Rose à Charlitte

J. F. H.

Mrs. Rose à Charlitte served her dinner in the middle of the day. The six o'clock meal she called supper.

With feminine insight she noticed, at supper, on a day a week later, that her guest was more quiet than usual, and even dull in humor.

Agapit, who was nearly always in high spirits, and always very much absorbed in himself, came bustling in,—sobered down for one minute to cross himself, and reverently repeat a bénédicité, then launched into a voluble and enjoyable conversation on the subject of which he never tired,—his beloved countrymen, the Acadiens.

Rose withdrew to the innermost recesses of her pantry. "Do you know these little berries?" she asked, coming back, and setting a glass dish, full of a thick, whitish preserve, before Vesper.

"No," he said, absently, "what are they?"

"They are poudabre, or capillaire,—waxen berries that grow deep in the woods. They hide their little selves under leaves, yet the children find them. They are expensive, and we do not buy many, yet perhaps you will find them excellent."

"They are delicious," said Vesper, tasting them.

"Give me also some," said Agapit, with pretended jealousy. "It is not often that we are favored with poudabre."

"There are yours beside your plate," said Rose, mischievously; "you have, if anything, more than Mr. Nimmo."

She very seldom mentioned Vesper's name. It sounded foreign on her lips, and he usually liked to hear her. This evening he paid no attention to her, and, with a trace of disappointment in her manner, she went away to the kitchen.

After Vesper left the table she came back. "Agapit, the young man is dull."

"I assure thee," said Agapit, in French, and very dictatorially, "he is as gay as he usually is."

"He is never gay, but this evening he is troubled."

Agapit grew uneasy. "Dost thou think he will again become ill?"

Rose's brilliant face became pale. "I trust not. Ah, that would be terrible!"

"Possibly he thinks of something. Where is his mother?"

"Above, in her room. Some books came from Boston in a box, and she reads. Go to him, Agapit; talk not of the dear dead, but of the living. Seek not to find out in what his dullness consists, and do not say abrupt things, but gentle. Remember all the kind sayings that thou knowest about women. Say that they are constant if they truly love. They do not forget."

Agapit's fingers remained motionless in the bowl of the big pipe that he was filling with tobacco. "Ma foi, but thou art eloquent. What has come over thee?"

"Nothing, nothing," she said, hurriedly, "I only wonder whether he thinks of his fiancée."

"How dost thou know he has a fiancée?"

"I do not know, I guess. Surely, so handsome a young man must belong already to some woman."

"Ah,—probably. Rose, I am glad that thou hast never been a coquette."

"And why should I be one?" she asked, wonderingly.

"Why, thou hast ways,—sly ways, like most women, and thou art meek and gentle, else why do men run after thee, thou little bleating lamb?"

Rose made him no answer beyond a shrug of her shoulders.

"But thou wilt not marry. Is it not so?" he continued, with tremulous eagerness. "It is better for thee to remain single and guard thy child."

She looked up at him wistfully, then, as solemnly as if she were taking a vow, she murmured, "I do not know all things, but I think I shall never marry."

Agapit could scarcely contain his delight. He laid a hand on her shoulder, and exclaimed, "My good little cousin!" Then he lighted his pipe and smoked in ecstatic silence.

Rose occupied herself with clearing the things from the table, until a sudden thought struck Agapit. "Leave all that for Célina. Let us take a drive, you and I and the little one. Thou hast been much in the house lately."

"But Mr. Nimmo—will it be kind to leave him?"

"He can come if he will, but thou must also ask madame. Go then, while I harness Toochune."

"I am not ready," said Rose, shrinking back.

"Ready!" laughed Agapit. "I will make thee ready," and he pulled her shawl and handkerchief from a peg near the kitchen door.

"I had the intention of wearing my hat," faltered Rose.

"Absurdity! keep it for mass, and save thy money. Go ask the young man, while I am at the stable."

Rose meekly put on the shawl and the handkerchief, and went to the front of the house.

