Winslow's recovery was rapid, under the care and skill of Suzanne. His left shoulder gave him considerable trouble, and he was compelled to keep his arm in a sling for several days; yet it was not long after his mishap when he had strength enough to wander over the island and ingratiate himself with the folk of Pierre Island. A deep friendship soon drew Winslow and Pierre together, and the young man spent much of his time in the company of the older. He felt that he owed Winslow was now domiciled at "Bluff Castle," where his simple and modest tastes, his good-nature and his quiet tact, pleased the old Acadian and the women of his household. Pierre carried with him into his daily life the rural simplicity of the peasant, and a certain dignity and kindness which never left him. His was a calm and quiet old age, far removed from the world, and free from its weaknesses and sordid influences and its common failings. The philosophers of old had the nature of this old Acadian, wise in the experiences peculiar to their environments, and true to those high principles of living which only men learn who contemplate with correct judgment the events of their existence and aim at the highest point for the purpose of their life. Tempered with a long life of labor, reared and trained within the sight and influence of the mighty changes of elemental nature, and in constant communication with its forces, and at last made wise at the shrine of sorrow, Pierre seemed to Winslow the embodiment of the highest qualities of ripe and noble old age. Pierre found himself drawn to Winslow as he would have been to his own son had not an accident cut him off in his young manhood. Because of this greatest loss and its resulting sorrow, the whole tendency and purpose of his life had been changed, and in his only daughter, Marie, he had placed the whole of his affection and hope and purpose of life. Yet the maiden had become a great fear to him in the element of uncertainty which necessarily affected his view of her future years. The father realized his age and the youth of the daughter, and the difficulties that might at any time surround her if he were removed by death. He yet mourned his wife, and felt that his life was broken by the loss of his son, but he faced the future calmly and without fear, save for the thought of his daughter. In her young womanhood she made the only concern of his life, and there was as yet no promise for the future. Yet in her was his only life. To her would descend all the title and history of the Gotros, for the first time since the great banishment of the Acadians in 1755 without a male representative. The name was virtually extinct and the house broken when he passed away. "This stone house of the Gotros is known among the Acadians as 'Pierre Logis,' and has been the home of the Pierres, as the Gotros of the direct line are known, ever since your ancestor removed our people from Grand-PrÉ," said the old man, pointing to his house. "Tell me, good friend," said Winslow, "how this "It is a long story, full of cruelty and suffering," answered the old man, sadly. "We must go back almost to the first settlement of Grand-PrÉ. Our name became very numerous, and then gradually through centuries died out. I am the last of our line,—the last of the name Pierre Gotro." The old man remained for some moments in thought, and a shade of sadness resting on his face darkened the depths of his eyes. His mind seemed to be dwelling upon the things of the past, and his thoughts shaped themselves at last in words calm and unimpassioned, as one who deals with revered things. The strength of his heart and mind, the chastening experiences of his life, the philosophical cast of his reason and understanding, gave dignity to his utterances, and impressed Winslow with the nobility of this son of toil. He began the story of his people and his family. "The first Gotro came to Grand-PrÉ from Port Royal, now called Annapolis, after that place had been settled for eighty years. It sent off its people like a hive in summer when, overcrowded, the young bees are compelled to seek a new home. The great meadows of Grand-PrÉ were waiting unpeopled, and in a few years became the largest of the Acadian centres. The whole section on the south yonder, called Minas," pointing with his arm across the "The Gotros in particular were favorable to English rule, as they had rich and large possessions of land and were anxious to avoid trouble with the people of other nationality. Yet, with all the other Acadian people who had taken the oath of allegiance to the English crown, they refused to the last to take up arms against their own kindred and nationality, as they were expected to do by the provincial governors who proposed the measure. This refusal on their part served as a pretext for removing them in 1755 from the province. "You know how all the people were called to their church, deceived by the order which declared that it was the command of the king, and that they were to hear the wishes of the English king in regard to themselves. Expecting a settlement of all their difficulties, they were thus entrapped and forcibly removed from their homes, and all the houses, barns and mills of Grand-PrÉ destroyed by fire." "The history of Pierre Gotro does not relate to