How Canada Was Won: A Tale of Wolfe and Quebec

Steve took his pipe and went away to think over the matter. His father's conversation had cleared up a mystery which had often troubled him. Now he understood why at times his father found need to absent himself. He had to go to France to look to the welfare of this property which had come to him through his wife. And now, too, he gathered why this unfortunate young Jules had followed him so often, and with such bitterness. He was a disappointed man, who considered that this English family had filched wealth from his own.

"And in the end his strange bitterness brought about his downfall," thought Steve. "He would have done better had he left us alone, and settled peacefully in the country. But there. I know now why he had a spite against me, and I forgive him."

In the course of years Mr. Mainwaring died, and Steve found himself a rich man, the owner of many broad acres in America, and of more in France and in England. But he never left his native country. The charm of the backwoods held him a prisoner, while he could never forsake Jim and Mac and Pete and many another trapper, now grown old and feeble and dependent upon him. The storm of the American revolution, which lost us one of our finest possessions, passed over his head like a huge rumbling cloud, leaving him unharmed. For he remained a neutral, in spite of threats and fines, declining to fight against his old comrades-in-arms, though he was conscious that his fellow-colonists had many grievances. When that struggle was ended, Steve made his way up those historic lakes, St. George and Champlain, found the hillock which he and Jim and their comrades had defended, and fought his battles over again. That zig-zag path up the face of the ridge at Quebec attracted his attention, and he clambered to the summit of the Anse du Foulon. His steps took him to that spot where the gallant soul of Wolfe had departed, and once again he saw the triple line of the English, heard the roar of their double-shotted weapons, and watched the charge of those gallant fellows. He was a lad again. The years which had flown past since those momentous times were bridged for the moment, and once again he was Captain Steve Mainwaring, fighting for a noble cause, the friend and leader of a gallant band of trappers and redskins.