Vesper stood in the doorway, his hands clasped behind his back. She could only see his curly head, a bit of his cheek, and the tip of his mustache. At the sound of her light step he turned around, and his face brightened.

"Look at the sunset," he said, kindly, when she stood in embarrassment before him. "It is remarkable."

It was indeed remarkable. A blood-red sun was shouldering his way in and out of a wide dull mass of gray cloud that was unrelieved by a single fleck of color.

Rose looked at the sky, and Vesper looked at her, and thought of a grieving Madonna. She had been so gay and cheerful lately. What had happened to call that expression of divine tenderness and sympathy to her face? He had never seen her so ethereal and so spiritually beautiful, not even when she was bending over his sick-bed. What a rest and a pleasure to weary eyes she was, in her black artistic garments, and how pure was the oval of her face, how becoming the touch of brownness on the fair skin. The silk handkerchief knotted under her chin and pulled hood-wise over the shock of flaxen hair combed up from the forehead, which two or three little curls caressed daintily, gave the finishing touch of quaintness and out-of-the-worldness to her appearance.

"You are feeling slightly blue this evening, are you not?" he asked.

"Blue,—that means one's thoughts are black?" said Rose, bringing her glance back to him.

"Yes."

"Then I am a very little blue," she said, frankly. "This inn is like the world to me. When those about me are sad, I, too, am sad. Sometimes I grieve when strangers go,—for days in advance I have a weight at heart. When they leave, I shut myself in my room. For others I do not care."

"And are you melancholy this evening because you are thinking that my mother and I must soon leave?"

Her eyes filled with tears. "No; I did not think of that, but I do now."

"Then what was wrong with you?"

"Nothing, since you are again cheerful," she said, in tones so doleful that Vesper burst into one of his rare laughs, and Rose, laughing with him, brushed the tears from her face.

"There was something running in my mind that made me feel gloomy," he said, after a short silence. "It has been haunting me all day."

Her eager glance was a prayer to him to share the cause of his unhappiness with her, and he recited, in a low, penetrating voice, the lines:

Rose had never heard anything like this, and she was troubled, and turned her blue eyes to the sky, where a trailing white cloud was soaring above the dark cloud-bank below. "It is like a soul going up to our Lord," she murmured, reverently.

Vesper would not shock her further with his heterodoxy. "Forget what I said," he went on, lightly, "and let me beg you never to put anything on your head but that handkerchief. You Acadien women wear it with such an air."

"But it is because we know how to tie it. Look,—this is how the Italian women in Boston carry those colored ones," and, pulling the piece of silk from her head, she arranged it in severe lines about her face.

"A decided difference," Vesper was saying, when Agapit came around the corner of the house, driving Toochune, who was attached to a shining dog-cart.

"Are you going with us?" he called out.

"I have not yet been asked."

"Thou naughty Rose," exclaimed Agapit; but she had already hurried up-stairs to invite Mrs. Nimmo to accompany them. "Madame, your mother, prefers to read," she said, when she came back, "therefore Narcisse will come."

"Mount beside me," said Agapit to Vesper; "Rose and Narcisse will sit in the background."

"No," said Vesper, and he calmly assisted Rose to the front seat, then extended a hand to swing Narcisse up beside her. The child, however, clung to him, and Vesper was obliged to take him in the back seat, where he sat nodding his head and looking like a big perfumed flower in his drooping hat and picturesque pink trousers.

"You smile," said Agapit, who had suddenly twisted his head around.

"I always do," said Vesper, "for the space of five minutes after getting into this cart."

"But why?"

"Well—an amusing contrast presents itself to my mind."

"And the contrast, what is it?"

"I am driving with a modern Evangeline, who is not the owner of the rough cart that I would have fancied her in, a few weeks ago, but of a trap that would be an ornament to Commonwealth Avenue."

"Am I the modern Evangeline?" said Agapit, in his breakneck fashion.

"To my mind she was embodied in the person of your cousin," and Vesper bowed in a sidewise fashion towards his landlady.

Rose crimsoned with pleasure. "But do you think I am like Evangeline,—she was so dark, so beautiful?"