those of our race who were removed. The first Pierre Gotro who made this island his home was known as 'Peche Gotro,' because of his fondness for fishing, and his skill in that calling. He was but a young man at the time, not being married, and was but one of the numerous name in Minas. Pierre owned a fishing boat, and had been away "Pierre Island at that time made a safe retreat. It was almost inaccessible save by a narrow and dangerous path which animals had discovered and kept open by constant use. The slope of the island which has the road leading up here was not connected with the beach, for the lowest point of it at that time was nearly fifty feet high, and was built up as it is now after many years of labor when it was finally safe for an Acadian to return to Nova Scotia. "Here Pierre made his home. In the cove where you were hurt he kept his boat, the channel thither being through a long and dangerous space of boulders. "It is strange that the Acadians ever attempted to return to a country where they had received such cruel treatment. It would have seemed more pleasing to them to go among their own people in other places, where they would not have been subjected to such severe and unjust treatment, after they had been separated and broken as a people. Yet they returned. And thus it was that Pierre came to "With the building of the stone house Pierre began the long and lonely life which opens the history of Pierre Island. Months of terrible doubt as to the fate of his own kindred, and the privation which beset him turned the young man into an old man before his time. Winter set in and cut him off from his home, or what had been his home. His supply of salted fish, with other provisions he had providently gathered, sustained him. But for eight years he never tasted bread. In six years the New England settlers had homes on the Acadian lands. Each year brought more people. The exiled Acadians themselves found their way back to their own country, but not to the places which had been their homes. Many of them who had escaped the dangers of the sea, and the disease that broke out on the ships, died on the long march back to Acadia. They toiled on through a thousand miles of wilderness. Government persecution finally ceased, but for many years they were hated by many of the new settlers, and were glad to escape from them into the woods and to make homes again in the wilderness. On their fine lands the English settlers could not at first support themselves, and had to get aid from the government. The Aca "Pierre in his lonely life learned wisdom and acquired great skill in the chase and on the water. It was many long years before he learned of his own family and relatives, and of the cruel fate of the numerous Gotros. In twenty years but few remained. Their large possessions, which had included almost all of the present village of Grand-PrÉ, and a large and rich family, were reduced to a few heart-broken and hopeless old men and women. "At forty years of age Pierre married one of his own people who had returned to her country after years of wandering and privation. She was an Acadian woman whom he had known at Grand-PrÉ. For twenty years he had lived alone on this island, and had cleared enough land to raise the necessaries of daily life, and by means of his fishing he added to his small wealth. He had built the stone house, and had raised up with stone and earth a road from the beach to the slope by which we come up to Bluff Castle. "Four generations of Pierres end with me," said the old man, sadly. "When I am placed with those whose graves are in sight of the land lost to them "That is the story of Bluff Castle. Each Pierre in turn went to his own people and chose a wife, and marrying her brought her here. Here the wives of the Pierres died and were buried. The daughters have never married till my sister broke the law established in the family after the deportation. That law required that no female should marry if the Pierre Gotro should continue and the name be perpetuated. "We had come to look upon this as an old family tradition, without meaning, and belonging to an earlier and superstitious time. They had placed much importance on the perpetuation of the name, and deemed it not too great a sacrifice if the females of the family remained unmarried. I did not think it justifiable to make the whole life of my sister bound to the observance of it. Indeed, her own spirit rebelled against the acceptance of that old family law after she had been away to school and had become imbued with the ideas of a later generation. "Well," continued Pierre, "my sister married. She died of a terrible disease in a month, and her husband followed not long after. Then came the fate of the Pierres. My only son was drowned. As if the dreadful broken vow of the Gotros were not yet expiated, my wife sickened and passed away, not soon, but after a lingering illness of years, The old man paused, gazing towards the place where lay the Gotros, the dark stones standing in mute testimony of the pride of a family, and the noble man in his great grief and firm submission to the fatal result of that pride blotted out in the judgment book all that was scored against the Gotros. He was the noblest of them all, this Gotro, the last of the Pierres. |