This information, though very flattering to me, added to my regret. I was now obliged to consider what I should next do. After the free wild life I had been leading, the idea of returning to Ireland was odious to me. I can scarcely now account for my conduct in this respect, but I had but once written home on my arrival at Quebec; and during my long excursions to the backwoods, I never had time. I was now ashamed to write--I seldom ever thought of those at home. I had sunk, I felt, from their grade, whenever I recollected them. My whole attention had been for so long occupied with the present, that the past was, as it were, a blank, or as a story which I had read in some book, and had almost forgotten. I therefore hardly for a moment thought of going back, if I did so at all; but I was anxious to fall in again with Captain Dean. I fancied the pleasures of a sea life more than those of a hunter, but I was not yet altogether tired of the backwoods. I had still a hankering to trap a few more beavers, and to shoot some more raccoons and deer.