Marshall Saunders

CHAPTER I.
A NEW ARRIVAL AT SLEEPING WATER.

"But swift or slow the days will pass,
The longest night will have a morn,
And to each day is duly born
A night from Time's inverted glass."

—Aminta.

Five years have passed away,—five long years. Five times the Acadien farmers have sown their seeds. Five times they have gathered their crops. Five times summer suns have smiled upon the Bay, and five times winter winds have chilled it. And five times five changes have there been in Sleeping Water, though it is a place that changes little.

Some old people have died, some new ones have been born, but chief among all changes has been the one effected by the sometime presence, and now always absence, of the young Englishman from Boston, who had come so quietly among the Acadiens, and had gone so quietly, and yet whose influence had lingered, and would always linger among them.

In the first place, Rose À Charlitte had given up the inn. Shortly after the Englishman had gone away, her uncle had died, and had left her, not a great fortune, but a very snug little sum of money—and with a part of it she had built herself a cottage on the banks of Sleeping Water River, where she now lived with CÉlina, her former servant, who had, in her devotion to her mistress, taken a vow never to marry unless Rose herself should choose a husband. This there seemed little likelihood of her doing. She had apparently forsworn marriage when she rejected the Englishman. All the Bay knew that he had been violently in love with her, all the Bay knew that she had sent him away, but none knew the reason for it. She had apparently loved him,—she had certainly never loved any other man. It was suspected that Agapit LeNoir was in the secret, but he would not discuss the Englishman with any one, and, gentle and sweet as Rose was, there were very few who cared to broach the subject to her.

Another change had been the coming to Sleeping Water of a family from up the Bay. They kept the inn now, and they were protÉgÉs of the Englishman, and relatives of a young girl that he and his mother had taken away—away across the ocean to France some four years before—because she was a badly brought up child, who did not love her native tongue nor her father's people.

It had been a wonderful thing that had happened to these Watercrows in the coming of the Englishman to the Bay. His mission had been to search for the heirs of Etex LeNoir, who had been murdered by his great-grandfather at the time of the terrible expulsion, and he had found a direct one in the person of this naughty little Bidiane.

She had been a great trouble to him at first, it was said, but, under his wise government, she had soon sobered down; and she had also brought him luck, as much luck as a pot of gold, for, directly after he had discovered her he—who had not been a rich young man, but one largely dependent on his mother—had fallen heir to a large fortune, left to him by a distant relative. This relative had been a great-aunt, who had heard of his romantic and dutiful journey to Acadie, and, being touched by it, and feeling assured that he was a worthy young man, she had immediately made a will, leaving him all that she possessed, and had then died.

He had sought to atone for the sins of his forefathers, and had reaped a rich reward.

A good deal of the Englishman's money had been bestowed on these Watercrows. With kindly tolerance, he had indulged a whim of theirs to go to Boston when they were obliged to leave their heavily mortgaged farm. It was said that they had expected to make vast sums of money there. The Englishman knew that they could not do so, but that they might cease the repinings and see for themselves what a great city really was for poor people, he had allowed them to make a short stay in one.

The result had been that they were horrified; yes, absolutely horrified,—this family transported from the wide, beautiful Bay,—at the narrowness of the streets in the large city of Boston, at the rush of people, the race for work, the general crowding and pushing, the oppression of the poor, the tiny rooms in which they were obliged to live, and the foul air which fairly suffocated them.

They had begged the Englishman to let them come back to the Bay, even if they lived only in a shanty. They could not endure that terrible city.

He generously had given them the Sleeping Water Inn that he had bought when Rose À Charlitte had left it, and there they had tried to keep a hotel, with but indifferent success, until Claudine, the widow of Isidore Kessy, had come to assist them.

The Acadiens in Sleeping Water, with their keen social instincts, and sympathetically curious habit of looking over, and under, and into, and across every subject of interest to them, were never tired of discussing Vesper Nimmo and his affairs. He had still with him the little Narcisse who had run from the Bay five years before, and, although the Englishman himself never wrote to Rose À Charlitte, there came every week to the Bay a letter addressed to her in the handwriting of the young Bidiane LeNoir, who, according to the instructions of the Englishman, gave Rose a full and minute account of every occurrence in her child's life. In this way she was kept from feeling lonely.

These letters were said to be delectable, yes, quite delectable. CÉlina said so, and she ought to know.

The white-headed, red-coated mail-driver, who never flagged in his admiration for Vesper, was just now talking about him. Twice a day during the long five years had Emmanuel de la Rive flashed over the long road to the station. Twice a day had this descendant of the old French nobleman courteously taken off his hat to the woman who kept the station, and then, placing it on his knee, had sat down to discuss calmly and impartially the news of the day with her, in the ten minutes that he allowed himself before the train arrived. He in the village, she at the station, could most agreeably keep the ball of gossip rolling, so that on its way up and down the Bay it might not make too long a tarrying at Sleeping Water.

