CHAPTER XVI

BATES ENLISTS IN JOTHAM GAY'S COMPANY-HALIFAX— JOINS "RANGERS"

THE next morning Jotham Gay, who had been away for a couple of days, found, with a good deal of satisfaction but without surprise, the name of Bates upon his rolls, although he did not know exactly how the decision had been reached. He had not been able to give the young man the commission to which his former services fairly entitled him when he had asked for it, but now he was glad to have him in a position where some special act of merit or general good conduct would make it possible to give it to him as soon as a vacancy should occur. Jotham's father, however, told him not to be too much in a hurry. He was not sure it was all right. He said that Bates had come there in the evening, and after finding that the captain was away had asked for the doctor and insisted upon signing the roll at once. His excitement was very plain to be seen, and his behavior entirely different from either his good-humored pleasantry or from the depression which had been more usual of late. The old doctor had not been entirely taken into the confidence of either party, but he had known, as he did of many of the troubles of his flock, how great a sorrow and terror Bates's restless ambition had been to his home-loving and affectionate wife, and, on the other hand, how heavily her restraint had weighed upon his desire for activity. It had before this been very evident what a trial it was to him to say that in the coming campaign, for which the government was expending such resources, the Colonies

contributing their utmost, from which every one was expecting so much not only of glory but of permanent relief, there was no place for him.

The shrewd old pastor partly sympathized with him until he thought of the wife, one of the lambs of his flock, who was to be left behind. Then, after allowing him to write his name, he requested him to consider his resolution very carefully and come again to talk it over with his son. Bates would not promise to do this. He said he had made up his mind for good-that, indeed, he had made it up long ago and now his wife had given her consent.

When Captain Gay, at his father's earnest request, gave him an opportunity to retract, he would not do so, and Mrs. Bates was too proud to claim that her angry exclamation was not to be taken as a formal consent. Indeed, she did not admit that she had been angry at all, but said to her gossips with a cheerful smile that she had at last become convinced that it was better her husband should go with her consent than run away without it.

The time of sailing was near, so near that Debby had to use all her energies, as she bent with bedimmed eyes over her sewing, to get the simple equipment of a private ready in time. What they said to each other in these last days neither ever told, though they agreed that after the decision was once made there was no attempt to discourage him.

A few days later the second of two schooners, neither of them too speedy, too roomy, or too clean, carried the second half of Captain Gay's company, whither they had not been told. Bates got a sharp rebuke for looking into the binnacle, but, as he knew they were sailing with a fair wind toward the northward and eastward, and as they had heard that Governor Pownal's regiment was going to the Kennebec, they expected soon to find themselves off Seguin. Great was Bates's disappointment when they had clearly gone too far for this, and he recognized the harbor of Halifax, not unfamiliar to him. Greater still was his disgust when he found they were making their preparations for a long stay

-it was rumored, all summer. They all knew how the British officers felt about the provincials and dreaded the summer, but it was not reasonable, they admitted, that the men who had been at Louisbourg the year before, the trained veterans, should be left behind in inglorious sloth when their new general was to strike his most vigorous blow at the very heart of Canada.

But for all the reasons it was a grievous disappointment for him to have gone through all this, to have waited a year and quarreled with his wife, just for the sake of keeping a lot of discontented, half-loyal Nova Scotians in order, or keep a lookout for an enemy who would surely never come! The enemy would have enough to do to take care of themselves elsewhere. Better far to have stayed at home than among such a set, to whom Yankees were, if anything, more repugnant than the regulars. It was they who had taken the most active part in making exiles of their countrymen, and they had not even that flavor of aristocracy, of delegated hereditary right, which made the red uniforms a shade less obnoxious than the blue. Their resentment was not all from pure sympathy for the exiles. From time to time a wanderer of the banished Acadians would find his way back to his old home, or as near as he dared go. Such were to be found throughout Canada. Although the first exiles had little reason to be grateful for the meagre sympathy they had received from their fellow countrymen, the ties of home, language and religion were still strong.

Soon after his arrival, Private Bates, as he was strolling aimlessly and disconsolately through the town after his turn of sentry duty was over, was accosted by a young Acadian who called him by name, with the title of lieutenant. "I'm no lieutenant now," said he, half resentfully and half ashamed.

"Why dat? She say you best soldier come from Hingham."

"She! What she?"

"Dat my vife. I leave Lancastair. I get ship, I guess I

carry off

steal, at Veymut, perhaps prize from enemy. Adele. Hingham folks say she drown. Dey not care if she drown, if she run away. She tole me. She say you

want marry her. She tell you she not marry you because you not Catholique, bot I guess she wait for me, yaas," said he with an expression of affection from which pride was not entirely absent. "Bot she say you good to her and old Trawhaw, too. Dat Baxtare's vife she good, bot she t'ink dat Mees Debby not like her mosh."

Bates thought that, considering all that had happened since, it was not worth while to discuss theories of the cause of his earliest refusal, even if the one which gave the man who profited by it so much comfort were not altogether correct; but his vanity strongly urged him to transfer the pangs of a still lingering jealousy to the heart of this conceited and self-satisfied fellow who was so sure no one could ever have come between him and the first love of his boyhood. But better feelings prevailed-to say nothing of prudence.

He informed his new-found friend that that very "Mees Debby" was now his wife, a fact which seemed to the Acadian to throw some light upon her dislike for Adele. Bates congratulated him upon his happiness and promised to accept his invitation to visit them at their temporary home. It occurred to him that if he were going to spend here months of tedious and uninteresting duty he might amuse himself by teaching something to this fine fellow who paraded his fancied security so easily and frankly.

Now their conversation turned to military and political matters. The young Acadian's expressions were all of loyalty to King George. He used the "we" and "us" on the right side, but he seemed to hesitate each time in order to make sure. He asked many questions, seeming to the young soldier more interested in the answers than was required by mere courtesy. He could get nothing of consequence; for the reason that there was little to tell, of that little Bates knew almost nothing, while the small remainder

was thoroughly falsified as soon as it seemed to him that his questioner was too much interested.

He hastened, however, to pay his visit, but was not so successful as he hoped to be in timing it to avoid his successful rival, hitherto unsuspected, but now growing more and more distasteful to him every moment that he thought about it.

ones.

Adele looked older, as she had a right to do, for the two years since he had seen her had been anxious and trying They had but added a refinement and spirituality to her former bright and childish beauty, and she seemed to him more fascinating than ever. She received him with cordiality, as did her husband, but there was an air of reserved intelligence about both of them. They said they had been in Halifax but a short time, as he was unable to get work elsewhere. He had no land and but very little capital. No one would hire a man known to be a friend of the English, whether a soldier or not. He had managed to get a few furs, which he was now trying to sell, although, at this season, at a great sacrifice.

A second attempt was, he at first thought, more successful. He ventured on some tender reminiscences of their former intimacy, but was met with such dense misunderstanding and interrupted by so much baby talk addressed to the rosy infant crowing in his cradle, that he abandoned that kind of conversation in despair. He could not be sure whether it was entirely sincere or whether she had developed a talent as an actress which he had never suspected. At any rate, he was convinced that the present basis must be friendship.

The time never came to carry it further. His next visit brought him to an empty house. Disappointment, tedious waiting, and weariness of the spirit once more. But relief came again soon in a more honorable form.

The news spread through the town that the officers of the "Rangers" were looking for men of the right kind. They were to accompany the regulars up the St. Lawrence