"You are passable, Rose, passable," interjected Agapit, "but you lack the passion, the fortitude of the heroine of Mr. Nimmo's immortal countryman, whom all Acadiens venerate. Alas! only the poets and story-tellers have been true to Acadie. It is the historians who lie."

"Why do you think your cousin is lacking in passion and fortitude?" asked Vesper, who had either lost his gloomy thoughts, or had completely subdued them, and had become unusually vivacious.

"She has never loved,—she cannot. Rose, did you love your husband as I did la belle Marguerite?"

"My husband was older,—he was as a father," stammered Rose. "Certainly I did not tear my hair, I did not beat my foot on the ground when he died, as you did when la belle married the miller."

"Have you ever loved any man?" pursued Agapit, unmercifully.

"Oh, shut up, Agapit," muttered Vesper; "don't bully a woman."

Agapit turned to stare at him,—not angrily, but rather as if he had discovered something new and peculiar in the shape of young manhood. "Hear what she always says when young men, and often old men, drive up and say, 'Rose à Charlitte, will you marry me?' She says, 'Love,—it is all nonsense. You make all that.' Is it not so, Rose?"

"Yes," she replied, almost inaudibly; "I have said it."

"You make all that," repeated Agapit, triumphantly. "They can rave and cry,—they can say, 'My heart is breaking;' and she responds, 'Love,—there is no such thing. You make all that.' And yet you call her an Evangeline, a martyr of love who laid her life on its holy altar."

Rose was goaded into a response, and turned a flushed and puzzled face to her cousin. "Agapit, I will explain that lately I do not care to say 'You make all that.' I comprehend—possibly because the blacksmith talks so much to me of his wish towards my sister—that one does not make love. It is something that grows slowly, in the breast, like a flower. Therefore, do not say that I am of ice or stone."

"But you do not care to marry,—you just come from telling me so."

"Yes; I am not for marriage," she said, modestly, "yet do not say that I understand not. It is a beautiful thing to love."

"It is," said Agapit, "yet do not think of it, since thou dost not care for a husband. Let thy thoughts run on thy cooking. Thou wert born for that. I think that thou must have arrived in this world with a little stew-pan in thy hand, a tasting fork hanging at thy girdle. Do not wish to be an Evangeline or to read books. Figure to yourself, Mr. Nimmo,"—and he turned his head to the back seat,—"that last night she came to my room, she begged me for an English book,—she who says often to Narcisse, 'I will shake thee, my little one, if thou usest English words.' She says now that she wishes to learn,—she finds herself forgetful of many things that she learned in the convent. I said, 'Go to bed, thou silly fool. Thy eyes are burning and have black rings around them the color of thy stove,' and she whimpered like a baby."

"Your cousin is an egotist, Mrs. Rose," said Vesper, over his shoulder. "I will lend you some books."

"Agapit is as a brother," she replied, simply.

"I have been a good brother to thee," he said, "and I will never forget thee; not even when I go out into the world. Some day I will send for thee to live with me and my wife."

"Perhaps thy wife will not let me," she said, demurely.

"Then she may leave me; I detest women who will not obey."

For some time the cousins chattered on and endeavored to snatch a glimpse, in "time's long and dark prospective glass," of Agapit's future wife, while Vesper listened to them with as much indulgence as if they had been two children. He was just endeavoring to fathom the rationale of their curious interchange of thou and you, when Agapit said, "If it is agreeable to you, we will drive back in the woods to the Concession. We have a cousin who is ill there,—see, here we pass the station," and he pointed his whip at the gabled roof near them.

The wheels of the dog-cart rolled smoothly over the iron rails, and they entered upon a road bordered by sturdy evergreens that emitted a deliciously resinous odor and occasioned Mrs. Rose to murmur, reverently, "It is like mass; for from trees like these the altar boys get the gum for incense."

Wild gooseberry and raspberry bushes lined the roadside, and under their fruit-laden branches grew many wild flowers. A man who stopped Agapit to address a few remarks to him gathered a handful of berries and a few sprays of wild roses and tossed them in Narcisse's lap.

