Batoche and his companions plunged into the forest. On the way, the object of the expedition was fully explained to the old man. He was expected to have an interview that night with some officer of the Continental army for the purpose of organizing a system of action between them and the malcontents of the environs of Quebec. These malcontents were of various degrees of earnestness, courage and activity. Some had boasted a great deal of what they would do when the Americans came, but when the Americans did come, and the loyalist troops showed a determined front of opposition, they quietly slunk into the background or even betrayed their former professions. Others of these malcontents confined themselves to secret action, such as furnishing information of what was going on within the city, harboring those who were tracked for treason, or affording supplies of food and ammunition to such of their friends as needed them for use. Finally, there were a determined few, chiefly old soldiers or the sons of old soldiers of Montcalm and LÉvis, who, having never become reconciled to their English masters, in the sixteen years which had elapsed since the Conquest, hailed the appearance of the Americans as the prelude of deliverance, and openly raised the standard of revolt. Of these there were again two classes. One formed into a duly equipped battalion which joined the army of Arnold and took part in all the subsequent events of the siege. The second class consisted of farmers around Quebec, who, not being able to quit their families and perform regular military service, engaged in a species of guerilla warfare which was both effective and romantic. Among these were ranged Barbin and his companions. Among them Batoche was called to take a position. His well-known skill with the carbine, his rare knowledge of all the woods for miles in circumference, his remarkable powers of endurance, his reckless bravery and fertility of expedient in the midst of most critical danger, all fitted him for the trying events which circumstances thrust upon him and his friends. But the oddities of his mode of life, the eccentricities of his character, his generally accredited relations with the spirits of the departed, and the gift of divination which all the country-side accorded him, spite of occasional and deriding criticism, went still further to point him out as a foremost man in the secret insurrection of the farmers. He himself, in his own way, favored the movement with enthusiasm. He was not a Canadian, but a Frenchman born. His youth had been spent in the wars of his country. When the great Marquis de Montcalm was ordered to New France, he followed him as a member of the famous Roussillon regiment In that capacity, he fought at Carillon, and shared the glory of the campaign of 1758. In the same capacity, he shared the stupendous defeat of Sept. 13th, 1759, on the Plains of Abraham. He had the sad consolation of having been one of those who bore the wounded Marquis from the field, and accompanied him to the Hospice of the Ursulines where he died, and where his glorious remains still rest. This circumstance saved him from the ignominy of capture. Before Murray, the successor of Wolfe, entered the vanquished city in triumph, he effected his escape by creeping along the valley of the St. Charles during the darkness, and making his way into the country. After wandering some miles, he paused near the Falls of Montmorenci, and built himself a kind of rustic tent on the very spot where he afterwards erected his lonely cabin. He chose this place not only on account of the beauty of its scenery, and the shelter from hostile intrusion which it afforded, but also because it was in the immediate neighborhood of the fortifications—visible even to this day—which his beloved commander had constructed there, and from which he repulsed Wolfe with great loss, only two months before the disastrous battle of the Plains of Abraham.

"Alas!" Batoche would often exclaim, standing over those earthworks, "if the great Marquis had relied upon the walls of Quebec, as he did upon these fortifications, we should still be masters of the country. Wolfe owed his success solely to the imprudence of Montcalm."

In the spring of the following year, Batoche joined the army of the Chevalier de LÉvis, and was present at the great victory of Ste. Foye. But the successful retreat of the British army, under Murray, behind the walls of Quebec; the inability of LÉvis to press the siege of the city; the gradual disbanding of the French forces throughout the Province, and the final surrender of Vaudreuil, at Montreal, whereby the whole French possessions in America, were ceded to Britain—one of the most momentous events of modern times in its gradual results—forced Batoche to return to his Montmorenci solitude.

He might have gone back to France, if he had been so minded, but after lingering some time in indecision, a circumstance occurred which determined him to fix his abode definitively in the new world. This was the receipt of a letter from his family, informing him of the death of his wife and the utter poverty in which his daughter, a girl of seventeen, was left. The girl herself appended a note stating that she intended to sail by the first occasion to join her father in Canada. The old soldier wrote at once to dissuade her from taking the step, giving the characteristic reason that he did not want her to become a servant of the detested English, but before his letter reached France, the girl landed in Quebec, and thus the course of Batoche's destiny was changed. His daughter was bright, intelligent and good looking, and received at once advantageous offers of situations in several of the best families of the capital, but the old man would not listen to any proposition of the kind.

"Come with me, into the woods," he said to her. "We will live there happily together. I don't want an Englishman to set his eyes upon you. I am still able to work. You will help me. We shall want for nothing."

And he took her into his lonely habitation beside the Falls of Montmorenci, where in effect the two spent a tranquil, easy existence. At the end of three years, the son of a farmer of Charlesbourg fell in love with the girl, and spite of his attachment, Batoche consented to a marriage between them. It was a rude blow when the bride went forth from his cabin to take up her residence in her husband's house, about twelve miles away, but the sacrifice was generously made, and when ten or eleven months later, a grandchild was born to him, Batoche felt that he had received sufficient compensation for his loss.

"Little Blanche will live with me," he said, "and replace her mother."

He did not know how sad was the prophecy that he uttered.