poverty, their merry submission to the errors and caprices of destiny, their mutual kindliness and careless friendship, these unprofitable devotees of the twinkling-footed burlesque seemed to be playing rather than living the life of strolling players; and their love-making was the last touch of a comedy that Basil could hardly accept as reality, it was so much more like something seen upon the stage.  He would not have detracted anything from the commonness and cheapness of the ‘mise en scene’, for that, he reflected drowsily and confusedly, helped to give it an air of fact and make it like an episode of fiction.  But above all, he was pleased with the natural eventlessness of the whole adventure, which was in perfect agreement with his taste; and just as his reveries began to lose shape in dreams, he was aware of an absurd pride in the fact that all this could have happened to him in our commonplace time and hemisphere.  “Why,” he thought, “if I were a student in Alcala, what better could I have asked?” And as at last his soul swung out from its moorings and lapsed down the broad slowly circling tides out in the sea of sleep, he was conscious of one subtle touch of compassion for those poor strollers,—­a pity so delicate and fine and tender that it hardly seemed his own but rather a sense of the compassion that pities the whole world.

X. HOMEWARD AND HOME.

The travellers all met at breakfast and duly discussed the adventures of the night; and for the rest, the forenoon passed rapidly and slowly with Basil and Isabel, as regret to leave Quebec, or the natural impatience of travellers to be off, overcame them.  Isabel spent part of it in shopping, for she had found some small sums of money and certain odd corners in her trunks still unappropriated, and the handsome stores on the Rue Fabrique were very tempting.  She said she would just go in and look; and the wise reader imagines the result.  As she knelt over her boxes, trying so to distribute her purchases as to make them look as if they were old,—­old things of hers, which she had brought all the way round from Boston with her,—­a fleeting touch of conscience stayed her hand.

“Basil,” she said, “perhaps we’d better declare some of these things.  What’s the duty on those?” she asked, pointing to certain articles.

“I don’t know.  About a hundred per cent. ad valorem.”

“C’est a dire—?”

“As much as they cost.”

“O then, dearest,” responded Isabel indignantly, “it can’t be wrong to smuggle!  I won’t declare a thread!”

“That’s very well for you, whom they won’t ask.  But what if they ask me whether there’s anything to declare?”

Isabel looked at her husband and hesitated.  Then she replied in terms that I am proud to record in honor of American womanhood:  “You mustn’t fib about—­it, Basil” (heroically); “I couldn’t respect you if you did,” (tenderly); “but” (with decision) “you must slip out of it some way!”