Grace Malherb proved such a listener as sailors love. She had not imbibed many of her father's prejudices, and was too full of the delight of life on one side, its personal problems and puzzles on the other, to concern herself with politics or abstract ideas touching the welfare of nations. Cecil Stark did what Grace's father was powerless to do, and wakened in her an active interest concerning war. She listened attentively while he rose to the occasion and, inspired by her advertance, painted with all an earnest lad's enthusiasm the cause for which he fought. She watched from under lowered lids, and while he fancied that her heart must throb to the cannon's roar or the crash of falling spars, she was either comparing his powerful face with the more delicate and more classic features of her lover, or contrasting the fire of the fighting man with the dreamy disposition of John Lee. But John Lee would presently be a fighting man also. Little basenesses crept into the soul of poor Grace under this ordeal. By night she wept bitterly at herself and marvelled to behold her own meanness. She found herself secretly thankful that Cecil Stark knew nothing of her engagement; then, heartily ashamed, she probed this instinct, and imagined that it must be caused by the American's superiority of position and of rank. In reality she erred and the truth was far different; but this the girl had not as yet discovered. Her misery was extreme, and she blamed herself bitterly when she reflected how much of her thoughts the American prisoner already owned. Indeed, all other concerns swept headlong into a remote, unimportant past. And it was so with the man; for his first love now lighted life with wild, unrestful glory. Of the maiden's heart, indeed, he knew nothing, but, impelled to do so by a vague hope as to the future, he had made a clean breast of his own affairs and dwelt egotistically upon them. Not seldom Mr. Peter Norcot's former assertion clouded those moments in which Stark had sense to pause and reflect, yet the other's name was never mentioned by Grace, and he began presently to hope that the wish was father to Peter's thought and declaration. There seemed no evidence that Miss Malherb's future was already determined. The sailor's ambitions Grace admired with enthusiasm; his splendid future, his prospective flocks and herds, lands and homesteads beside the Champlain, attracted her less keenly. But more topics than one made the girl's eyes sparkle as he spoke of them. "You are such a Diana that you'd love Vermont," Cecil once said. "Our folks, however, hunt for business rather than sport. We had moose, deer, bears, foxes and wolves once, and peltry was the great business of the trappers and pioneers. Even yet our furs fetch near two thousand pounds every year; but the beasts are being killed faster than Nature can restore them. They will soon vanish."