to reclaim it from that desecration,—­this fateful bell still hangs in the church-tower of St. Regis, and has invited to matins and vespers for nearly two centuries the children of those who fought so pitilessly and dared and endured so much for it.  Our friends would fair have heard it as they passed, hoping for some mournful note of history in its sound; but it hung silent over the silent hamlet, which, as it lay in the hot afternoon sun by the river’s side, seemed as lifeless as the Deerfield burnt long ago.

They turned from it to look at a gentleman who had just appeared in a mustard-colored linen duster, and Basil asked, “Shouldn’t you like to know the origin, personal history, and secret feelings of a gentleman who goes about in a duster of that particular tint?  Or, that gentleman yonder with his eye tied up in a wet handkerchief, do you suppose he’s travelling for pleasure?  Look at those young people from Omaha:  they haven’t ceased flirting or cackling since we left Kingston.  Do you think everybody has such spirits out at Omaha?  But behold a yet more surprising figure than any we have yet seen among this boat-load of nondescripts.”

This was a tall, handsome young man, with a face of somewhat foreign cast, and well dressed, with a certain impressive difference from the rest in the cut of his clothes.  But what most drew the eye to him was a large cross, set with brilliants, and surmounted by a heavy double-headed eagle in gold.  This ornament dazzled from a conspicuous place on the left lappet of his coat; on his hand shone a magnificent diamond ring, and he bore a stately opera-glass, with which, from time to time, he imperiously, as one may say, surveyed the landscape.  As the imposing apparition grew upon Isa-bel, “O here,” she thought, “is something truly distinguished.  Of course, dear,” she added aloud to Basil, “he’s some foreign nobleman travelling here”; and she ran over in her mind the newspaper announcements of patrician visitors from abroad and tried to identify him with some one of them.  The cross must be the decoration of a foreign order, and Basil suggested that he was perhaps a member of some legation at Washington, who had ran up there for his summer vacation.  The cross puzzled him, but the double-headed eagle, he said, meant either Austria or Russia; probably Austria, for the wearer looked a trifle too civilized for a Russian.

“Yes, indeed!  What an air he has.  Never tell me.  Basil, that there’s nothing in blood!” cried Isabel, who was a bitter aristocrat at heart, like all her sex, though in principle she was democratic enough.  As she spoke, the object of her regard looked about him on the different groups, not with pride, not with hauteur, but with a glance of unconscious, unmistakable superiority.  “O, that stare!” she added; nothing but high birth and long descent can give it!  Dearest, he’s becoming a great affliction to me.  I want to know who he is.  Couldn’t you invent some pretext for speaking to him?”