One day, after he had been at the hostelry upwards of five years, the stage deposited at this log hotel an officer from the army of old France. He was every inch a soldier in dress, in looks and action. Having partaken of his dinner, he called the landlord to his side and asked if he had ever met a man of such and such a description. Now, to the landlord’s infinite surprise, the description this officer gave minutely corresponded with the mysterious stranger, but well knowing that the man had ever studiously avoided being recognized, he repudiated any knowledge of any such person. In the evening when the man returned he told him of the French officer and the enquiries he had made. He answered not a word, but ate his supper and retired to his room. On the following morning, when the stage came along, going in the direction whence the French officer came, and in the opposite way to which he was bound, our strange guest came out of his room and asked to have his trunks strapped on the stage. With as few words as possible he paid all his reckonings with the landlord, quietly bade him and his household good-bye, climbed into the seat, and was gone forever. Nothing was ever heard of him again. He vanished from that part of Upper Canada as suddenly as he came into it. Where he came from or where he went to it is probable no one will ever know. It was supposed by some that this person had been one of Napoleon the Great’s generals, and that after the defeat of Waterloo he had seized all he could find in his division military chest; when Napoleon had given himself up on board the _Bellerophon_ he got on board another vessel and sailed for America, and had come away from the seaboard to this remote place to avoid the probability of anyone meeting and recognizing him; and that this French officer whose arrival and enquiries had caused his departure was upon his track to wreak some vengeance upon him either for the public wrong he had committed, or, it might be, a private one of so delicate a nature as to be without the cognizance of the law. Be that as it may, the man went as he came and left no sign, an unsolved enigma to all with whom he had come in contact while in the wilds of Canada. CHAPTER VII. Religious movements--Itinerant preachers--$50 a year--Camp-meetings--Weird scenes at night--Millerites--World coming to an end--Dissenters attempt to fly--Affrighted by a “sun-dog”--Destruction fails to materialize--The Mormons--An improvised Gabriel--Raising the dead--Converts--Salt Lake--An Irish refugee and his poem. “On some fond breast the ’parting soul relies, Some pious tears the closing eye requires, E’en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries, E’en in our ashes live their wonted fires.”