Burton, or, The sieges

"The bells of a ruined monastery in the vale of Chaudiere were chiming the hour of evening service at the close of a cold windy day in the month of November, seventeen hundred and seventy-five, when a single traveller, in the garb of a Roman Catholic priest, appeared on the skirts of a forest, that, sacred from the invading ploughshare or the axe of the woodman, stretched many leagues into the province of Maine."