The child uttered a polite, "Merci, monsieur" (thank you, sir), then silently spread the flowers and berries on the lap rug and allowed tears from his beautiful eyes to drop on them.

Vesper took some of the berries in his hand, and carefully explained to the sorrowing Narcisse that the sensitive shrubs did not shiver when their clothes were stripped from them and their hats pulled off. They were rather shaking their sides in laughter that they could give pleasure to so good and gentle a boy. And the flowers that bowed so meekly when one wished to behead them, were trembling with delight to think that they should be carried, for even a short time, by one who loved them so well.

Narcisse at last was comforted, and, drying his tears, he soberly ate the berries, and presented the roses to his mother in a brilliant nosegay, keeping only one that he lovingly fastened in his neck, where it could brush against his cheek.

Soon they were among the clearings in the forest. Back of every farm stood grim trees in serried rows, like soldiers about to close in on the gaps made in their ranks by the diligent hands of the Acadien farmers. The trees looked inexorable, but the farmers were more so. Here in the backwoods so quiet and still, so favorable for farming, the forest must go as it had gone near the shore.

About every farmhouse, men and women were engaged in driving in cows, tying up horses, shutting up poultry, feeding pigs, and performing the hundred and one duties that fall to the lot of a farmer's family. Everywhere were children. Each farmer seemed to have a quiver full of these quiet, well-behaved little creatures, who gazed shyly and curiously at the dog-cart as it went driving by.

When they came to a brawling, noisy river, having on its banks a saw-mill deserted for the night, Agapit exclaimed, "We are at last arrived!"

Close to the mill was a low, old-fashioned house, situated in the midst of an extensive apple orchard in which the fruit was already taking on size and color.

"They picked four hundred barrels from it last year," said Agapit, "our cousins, the Kessys, who live here. They are rich, but very simple," and springing out, he tied Toochune's head to the gatepost. "Now let us enter," he said, and he ushered Vesper into a small, dull room where an old woman of gigantic stature sat smoking by an open fireplace.

Another tall woman, with soft black eyes, and wearing on her breast a medal of the congregation of St. Anne, took Rose away to the sick-room, while Agapit led Vesper and Narcisse to the fireplace. "Cousin grandmother, will you not tell this gentleman of the commencement of the Bay?"

The old woman, who was nearly sightless, took her pipe from her mouth, and turned her white head. "Does he speak French?"

"Yes, yes," said Agapit, joyfully.

A light came into her face,—a light that Vesper noticed always came into the faces of Acadiens, no matter how fluent their English, if he addressed them in their mother tongue.

"I was born en haut de la Baie" (up the Bay), she began, softly.

"Further than Sleeping Water,—towards Digby," said Agapit, in an undertone.

"Near Bleury," she continued, "where there were only eight families. In the morning my mother would look out at the neighbors' chimneys; where she saw smoke she would send me, saying, 'Go, child, and borrow fire.' Ah! those were hard days. We had no roads. We walked over the beach fifteen miles to Pointe à l'Eglise to hear mass sung by the good Abbé.

"There were plenty of fish, plenty of moose, but not so many boats in those days. The hardships were great, so great that the weak died. Now when my daughter sits and plays on the organ, I think of it. David Kessy, my father, was very big. Once our wagon, loaded with twenty bushels of potatoes, stuck in the mud. He put his shoulder against it and lifted it. Nowadays we would rig a jack, but my father was strong, so strong that he took insults, though he trembled, for he knew a blow from his hand would kill a man."

The Acadienne paused, and fell into a gentle reverie, from which Agapit, who was stepping nimbly in and out of the room with jelly and other delicacies that he had brought for the invalid, soon roused her.

"Tell him about the derangement, cousin grandmother," he vociferated in her ear, "and the march from Annapolis."

CHAPTER XI
NEWS OF THE FIERY FRENCHMAN.

