About three o'clock in the morning a sleigh drew up at the door of a large square house in a retired street. Two men issued from it, one middle-aged, erect and dressed in rather costly furs; the other old, thin and arrayed like an Indian hunter, with a large fox-skin cap on his head. As they stepped across the footpath from the sleigh to the front steps of the mansion, a tall muffled figure stalked slowly on the other side of the street. "It is the Governor," whispered the younger man to his companion. "I know his stature and carriage! Let us enter." "I wonder what Belmont is doing out at this unseasonable hour," muttered the tall man in the folds of his cloak. And he walked on, while the door of the mansion closed with a thud upon the two sleighmen. * * * * * It was five o'clock on the morning of the 10th November, 1775. The first faint light of the morning was touching the tops of the far mountains. The air was frosty, with indications of snow. Two men stood at an angle of the ramparts, on the highest point of the citadel of Quebec. They were looking eastward. "See, Lieutenant," said one pointing his gloved hand across the river. "Ay, there they are, Your Excellency, issuing from the woods and ascending the hill," replied the other. "They are _on_ the hill, swarming up in hundreds," rejoined the Governor. Cramahe pressed the hand of Hardinge, and the two descended rapidly but silently into the city. On their way, they heard the confused mutter of the streets: "The Bastonnais have come!" Yes, there they were. Arnold's men stood like a spectral army on the Heights of Levis. END OF BOOK THE FIRST. BOOK II. THE THICKENING OF THE CLOUDS. I. ZULMA SARPY. It was a damp bleak morning, and the snow was falling fast. Zulma Sarpy sat in her bedroom, indolently stretched upon a rocking chair before a glowing fire. She was attired in a white morning dress, or _peignoir_, slightly unbuttoned at the collar, and revealing the glories of a snowy columnar neck, while the hem, negligently raised, displayed two beautiful slippered feet half buried in the plush of a scarlet cushion. Her abundant yellow hair, thrown back in banks of gold over the forehead and behind the rosy ears, was gathered in immense careless coils behind her head and kept in position by a towering comb of pearl. Her two arms were raised to the level of her head, and the two hands held on languidly to the ivory knobs at the top of the chair. On the second finger of the left hand was a diamond ring that flashed like a star. The whole position of the lovely lounger brought out her grand bust into full relief.