The forenoon thus wore away. The sky kept on thickening and lowering until it broke into a snow-storm. A light east wind arose, and the white flakes tossed and whirled, blotting out the lines of the horizon. The heights of Levis melted in the distance, the bed of the river was surmounted by a wall of vapor, and the tall rock of the citadel wavered like a curtain of gauze. What a delicious sense of isolation is produced by an abundant snowfall. It hems you in from all the world. You extend your hand feeling for your neighbor, and you touch nothing but a palpable mist. You raise your face to the heavens, and the soft touch of the flossy drops makes you close your eyes as in a dream. The great crowd in the Square was thus broken into indistinct groups, and its mighty rumor dwindled to a murmur in the heavy atmosphere. But all the same the expectant and anxious multitude was there, and its numbers were continually increasing. Women, wrapped in scarfs or muffled in hoods, now added to its volume. Priests from the neighboring Seminary, in shovel hats, Roman collars, and long black cloaks, quietly edged their way through the masses. And the irrepressible small boy, the very same a hundred years ago as he is to-day, dashed in and out, from the centre of the crowd to its circumference, intent upon seeing and hearing everything, yet blissfully incurious of the dread secret of all this gathering. Suddenly there was a movement in the centre of the Square. The concentric circles of people felt it successively till it rippled to the very outskirts of the assemblage. Everybody inquired of his neighbor what had happened. "Two men are fighting," said one. "A woman has fallen into a fit," said another. "Old Boniface is glancing a jig," said a third. Whereupon there was a laugh, for Boniface was a mountebank of La Canardiere, famous in the city and all the country side. "A Bastonnais prisoner has just been brought in," said a fourth. At this a serious interest was manifested. A Bastonnais prisoner meant an American prisoner. The expedition of Arnold was known to have started from Boston. Hence its members were called Bostonese. Bastonnais is a rustic corruption for the French Bostonnais, and the corruption has extended to our day. The whole American invasion is still known among French Canadians as _la guerre des Bastonnais_. There is always a certain interest attached to national solecisms, and we have retained this one. "It is none of any of these things," said a grave old gentleman, who was working his way out of the crowd with a scared look. "What is it?" asked several voices at once. "One of our own citizens has been arrested." "Arrested! arrested!" "Well, if he is not arrested, he is at least summoned to the Chateau." "Who is it?" "M. Belmont." "What! the father of our nationality, the first citizen of Quebec? It cannot be."