J. F. Herbin.

An extraordinary change came over the aged woman at Agapit's words. Some color crept to her withered cheeks. She straightened herself, and, no longer leaning on her cane, said, in a loud, firm voice, to Vesper, "The Acadiens were not all stolen from Annapolis at the derangement. Did you think they were?"

"I don't know that I ever thought about it, madame," he said, courteously; "but I should like to know."

"About fifty families ran to the wood," she said, with mournful vivacity; "they spent the winter there; I have heard the old people talk of it when I was young. They would sit by the fire and cry. I would try not to cry, but the tears would come. They said their good homes were burnt. Only at night could they revisit them, lest soldiers would catch them. They dug their vegetables from the ground. They also got one cow and carried her back. Ah, she was a treasure! There was one man among them who was only half French, and they feared him, so they watched. One day he went out of the woods,—the men took their guns and followed. Soon he returned, fifty soldiers marching behind him. 'Halt!' cried the Acadiens. They fired, they killed, and the rest of the soldiers ran. 'Discharge me! discharge me!' cried the man, whom they had caught. 'Yes, we will discharge you,' they said, and they put his back against a tree, and once more they fired, but very sadly. At the end of the winter some families went away in ships, but the Comeaus, Thibaudeaus, and Melançons said, 'We cannot leave Acadie; we will find a quiet place.' So they began a march, and one could trace them by the graves they dug. I will not tell you all, for why should you be sad? I will say that the Indians were good, but sometimes the food went, and they had to boil their moccasins. One woman, who had a young baby, got very weak. They lifted her up, they shook the pea-straw stuffing from the sack she lay on, and found her a handful of peas, which they boiled, and she got better.

"They went on and on, they crossed streams, and carried the little ones, until they came here to the Bay,—to Grosses Coques,—where they found big clams, and the tired women said, 'Here is food; let us stay.'

"The men cut a big pine and hollowed a boat, in which they went to the head of the Bay for the cow they had left there. They threw her down, tied her legs, and brought her to Grosses Coques. Little by little they carried also other things to the Bay, and made themselves homes.

"Then the families grew, and now they cover all the Bay. Do you understand now about the march from Annapolis?"

"Thank you, yes," said Vesper, much moved by the sight of tears trickling down her faded face.

"What reason did the old people give for this expulsion from their homes?"

"Always the same, always, always," said Madame Kessy, with energy. "They would not take the oath, because the English would not put in it that they need not fight against the French."

"But now you are happy under English rule?"

"Yes, now,—but the past? What can make up for the weeping of the old people?"

Nothing could, and Vesper hastened to introduce a new subject of conversation. "I have heard much about the good Abbé that you speak of. Did you ever see him?"

"See him,—ah, sir, he was an angel of God, on this Bay, and he a gentleman out of France. We were all his children, even the poor Indians, whom he gathered around him and taught our holy religion, till their fine voices would ring over the Bay, in hymns to the ever blessed Virgin. He denied himself, he paid our doctors' bills, even to twenty pounds at a time,—ah, there was mourning when he died. When my bans were published in church the good Abbé rode no more on horseback along the Bay. He lay a corpse, and I could scarcely hold up my head to be married."

"In speaking of those old days," said Vesper, "can you call to mind ever hearing of a LeNoir of Grand Pré called the Fiery Frenchman?"

"Of Etex LeNoir," cried the old woman, in trumpet tones, "of the martyr who shamed an Englishman, and was murdered by him?"

"Yes, that is the man."

"I have heard of him often, often. The old ones spoke of it to me. His heart was broken,—the captain, who was more cruel than Winslow, called him a papist dog, and struck him down, and the sailors threw him into the sea. He laid a curse on the wicked captain, but I cannot remember his name."

"Did you ever hear anything of the wife and child of Etex LeNoir?"

"No," she said, absently, "there was only the husband Etex that I had heard of. Would not his wife come back to the Bay? I do not know," and she relapsed into the dullness from which her temporary excitement had roused her.

"He was called the Fiery Frenchman," she muttered, presently, but so low that Vesper had to lean forward to hear her. "The old ones said that there was a mark like flame on his forehead, and he was like fire himself."

