old customs, old notions, old traditions; but for me I am a Canadian,
my mind is wearied with over-much civilization. I hate the English
love of land for land's sake. That line of hills, swelling in massive
curves, and crowned, not with a tottering ruin, serving to hang some
legendary romance or faded rag of superstition upon, but with stately
trees--that is my idea of the beautiful."

He struck into a sharp gallop, his bright head above the dark blue
military cloak forming a picturesque feature in the woodland, and the
flying heels of his spirited horse seeming to add a rattling chorus of
applause to his patriotic sentiments. The old retainer ambled along in
his wake, but more slowly. His idea of the beautiful was not quite so
recklessly defiant. Presently, for he was still jaded from the effects
of his long journey on the previous day, he relaxed his attempt at
speed, and soon lost sight of his companion altogether. The vision of
waving cloak and flying steed vanished in the green aisles of the
forest.

Along the Oak Ridges--situate some thirty miles from York--which the
two horsemen now neared, a Huguenot settlement had been formed about
the close of the eighteenth century. The settlers were French officers
of the noblesse order, who, during the French Revolution, when the
royalist cause became desperate, emigrated to England, thence to
Canada, where, by the bounty of the Crown, they were given grants of
land in this portion of the Province of Upper Canada. Here many of
these _emigres_ had made clearings on the Ridges, and reared _chateaux_
for themselves and their households after the manner of their ancestral
homes in Languedoc and Brittany. Into the grounds of one of these
mansions had the younger horseman disappeared to pay his hurried
respects to the stately dame who was its owner, and who, with her fair