In the streets, he felt as if he had been suddenly transported to a new world. The one night's trip across the Channel, between coasts in sight of each other, had wrought a greater transformation in his surroundings than the five weeks' voyage across the Atlantic had produced. The spareness, alertness, fussiness, and excessive politeness of the people was as great a contrast to the characteristics of the rubicund Britons he had been among a day ago, as he could have imagined. The jabbering of the people, though, was not entirely strange to his ears; he had heard its like from the _habitans_ of Canada. Nor was the ubiquity of soldiers and priests new to eyes that had seen Quebec and its environs. Yet the tall, straight, carefully powdered French soldiers that he saw as he walked near the fortifications, little resembled the stout, well-fed English troops he had faced at Bunker Hill. Now and then he could recognize in the crowd, at a glance, some round, red, contented-looking English face; and, when two of these passed together, it was a pleasure to Dick to hear the English words that fell from either mouth. As he was approaching one of the best hotels of the place, Dick got a rear view of a gentleman standing before it, from whose broad back and solid-looking legs Dick would have sworn him to be an Englishman. Dick observed that this gentleman was looking at a pretty girl at an upper window of a house across the street. Himself gazing at the same object, he bumped heavily against the gentleman in passing. "Damme," cried the gentleman, in a robust voice, "must you frog-eaters be always tumbling over people, because you have no footways in your cursed streets?" And he glared indignantly into the face of Dick, who had stopped and was inspecting him. "I don't happen to be a Frenchman, and I agree with you in cursing the lack of footways," said Dick. "How have you fared since we met--and parted--at the Pelican at Newbury, Sir Hilary?" "Eh? Sir Hilary? Pelican? Why, who the devil--By the lord, 'tis the gentleman that offered to pay the landlord, so we might all get away betimes! Welcome, sir! By your looks, I can guess you're like some others of us on this side the Channel,--you've had your own reasons to try the air of France! Well, by George, you shall keep me company awhile! You shall come in, and break a bottle with me, sir,--half a dozen bottles, damme! And after that you shall be my guest. Come in! I won't hear you say no! God save the King, and huzza for old England!" And, having capped these patriotic exclamations with a defiant look around at the French passers-by, the exiled Berkshire fox-hunter caught hold of Dick, who had not the slightest intention of saying no, and hustled him cordially into the inn. CHAPTER XV. AN ELOPEMENT FROM A DILIGENCE.