"Agapit, is it not time that we embark?" said Rose, gliding from an inner room. "It will soon be dark."

Agapit sprang up. Vesper shook hands with Madame Kessy and her daughter, and politely assured them, in answer to their urgent request, that he would be sure to call again, then took his seat in the dog-cart, where in company with his new friends he was soon bowling quickly over a bit of smooth and newly repaired road.

Away ahead, under the trees, they soon heard snatches of a lively song, and presently two young men staggered into view supporting each other, and having much difficulty in keeping to their side of the road.

Agapit, with angry mutterings, drove furiously by the young men, with his head well in the air, although they saluted him as their dear cousin from the Bay.

Rose did not speak, but she hung her head, and Vesper knew that she was blushing to the tips of the white ears inside her black handkerchief.

No one ventured a remark until they reached a place where four roads met, when Agapit ejaculated, desperately, "The devil is also here!"

Vesper turned around. The sun had gone down, the twilight was nearly over, but he possessed keen sight and could plainly discover against the dull blue evening sky the figures of a number of men and boys, some of whom were balancing themselves on the top of a zigzag fence, while others stood with hands in their pockets,—all vociferously laughing and jeering at a man who staggered to and fro in their midst with clenched fists, and light shirt-sleeves spotted with red.

"This is abominable," said Agapit, in a rage, and he was about to lay his whip on Toochune's back when Vesper suggested mildly that he was in danger of running down some of his countrymen.

Agapit pulled up the horse with a jerk, and Rose immediately sprang to the road and ran up to the young man, who had plainly been fighting and was about to fight again.

Vesper slipped from his seat and stood by the wheel.

"Do not follow her," exclaimed Agapit; "they will not hurt her. They would beat you."

"I know it."

"She is my cousin, thou impatient one," pursued Agapit, irritably. "I would not allow her to be insulted."

"I know that, too," said Vesper, calmly, and he watched the young men springing off the fences and hurrying up to Rose, who had taken the pugilist by the hand.

"Isidore," she said, sorrowfully, and as unaffectedly as if they had been alone, "hast thou been fighting again?"

"It is her second cousin," growled Agapit; "that is why she interferes."

"Écoute-moi, écoute-moi, Rose" (listen to me), stammered the young man in the blood-stained shirt. "They all set upon me. I was about to be massacred. I struck out but a little, and I got some taps here and there. I was drunk at first, but I am not very drunk now."

"Poor Isidore, I will take thee home; come with me."

The crowd of men and boys set up a roar. They were quarrelsome and mischievous, and had not yet got their fill of rowdyism.

"Va-t'ang, va-t'ang" (go away), "Rose à Charlitte. We want no women here. Go home about thy business. If Big Fists wishes to fight, we will fight."

Among all the noisy, discordant voices this was the only insulting one, and Rose turned and fixed her mild gaze on the offender, who was one of the oldest men present, and the chief mischief-maker of the neighborhood. "But it is not well for all to fight one man," she said, gently.

"We fight one by one. Isidore is big,—he has never enough. Go away, or there will yet be a bigger row," and he added a sentence of gross abuse.

Vesper made a step forward, but Isidore, the young bully, who was of immense height and breadth, and a son of the old Acadienne that they had just quitted, was before him.

"You wish to fight, my friends," he said, jocularly; "here, take this," and, lifting his big foot, he quickly upset the offender, and kicked him towards some men in the crowd who were also relatives of Rose.

One of them sprang forward, and, with his dark face alight with glee at the chance to avenge the affront offered to his kinswoman, at once proceeded to beat the offender calmly and systematically, and to roll him under the fence.

Rose, in great distress, attempted to go to his rescue, but the young giant threw his arm around her. "This is only fun, my cousin. Thou must not spoil everything. Come, I will return with thee."

"Nâni" (no), cried Agapit, furiously, "thou wilt not. Fit company art thou for strangers!"