On this particular July morning he was on his favorite subject. "Has it happened to come to your ears," he said in his shrill, musical voice to Madame ThÉriault, who, as of old, was rocking a cradle with her foot, and spinning with her hands, "that there is talk of a great scheme that the Englishman has in mind for having cars that will run along the shores of the Bay, without a locomotive?"

"Yes, I have heard."

"It would be a great thing for the Bay, as we are far from these stations in the woods."

"It is my belief that he will some day return, and Rose will then marry him," said the woman, who, true to the traditions of her sex, took a more lively interest in the affairs of the heart than in those connected with means of transportation.

"It is evident that she does not wish to marry now," he said, modestly.

"She lives like a nun. It is incredible; she is young, yet she thinks only of good works."

"At least, her heart is not broken."

"Hearts do not break when one has plenty of money," said Madame ThÉriault, wisely.

"If it were not for the child, I daresay that she would become a holy woman. Did you hear that the family with typhoid fever can at last leave her house?"

"Yes, long ago,—ages."

"I heard only this morning," he said, dejectedly, then he brightened, "but it was told to me that it is suspected that the young Bidiane LeNoir will come back to the Bay this summer."

"Indeed,—can that be so?"

"It is quite true, I think. I had it from the blacksmith, whose wife Perside heard it from CÉlina."

"Who had it from Rose—eh bonn! eh bonn! eh bonn!" (Eh bien!—well, well, well). "The young girl is now old enough to marry. Possibly the Englishman will marry her."

Emmanuel's fine face flushed, and his delicate voice rose high in defence of his adored Englishman. "No, no; he does not change, that one,—not more so than the hills. He waits like Gabriel for Evangeline. This is also the opinion of the Bay. You are quite alone—but hark! is that the train?" and clutching his mail-bag by its long neck, he slipped to the kitchen door, which opened on the platform of the station.

Yes; it was indeed the Flying Bluenose, coming down the straight track from Pointe À l'Eglise, with a shrill note of warning.

Emmanuel hurried to the edge of the platform, and extended his mail-bag to the clerk in shirt-sleeves, who leaned from the postal-car to take it, and to hand him one in return. Then, his duty over, he felt himself free to take observations of any passengers that there might be for Sleeping Water.

There was just one, and—could it be possible—could he believe the evidence of his eyesight—had the little wild, red-haired apostate from up the Bay at last come back, clothed and in her right mind? He made a mute, joyous signal to the station woman who stood in the doorway, then he drew a little nearer to the very composed and graceful girl who had just been assisted from the train, with great deference, by a youthful conductor.

"Are my trunks all out?" she said to him, in a tone of voice that assured the mail-man that, without being bold or immodest, she was quite well able to take care of herself.

The conductor pointed to the brakemen, who were tumbling out some luggage to the platform.

"I hope that they will be careful of my wheel," said the girl.

"It's all right," replied the conductor, and he raised his arm as a signal for the train to move on. "If anything goes wrong with it, send it to this station, and I will take it to Yarmouth and have it mended for you."

"Thank you," said the girl, graciously; then she turned to Emmanuel, and looked steadfastly at his red jacket.

He, meanwhile, politely tried to avert his eyes from her, but he could not do so. She was fresh from the home of the Englishman in Paris, and he could not conceal his tremulous eager interest in her. She was not beautiful, like flaxen-haired Rose À Charlitte, nor dark and statuesque, like the stately Claudine; but she was distinguÉe, yes, trÈs-distinguÉe, and her manner was just what he had imagined that of a true Parisienne would be like. She was small and dainty, and possessed a back as straight as a soldier's, and a magnificent bust. Her round face was slightly freckled, her nose was a little upturned, but the hazy, fine mass of hair that surrounded her head was most beauteous,—it was like the sun shining through the reddish meadow grass.

He was her servant, her devoted slave, and Emmanuel, who had never dreamed that he possessed patrician instincts, bowed low before her, "Mademoiselle, I am at your service."

"Merci, monsieur" (thank you, sir), she said, with conventional politeness; then in rapid and exquisite French, that charmed him almost to tears, she asked, mischievously, "But I have never been here before, how do you know me?"

He bowed again. "The name of Mademoiselle Bidiane LeNoir is often on our lips. Mademoiselle, I salute your return."

Illustration
"'MADEMOISELLE, I SALUTE YOUR RETURN.'"

"You are very kind, Monsieur de la Rive," she said, with a frank smile; then she precipitated herself on a bed of yellow marigolds growing beside the station house. "Oh, the delightful flowers!"

"Is she not charming?" murmured Emmanuel, in a blissful undertone, to Madame ThÉriault. "What grace, what courtesy!—and it is due to the Englishman."

Madame ThÉriault's black eyes were critically running over Bidiane's tailor-made gown. "The Englishman will marry her," she said, sententiously. Then she asked, abruptly, "Have you ever seen her before?"

"Yes, once, years ago; she was a little hawk, I assure you."

"She will do now," and the woman approached her. "Mademoiselle, may I ask for your checks."

