Chapter II.

"A seducer flourishes, and a poor maid is undone."
-- _All's Well That Ends Well._

The advocate was by birth an Englishman, and a
cadet of an ancient family, who, after having spent a
dissolute youth and early manhood, had come to
Canada. Here he became acquainted with an old,
half-pay Highland officer of Wolfe's Army, who for
his signal services rendered during the operations of
the British force before Quebec, had been rewarded
with a grant of land in that vicinity. Like others
of his countrymen, the Highlander had settled in the
Province, and married into a French Canadian family.
But, soon after their union, his wife died in giving
birth to a daughter, which he reared to womanhood
with all the strength of an undivided affection. The
Englishman's frank bearing and singular mental
powers won the admiration of the old soldier, and, at
the same time, dazzled and captivated his comely and
unsophisticated daughter, to whom the stranger was
soon understood to stand in the light of a lover. But
Macdonald -- for such was the name of the warm-
hearted clansman -- was not destined to see his dearest
wishes realized in the union of the two. A sudden
sickness laid low his hardy frame, and, dying, he
called the pair to his bedside, and joined their hands
in anticipation of the rite of wedlock. The father
dead, the lover betook himself to the study of the

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