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"In sooth, it is even as you say," Aylward answered, looking at it with contempt and dislike in his face. "I have seen them here upon the ramparts, and have also exchanged a buffet or two with him who had charge of them. He was jack-fool enough to think that with this leather pipe he could outshoot the best archer in Christendom.

Before Rayner could answer, the sound of eight or nine guns, a sloop's whole broadside, was heard, followed by the crash of the shot as they struck the fortification. In an instant the whole fort was in an uproar, the officers shouting their orders to the men, and the men calling to each other, as they rushed from their quarters to the ramparts.

Clad in his faded gray, the colonel lies peacefully awaiting the great Reveille. When the sloping bayonets of the regiment glitter, for the last time, over the ramparts their generous blood has stained in fight, as the defeated troops move away, many a stout heart softens as they feel they are leaving alone and to the foe the lost idol of their rough worship.

He looked up at the ramparts, and saw that the sentinels stood silent and apart, wrapped in their heavy watch-cloaks, and supported on their trusty weapons. It was perfectly apparent that the events of his night of suffering and despair had passed unheeded by the outer world. He glanced back with a shudder upon his wounded and helpless limb; then his eyes fixed themselves upon the wall.

In front of the table benches arranged in zigzag form, like the circumvallations of a retrenchment, formed a succession of bastions and curtains set apart for the use of the members of the club; and on this especial evening one might say, "All the world was on the ramparts."

In the centre stood the fort, which was a hundred and twenty yards square, mounting ten thirty-two pounder guns on each of its four bastions. Twenty four-pounder guns were placed on the ramparts, facing the river on the south. On an outlying work commanding the watergate eight thirty-two pounders were mounted.

Beside it rises a huge castle with arched gateway, turrets, watch-towers, ramparts, etc., and to right and left palaces, obelisks, and pyramids fairly fill the gulf, all colossal and all lavishly painted and carved. Here and there a flat-topped structure may be seen, or one imperfectly domed; but the prevailing style is ornate Gothic, with many hints of Egyptian and Indian.

The latter they interred under the ramparts of one of the Highland forts, and the former they consigned to the tender care of his afflicted bride. Many weeks were gone before the major was restored to sufficient strength to be removed. During those weeks, how often did he bless the moment that gave him a right to the services of his beautiful nurse!

That is, they are valiant, consistent, reliable in an obvious public sense; but their curse is that they can only tread the flagstones of the court-yard or the cold rock of the ramparts; they have never so much as set their foot upon their native soil. We have considered Bernard Shaw as an Irishman.

On the Sunday following the capitulation, July 22nd, Louis Kirke hoisted the English flag over one of the bastions of the fort, and in order to render the official possession of Quebec more imposing, he placed his soldiers in ranks along the ramparts, and at a precise hour a volley was fired from English muskets.