Between Rimouski and Father Point (called by the French Pointe à Père) is
a long dusty road, very flat, and, except where the gulf comes in to the
coast in frequent little bays, very uninteresting.

There are few houses on this road, and these are far apart.

At the doorstep of one of these cottages--a well-kept, clean and neat
little dwelling--sat, this August afternoon, an old woman, spinning
busily. She, although some of her neighbors might be, was not asleep. Oh,
no! Seldom was Madame McAllister caught napping, save at orthodox hours,
between ten p.m. and six a.m. In spite of her seventy-six years, was she
hale and hearty, bright and active. She was a brisk little body, and had
a most intelligent face. Her eyes were dark and bright with animation,
and her coloring was brown and healthy, unlike that of her neighbors of
the same age, for, as a rule, French Canadian women of the lower classes
lead very hard-working lives, often marrying at sixteen or seventeen, and
have scarcely any youth, entering, as they do, on the trials and duties
of womanhood before an English girl of the same age has left the
schoolroom.

But, as I said before, Madame McAllister was hale and hearty. This
circumstance was due most probably to the admixture of Scottish blood
in her veins, for her grandfather, Peter Fraser, had been one of the
stanchest adherents of the young Pretender. Disappointed in his hopes,
he had come out to Quebec to help in the wars against the French, and,
after his regiment had been disbanded near Rimouski, he remained in the
district. His colonel, a certain Ivan McAllister, persuaded many of his
men to remain in that part of the country with him, cherishing the
quixotic hope that in this new world he might form a kingdom over which
his idol, Prince Chairlie, should reign.