"You have conquered, Montgomery; my curses recoil upon my own head. You will proclaim that I have deserted to the enemy, that I am a traitor as you long suspected. You will rejoice indeed, for I have lost all, even honor." And like Job, he cursed the day that he was born.
After two hours' rapid marching they arrived at the foot of the mountain which overlooks Trois Saumons Lake, on which water Archie concluded that they would find an encampment of the Abénaquis. Coming to the edge of the lake, one of his captors uttered three times the cry of the osprey; and the seven echoes of the mountain repeated, each three times, the piercing and strident call of the great swan of Lower Canada. At any other time Lochiel would have thrilled with admiration at the sight of this beautiful water outspread beneath the starlight, enringed with mountains and seeded with green-crowned islets. It was the same lake to which, for ten happy years, he had made hunting and fishing excursions with his friends. It was the same lake which he had swum at its widest part to prove his prowess. But to-night all Nature appeared as dead as the heart within him. From one of the islets came a birch canoe, paddled by a man in Indian garb, but wearing a cap of fox-skin. The new comer held a long conversation with the four savages, but Archie was ignorant of the Abénaquis tongue, and could make out nothing of what they said. Two of the Indians thereupon started off to the southwest; but Archie was put into the canoe and taken to the islet.
What tragic tears bedew the eye! What deaths we suffer ere we die! Our broken friendships we deplore, And loves of youth that are no more.
All, all on earth is shadow, all beyond Is substance; the reverse is folly's creed. How solid all where change shall be no more!
Having cursed his enemy and the day of his birth, Lochiel had gradually come to a more Christian frame of mind, as he lay bound to a tree and all hope banished from his heart. He knew that the savages scarcely ever spared their captives, and that a slow and hideous death was in store for him. Recovering his natural force of mind, he hardly took care to pray for his deliverance; but he implored of Heaven forgiveness for his sins and strength to bear the tortures that were before him. Of what account, thought he, the judgment of men when the dream of life is over? And he bowed himself beneath the hand of God.