Batoche, too, had a word with Zulma. He predicted the reward of Heaven upon her abnegation, sent remembrances to his friends, and, in most touching language, begged her to assume the care of little Blanche, to whom he bequeathed a tearful blessing. When this was accomplished, he told M. Belmont that Blanche knew the secret of his casket and would reveal it to him. Then the final separation took place. Cary and Batoche left the house together. The next morning the former had joined his companions on their retreat, while the latter lay prone on the wet grass, at the foot of the Montmorenci Falls--dead. The lion-like heart was broken. It could not survive the ruin of its hopes. XIX. FINAL QUINTET. Eight years had elapsed. It was the summer of 1784. The great war of the Revolution was over and peace had been signed. Cary Singleton, having laid down his arms, proposed to travel for rest and recuperation. His first visit was to Canada in the company of his wife, and of M. Belmont, who desired to return to Quebec, and there spend the evening of his days. Having accompanied Pauline to Maryland immediately after her recovery--which had been very protracted--he had a led a tranquil life there, but now that age was telling, and that he had no further solicitude about the safety of Cary, nostalgia came hard upon him. It is needless to say that the journey was a most agreeable one. All the old places were revisited, all the old faces that had survived were seen once more. But the chief attraction for both Cary and Pauline was Zulma and Roderick. What had become of them? The latter remained in the army for a year after the deliverance of Quebec. Carrying his great disappointment in his heart, he joined the expedition of Burgoyne, and, of course, shared its fate at Saratoga. But as Morgan was in that battle, where he caused the death of the brave English General Fraser, and Cary was with him, Roderick received at the hands of the latter the same treatment which he had extended to him, after the battle of Sault-au-Matelot. Whereas all Burgoyne's men were kept prisoners in the interior of the country, Hardinge procured his liberation through the influence of Singleton with Morgan, and returned home renouncing military pursuits forever. He retired first to his estate in the country, but the solitude became painful to him, and he took up his residence in the old capital, where one of the first persons he met was Zulma who had just returned from Paris, after an absence of a couple of years. She was an altered woman, the fire of whose spirits had died out, and who carried the burden of her loneliness as bravely as she could. But her wonderful beauty had not yet decayed. Rather was it expanded into full flower. Like Roderick, she was alone in the world, her father having died within a year after the siege of Quebec. It was only natural that these two should gradually come together, and no one will be