"What is that?" exclaimed the Ontarian, suddenly, lifting his hand, his
eyes brightening with an interest unwonted for a man beyond middle age.

The steamer was passing close to the shore, making for a pier some
distance ahead; and, surmounting the high bank, a majestic scene arose,
facing them like an apparition. It was a grey Tudor mansion of
weather-stained stone, with churchy pinnacles, a strange-looking bright
tin roof, and, towering around the sides and back of its grounds a lofty
walk of pine trees, marshalled in dark, square, overshadowing array, out
of which, as if surrounded by a guard of powerful forest spirits, the
mansion looked forth like a resuscitated Elizabethan reality. Its mien
seemed to say: "I am not of yesterday, and shall pass tranquilly on into
the centuries to come: old traditions cluster quietly about my gables;
and rest is here."

"That is the Manoir of Dormillière," replied the Montrealer, as the
steamer, whose paddles had stopped their roar, glided silently by.

Impressive was the Manoir, with its cool shades and air of erect
lordliness, its solemn grey walls and pinnacled gables, the beautiful
depressed arch of its front door; and its dream-like foreground of river
mirroring its majestic guard of pines.

"I knew," said Chrysler, "that you had your seigniories in Quebec, and
some sort of a feudal history, far back, but I never dreamed of such
seats."

"O, the Seigneurs[A] have not yet altogether disappeared," returned the
Montrealer. "Twenty years ago their position was feudal enough to be
considered oppressive; and here and there still, over the Province, in