Isidore stared confusedly at him, while Vesper settled the question by inviting him in the back seat and installing Rose beside him. Then he held out his arms to Narcisse, who had been watching the disturbance with drowsy interest, fearful only that the Englishman from Boston might leave him to take a hand in it.

As soon as Vesper mounted the seat beside him, Agapit jerked the reins, and set off at a rapid pace; so rapid that Vesper at first caught only snatches of the dialogue carried on behind him, that was tearful on the part of Rose, and meek on that of Isidore.

Soon Agapit sobered down, and Rose's words could be distinguished. "My cousin, how canst thou? Think only of thy mother and thy wife; and the good priest,—suppose he had come!"

"Then thou wouldst have seen running like that of foxes," replied Isidore, in good-natured, semi-interested tones.

"Thou wast not born a drunkard. When sober thou art good, but there could not be a worse man when drunk. Such a pile of cursing words to go up to the sky,—and such a volley of fisting. Ah, how thou wast wounding Christ!"

Isidore held on tightly, for Agapit was still driving fast, and uttered an inaudible reply.

"Tell me where thou didst get that liquor," said Rose.

"It was a stolen cask, my cousin."

"Isidore!"

"But I did not steal it. It came from thy charming Bay. Thou didst not know that, shortly ago, a captain sailed to Sleeping Water with five casks of rum. He hired a man from the Concession to help him hide them, but the man stole one cask. Imagine the rage of the captain, but he could not prosecute, for it was smuggled. Since then we have fun occasionally."

"Who is that bad man? If I knew where was his cask, I would take a little nail and make a hole in it."

"Rose, couldst thou expect me to tell thee?"

"Yes," she said, warmly. Then, remembering that she had been talking English to his French, she suddenly relapsed into low, swift sentences in her own tongue, which Vesper could not understand. He caught their import, however. She was still inveighing against the sin of drunkenness and was begging him to reform, and her voice did not flag until they reached his home, where his wife—a young woman with magnificent eyes and a straight, queenly figure—stood by the gate.

"Bon soir (good evening), Claudine," called out Agapit. "We have brought home Isidore, who, hearing that a distinguished stranger was about to pass through the Concession, thoughtfully put himself on exhibition at the four roads. You had better keep him at home until La Guerrière goes back to Saint Pierre."

"It was La Guerrière that brought the liquor," said Rose, suddenly, to Isidore.

He did not contradict her, and she said, firmly, "Never shall that captain darken my doors again."

The young Acadien beauty gave Vesper a fleeting glance, then she said, bitterly, "It should rather be Saint Judas, for from there the evil one sends stuff to torture us women—Here enter," and half scornfully, half affectionately, she extended a hand to her huge husband, who was making a wavering effort to reach the gateway.

He clung to her as if she had been an anchor, and when she asked him what had happened to his shirt he stuttered, regretfully, "Torn, Claudine,—torn again."

"How many times should one mend a shirt?" she asked, turning her big blazing eyes on Rose.

"Charlitte never became drunk," said Rose, in a plaintive voice, "but I have mended the shirts of my brothers at least a hundred times."

"Then I have but one more time," said the youthful Madame Kessy. "After that I shall throw it in the fire. Go into the house, my husband. I was a fool to have married thee," she added, under her breath.

Isidore stood tottering on his feet, and regarded her with tipsy gravity. "And thou shalt come with me, my pretty one, and make me a hot supper and sing me a song."

"I will not do that. Thou canst eat cold bread, and I will sing thee a song with my tongue that will not please thee."

"The priest married us," said Isidore, doggedly, and in momentary sobriety he stalked to the place where she stood, picked her up, and, putting her under his arm, carried her into the house, she meanwhile protesting and laughing hysterically while she shrieked out something to Rose about the loan of a sleeve pattern.

"Yes, yes, I understand," called Rose, "the big sleeve, with many folds; I will send it. Make thy husband his supper and come soon to see me."

"Rose," said Agapit, severely, as they drove away, "is it a good thing to make light of that curse of curses?"

"To make light of it! Mon Dieu, you do not understand. It is men who make women laugh even when their hearts are breaking."

