“I can believe it, Madame; indeed I have seen something of that skill with mine own eyes.  But, alas!  I fear that the case of our friend was beyond human skill.  I think that, had he had the choice, he would have chosen to die as he did in the hour of victory.  To wear out a life of suffering in uncongenial inactivity would have been sorely irksome to his unquenchable spirit; and yet, after the hardships through which he had passed, I misdoubt me if he could ever have taken the field again.  He would have endured the peril and pain of another long voyage only to die upon shipboard, or at his home if he lived to reach it.  The hand of death was surely upon him.”

“And to die in the hour of a glorious victory is surely a fitting close to a hero’s life,” said Corinne softly to Julian, when the tide of talk had recommenced to flow in other quarters.  “But tell me, does he leave behind many to mourn him?  Has he parents living, or sisters and brothers, or one nearer and dearer still?  Has he a wife in England?”

“Not a wife, Mademoiselle, but one who was to have been his wife had he lived to return, and a mother who loves him as the apple of the eye.  I shall have a sad task before me when I return to tell them of him whom they have loved and lost.”

“Are you then going back to England?” asked Corinne; “are you not born in these lands of the West?”

“Yes; and I think that my home will be here when my duties to my friend are done.  But first I must return to his home and his mother, and give to them there his last loving messages, and those things he wished them to possess of his.  Indeed, his body is to be taken back, embalmed; the officers have decided upon that.  I must see his mother and Miss Lowther again; then I think I shall return to these Western shores once again, and make my home upon Canadian soil.”

“Tell me more about Mrs. Wolfe and Miss Lowther,” said Corinne, with keen interest in her eyes and voice.

So Julian told her much of the events of those months which he spent in England by the side of Wolfe, and at last he drew forth the double miniature containing the likeness of the two who loved the hero so well, and gave it to Corinne to look at.

The tears came into her eyes as she gazed at the two faces.  He saw the sparkle on her long lashes as she returned him the case, and he loved her for them.

“It is a beautiful face; both are beautiful faces,” she said.  “How sad for them—­how very sad—­that he should return to them no more!  Do you think Miss Lowther will ever love again?  Or will she go mourning all the days of her life for him whom she has lost?”

Julian shook his head doubtfully.

“I cannot tell; yet time is a great healer, and Wolfe himself sent her a message bidding her not mourn too long and deeply for him.  She is still young, and the time they spent together was not very long.  I trust and hope that comfort will come to her when her grief has abated and the wound has healed.  Life would become too sorrowful a thing if death were able to make such lasting havoc of its hopes and happiness.”