Philippe Aubert de Gaspé - Cameron of Lochiel

"A fine idea that," exclaimed the boy, "to think that I bear any one a grudge because I am in his debt in regard to a little exchange of compliments! So that is how you take it, eh? Shake, then, and let us think no more about it. You may brag of being the only one to scratch me without my having drawn his blood in return."

With these words he sprang upon the young man's shoulders like a monkey, pulled out a few hairs to satisfy his conscience, and scampered off to join the merry group which was waiting for him.

Archibald of Lochiel, matured by bitter experiences, and on that account more self-contained and more reserved than other boys of his age, on his first coming to college hardly knew whether to smile or be angry at the frolics of the little imp who seemed to have taken him for his special butt, and who hardly left him any peace. He could not be expected to divine that this was Jules's manner of showing his affection for those he loved the most. One day, driven to the end of his forbearance, Archie said to him:

"Do you know, you would try the patience of a saint! Verily I don't know what to do with you."

"But you have a way out of your difficulties," answered Jules. "My skin itches; give me a good hiding, and I'll leave you in peace. That will be easy enough for you, you young Hercules."

Lochiel, indeed, accustomed from his infancy to the trying sports of the young Highlanders, was at fourteen marvelously strong for his years.

"Do you think," exclaimed Archie, "that I am such a coward as to strike a boy younger and weaker than myself?"

"Oh, no," said Jules; "I see we agree on that score – never a knock for a little fellow. What suits me is a good tussle with a fellow of my own age, or even a little older; then shake hands and think no more about it. By the way," continued Jules, "you know that comical dog De Chavigny? He is older than I am, but so weak and miserable that I have never had the heart to punch him, although he has played me such a trick as even St. Francis himself would hardly pardon. Just think of him running to me all out of breath and exclaiming: 'I've just snatched an egg from that greedy Letourneau, who had stolen it out of the refectory. Here, hide it; he's after me!'

"'Where do you want me to hide it?' said I.

"'Oh, in your hat,' he answered; 'he'll never think of looking for it there.'

"As for me, I was fool enough to do it. I ought to have mistrusted him.

"In a moment Letourneau came up and jammed my cap down over my eyes. The accursed egg nearly blinded me, and I swear did not smell like a rose-garden! It was an addled egg found by Chavigny in a nest which the hen had probably abandoned a month before. I got out of that mess with the loss of a cap, a vest, and other garments. Well, after the first of my fury was over, I could not help laughing; and if I bear him any grudge at all, it is for having got ahead of me with so neat a trick. I should love to get it off on Derome, who keeps his hair so charmingly powdered. As for Letourneau, since he was too stupid to have invented the trick myself, I contented myself with saying to him, 'Blessed are they of little wit'; and he professed himself proud of the compliment, being glad enough, after all, to get off so cheaply.

"And now, my dear Archie," continued Jules, "let us come to terms. I am a kindly potentate, and my conditions shall be most easy. To please you, I undertake, on the word of a gentleman, to diminish by one third those tricks of mine which you lack the good taste to appreciate. Come, now, you ought to be satisfied with that if you are not utterly unreasonable, for you see, my dear boy, I love you. I would not have made peace with any one else on such advantageous terms."

Lochiel could not help laughing as he shook the irrepressible lad. It was from this conversation that the friendship between the two boys took its beginning – on Archie's part with a truly Scottish restraint, on the side of Jules with the passionate warmth of which the French heart is capable.

A few weeks later, about a month before the vacation, which began then on the 15th of August, Jules seized his friend's arm and whispered:

"Come into my room. I have just had a letter from father which concerns you."

"Concerns me!" exclaimed the other in astonishment.

"Why are you surprised?" retorted D'Haberville. "Do you think you are not of sufficient importance for any one to concern himself about you? Why, all New France is talking about the handsome Scotchman. The mammas, fearing your influence on the inflammable hearts of their daughters, talk seriously of petitioning our principal never to let you appear in public except with a veil on, like the women of the East."

"Come, stop your fooling, and let me go on with my reading."

"But I am very much in earnest," said Jules. And, dragging his friend along with him, he read him part of a letter from his father, which ran as follows:

"What you tell me about your young friend, Master de Lochiel, interests me very much. I grant your request with the greatest pleasure. Give him my compliments, and beg him to come and spend his next vacation with us, and all his vacations so long as he is attending college. If he does not consider this invitation sufficiently formal, I will write to him myself. His father sleeps upon a glorious field. Soldiers are brothers everywhere; so should their sons be likewise. Let him come to our own hearth-stone, and our hearts shall open to him as to one of our own blood."

Archie was so affected by the warmth of this invitation that for some moments he could not answer.

"Come, my haughty Scotlander, will you do us the honor?" said his friend. "Or must my father send, on a special embassy, his chief butler, José Dubé, with the bagpipes slung on his back in the form of a St. Andrew's cross – as is the custom, I believe, among your Highland chiefs – to present you his invitation with all due formality?"

"As, fortunately, I am no longer in my Highlands," said Archie, laughing, "we can dispense with these formalities. I shall write at once to Captain D'Haberville, and thank him with my whole heart for his noble generosity to the exiled orphan."

"Then, let us speak reasonably for once," said Jules, "if only for the novelty of the thing. You think me very light, silly, and scatter-brained. I acknowledge that there is a little of all that in me, which does not prevent me from being in earnest more often than you think. I have long been seeking a friend, a true and high-hearted friend. I have watched you very closely, and I find you all I could wish. Lochiel, will you be my friend?"

"Without a moment's question, my dear boy," answered Archie, "for I have always felt strongly attracted toward you."

"Well, then," cried Jules, grasping his hand warmly, "it is for life and death with us Lochiel!"

Thus, between a boy of twelve and a boy of fourteen, was ratified a friendship which in the sequel will be exposed to the crudest tests.

"Here's a letter from mother," said Jules, "in which there is a word for you":

"I hope your friend, Master de Lochiel, will do us the pleasure of accepting your father's invitation. We are all eager to meet him. His room is ready, alongside of your own. In the box which José will hand you there is a parcel for him which he would grieve me greatly by refusing. In sending it I am thinking of the mother he has lost."

The box contained equal shares for the two boys of cakes, sweetmeats, jams, and other dainties.

The friendship between the two boys grew stronger day by day. They became inseparable. Their college-mates dubbed them variously Damon and Pythias, Orestes and Pylades, Nisus and Euryalus. At last they called them the brothers.

All the time Lochiel was at college he spent his vacations with the D'Habervilles, who made no difference between the two boys unless to lavish the more marked attentions upon the young Scotchman who had become as it were a son of the house. It was most natural, then, that Archie, before sailing for Europe, should accompany Jules on his farewell visit to his father's house.