Agapit did not reply, and, as they were about to enter a thick wood, he passed the reins to Vesper and got out to light the lamps.

While he was fidgeting with them, Rose moved around so that she could look into the front seat.

"Your child is all right," said Vesper, gazing down at the head laid confidingly against his arm. "He is sound asleep,—not a bit alarmed by that fuss."

"It does not frighten him when human beings cry out. He only sorrows for things that have no voices, and he is always right when with you. It is not that; I wish to ask you—to ask you to forgive me."

"For what?"

"But you know—I told you what was not true."

"Do not speak of it. It was a mere bagatelle."

"It is not a bagatelle to make untruths," she said, wearily, "but I often do it,—most readily when I am frightened. But you did not frighten me."

Vesper did not reply except by a reassuring glance, which in her preoccupation she lost, and, catching her breath, she went on, "I think so often of a sentence from an Englishman that the sisters of a convent used to say to us,—it is about the little lies as well as the big ones that come from the pit."

"Do you mean Ruskin?" said Vesper, curiously, "when he speaks of 'one falsity as harmless, and another as slight, and another as unintended,—cast them all aside; they may be light and accidental, but they are ugly soot from the smoke of the pit for all that?'"

"Yes, yes, it is that,—will you write it for me?—and remember," she continued, hurriedly, as she saw Agapit preparing to reënter the cart, "that I did not say what I did to make a fine tale, but for my people whom I love. You were a stranger, and I supposed you would linger but a day and then proceed, and it is hard for me to say that the Acadiens are no better than the English,—that they will get drunk and fight. I did not imagine that you would see them, yet I should not have told the story," and with her flaxen head drooping on her breast she turned away from him.

"When is lying justifiable?" asked Vesper of Agapit.

The young Acadien plunged into a long argument that lasted until they reached the top of the hill overlooking Sleeping Water. Then he paused, and as he once more saw above him the wide expanse of sky to which he was accustomed, and knew that before him lay the Bay, wide, open, and free, he drew a long breath.

"Ah, but I am glad to arrive home. When I go to the woods it is as if a large window through which I had been taking in the whole world had been closed."

No one replied to him, and he soon swung them around the corner and up to the inn door. Rose led her sleepy boy into the kitchen, where bright lights were burning, and where the maid Célina seemed to be entertaining callers. Vesper took the lantern and followed Agapit to the stable.

"Is it a habit of yours to give your hotel guests drives?" he asked, hanging the lantern on a hook and assisting Agapit in unbuckling straps.

"Yes, whenever it pleases us. Many, also, hire our horse and pony. You see that we have no common horse in Toochune."

"Yes, I know he is a thoroughbred."

"Rose, of course, could not buy such an animal. He was a gift from her uncle in Louisiana. He also sent her this dog-cart and her organ. He is rich, very rich. He went South as a boy, and was adopted by an old farmer; Rose is the daughter of his favorite sister, and I tell her that she will inherit from him, for his wife is dead and he is alone, but she says not to count on what one does not know."

Vesper had already been favored with these items of information by his mother, so he said nothing, and assisted Agapit in his task of making long-legged Toochune comfortable for the night. Having finished, and being rewarded by a grateful glance from the animal's lustrous eyes, they both went to the pump outside and washed their hands.

"It is too fine for the house," said Agapit. "Are you too fatigued to walk? If agreeable I will take you to Sleeping Water River, where you have not yet been, and tell you how it accumulated its name. There is no one inside," he continued, as Vesper cast a glance at the kitchen windows, "but the miller and his wife, in whom I no longer take pleasure, and the mail-driver who tells so long stories."

"So long that you have no chance."

"Exactly," said Agapit, fumbling in his pocket. "See what I bought to-day of a travelling merchant. Four cigars for ten cents. Two for you, and two for me. Shall we smoke them?"

Vesper took the cigars, slipped them in his pocket, and brought out one of his own, then with Agapit took the road leading back from the village to the river.

CHAPTER XII.
AN UNHAPPY RIVER.