Wetherall had partially, by his great success, arrested the rebellion in his own quarter; but it was in all its strength elsewhere, and the troops had many severe and harassing duties to perform amid the frost and snow of a very severe winter. It has justly been said that the British officer is essentially a dandy, that "the neatly and closely cropped hair, the well-trimmed mustache, the set up figure, the spotless gloves, boots bright as a mirror, and the general air of dandyism are the outward symbols of those qualities which make men good soldiers."
It no doubt is so. The set up figure remained, but in Canada at that particular juncture, the dandyism had nearly departed, as much as it did in the Crimea.
Amid these duties, Roland could have no letters from Aurelia; neither could he write, for the postal arrangements were completely suspended, or could only be carried on by parties of armed men.
At last there came a day--one of horror--and Roland never forgot it!
"Look here, old fellow," said Logan, with a bright expression on his handsome face, bringing him a copy of the _Montreal Gazette_ some weeks old; "as Byron says, 'pleasant 'tis to see one's name in print--'"
"Yes, and proud was I when first I saw my name there," said Logan.
"Mine!" A sickening thought occurred to Roland of the story of the concealed will, Ardgowrie, and the discovered heir or heirs, for though he had schooled himself to face the idea, it was a bitter one; therefore, it was only a relief to his mind to find, that the matter referred to, was the fact that he was favourably mentioned and thanked in General Orders by Sir John Colborne, commanding Her Majesty's forces in Canada. "for his gallantry displayed on the 28th of November last, at the abatis of Point Oliviere."
As he read it he thought of Aurelia, and the pleasure such a notice would afford her; and was carelessly running his eyes over the columns of the paper, when they caught her name--_her name_--and mentioned in a way that made his blood turn alternately cold as ice, and hot as fire!
When proceeding in her sledge, with her daughter Aurelia, Madame Darnel had been stopped and surrounded near her own seigneury "by a band of rebels under the notorious Colonel Smash, for whose arrest a reward is now offered."