"You will want to know what they are doing in Minnesota and along the
flank of your march, and you have no one to tell you," I said.

"You are right; we do want a man out there. Look now, start for Montreal
by first train to-morrow; by to night's mail I will write to the general,
recommending your appointment. If you see him as soon as possible, it may
yet be all right."

I thanked him, said "Good-bye," and in little more than twenty-four hours
later found myself in Montreal, the commercial capital of Canada.

"Let me see," said the general next morning, when I presented myself
before him, "you sent a cable message from the South of Ireland last
month, didn't you? and you now want to get out to the West? Well, we will
require a man there, but the thing doesn't rest with me; it will have to
be referred to Ottawa; and meantime you can remain here, or with your
regiment, pending the receipt of an answer."

So I went back to my regiment to wait.

Spring breaks late over the province of Quebec-that portion of America
known to our fathers as Lower Canada, and of old to the subjects of the
Grand Monarque as the kingdom of New France. But when the young trees
begin to open their leafy lids after the long sleep of winter, they do it
quickly. The snow is not all gone before the maple-trees are all green;
the maple, that most beautiful of trees! Well has Canada made the symbol
of her new nationality that tree whose green gives the spring its
earliest freshness, whose autumn dying tints are richer than the clouds,
sunset, whose life-stream is sweeter than honey, and whose branches are