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On the day following the preliminaries, Champlain went on board Louis Kirke's vessel, where he was to see the commission of Charles I, which empowered the Kirke brothers to take Quebec and the whole country by assault. Both parties then signed the articles of capitulation, and the English troops, conducted by Champlain, came in shallops near to the habitation.
CRAWFORD, THOMAS. Born at New York City, March 22, 1814; went to Italy, 1834, and took up residence at Rome for the remainder of his life; afflicted with sudden blindness in 1856, and died at London, October 16, 1857. BROWN, HENRY KIRKE. Born at Leyden, Massachusetts, February 24, 1814; studied in Italy, 1842-46; opened Brooklyn studio, 1850; died at Newburgh, New York, July 10, 1886.
Another class of highwaymen had long before them been also attracted by the fine manoeuvring facilities of the heath, beginning with the army of the Cæsars and ending with that of James II. Jonathan Wild and his merry men were saints to Kirke and his lambs.
Kirke's position was becoming untenable, but by a singular blunder instead of being defeated he was allowed to become the master. One of Emery de Caën's sailors having cried "Quartier! Quartier!" or Surrender! Kirke hurriedly answered, "Bon quartier, and I promise your life safe, and I shall treat you as I did Champlain, whom I bring with me."
James II., who had had the sense to choose Jeffreys and Kirke, was a prince imbued with true religion; he practised mortification in the ugliness of his mistresses; he listened to le Père la Colombière, a preacher almost as unctuous as le Père Cheminais, but with more fire, who had the glory of being, during the first part of his life, the counsellor of James II., and, during the latter, the inspirer of Mary Alcock.
When, eventually, Colonel Kirke was recalled and reprimanded, it was not because of his barbarities many of which transcend the possibilities of decent print but because of a lenity which this venal gentleman began to display when he discovered that many of his victims were willing to pay handsomely for mercy.
Edmund Kirke, in his admirable life of Garfield, has condensed the captain's account of the occurrence, and I quote it here as likely to prove interesting to my boy readers: "The Evening Star was at Beaver, and a steamboat was ready to tow her up to Pittsburg.
And when you come to think of it, Charles Stuart lost his head on the block five years from that day. When Eli Kirke left jail to take ship for Boston Town both ears had been cropped. On his forehead the letters S L seditious libeler were branded deep, though not so deep as the bitterness burned into his soul.
"When a chap begins to look solemn, sitting beside a girl you know he's in love with, you can be sure he has it on his mind to have it out with her before the day is over. If I could have just got Kirke to her yesterday! Ridge may do it any time now; I can see it in his eye and she may take him. I don't know what's got into Dot.
At another I considered that a banished gentleman could not choose his goings. How could I stay with M. Picot and desert M. de Radisson? How could I go to M. de Radisson and abandon Hortense? "Straight is the narrow way," Eli Kirke oft cried out as he expounded Holy Writ. Ah, well, if the narrow way is straight, it has a trick of becoming tangled in a most terrible snarl!
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