Bidiane sprang up from the flower bed and caught her by both hands. "You are Madame ThÉriault—I know of you from Mr. Nimmo. Ah, it is pleasant to be among friends. For days and days it has been strangers—strangers—only strangers. Now I am with my own people," and she proudly held up her red head.

The woman blushed in deep gratification. "Mademoiselle, I am more than glad to see you. How is the young Englishman who left many friends on the Bay?"

"Do you call him young? He is at least thirty."

"But he was young when here."

"True, I forgot that. He is well, very well. He is never ill now. He is always busy, and such a good man—oh, so good!" and Bidiane clasped her hands, and rolled her lustrous, tawny eyes to the sky.

"And the child of Rose À Charlitte?" said Emmanuel, eagerly.

"A little angel,—so calm, so gentle, so polite. If you could see him bow to the ladies,—it is ravishing, I assure you. And he is always spoiled by Mrs. Nimmo, who adores him."

"Will he come back to the Bay?"

"I do not know," and Bidiane's vivacious face grew puzzled. "I do not ask questions—alas! have I offended you?—I assure you I was thinking only of myself. I am curious. I talk too much, but you have seen Mr. Nimmo. You know that beyond a certain point he will not go. I am ignorant of his intentions with regard to the child. I am ignorant of his mother's intentions; all I know is that Mr. Nimmo wishes him to be a forester."

"A forester!" ejaculated Madame ThÉriault, "and what is that trade?"

Bidiane laughed gaily. "But, my dear madame, it is not a trade. It is a profession. Here on the Bay we do not have it, but abroad one hears often of it. Young men study it constantly. It is to take care of trees. Do you know that if they are cut down, water courses dry up? In Clare we do not think of that, but in other countries trees are thought useful and beautiful, and they keep them."

"Hold—but that is wonderful," said Emmanuel.

Bidiane turned to him with a winning smile. "Monsieur, how am I to get to the shore? I am eaten up with impatience to see Madame de ForÊt and my aunt."

"But there is my cart, mademoiselle," and he pointed to the shed beyond them. "I shall feel honored to conduct you."

"I gladly accept your offer, monsieur. Au revoir, madame."

Madame ThÉriault reluctantly watched them depart. She would like to keep this gay, charming creature with her for an hour longer.

"It is wonderful that they did not come to meet you," said Emmanuel, "but they did not expect you naturally."

"I sent a telegram from Halifax," said Bidiane, "but can you believe it?—I was so stupid as to say Wednesday instead of Tuesday. Therefore Madame de ForÊt expects me to-morrow."

"You advised her rather than Mirabelle Marie, but wherefore?"

Bidiane shook her shining head. "I do not know. I did not ask; I did simply as Mr. Nimmo told me. He arranges all. I was with friends until this morning. Only that one thing did I do alone on the journey,—that is to telegraph,—and I did it wrong," and a joyous, subdued peal of laughter rang out on the warm morning air.

Emmanuel reverently assisted her into his cart, and got in beside her. His blood had been quickened in his veins by this unexpected occurrence. He tried not to look too often at this charming girl beside him, but, in spite of his best efforts, his eyes irresistibly and involuntarily kept seeking her face. She was so eloquent, so well-mannered; her clothes were smooth and sleek like satin; there was a faint perfume of lovely flowers about her,—she had come from the very heart and centre of the great world into which he had never ventured. She was charged with magic. What an acquisition to the Bay she would be!

He carefully avoided the ruts and stones of the road. He would not for the world give her an unnecessary shock, and he ardently wished that this highway from the woods to the Bay might be as smooth as his desire would have it.

"And this is Sleeping Water," she said, dreamily.

Emmanuel assured her that it was, and she immediately began to ply him with questions about the occupants of the various farms that they were passing, until a sudden thought flashed into her mind and made her laughter again break out like music.

"I am thinking—ah, me! it is really too absurd for anything—of the astonishment of Madame de ForÊt when I walk in upon her. Tell me, I beg you, some particulars about her. She wrote not very much about herself."

Emmanuel had a great liking for Rose, and he joyfully imparted to Bidiane the most minute particulars concerning her dress, appearance, conduct, daily life, her friends and surroundings. He talked steadily for a mile, and Bidiane, whose curiosity seemed insatiable on the subject of Rose, urged him on until he was forced to pause for breath.

Bidiane turned her head to look at him, and immediately had her attention attracted to a new subject. "That red jacket is charming, monsieur," she said, with flattering interest. "If it is quite agreeable, I should like to know where you got it."

"Mademoiselle, you know that in Halifax there are many soldiers."

"Yes,—English ones. There were French ones in Paris. Oh, I adore the short blue capes of the military men."

"The English soldiers wear red coats."

"Yes, monsieur."

"Sometimes they are sold when their bright surface is soiled. Men buy them, and, after cleaning, sell them in the country. It is cheerful to see a farmer working in a field clad in red."

"Ah! this is one that a soldier used to wear."

"No, mademoiselle,—not so fast. I had seen these red coats,—Acadiens have always loved that color above others. I wished to have one; therefore, when asked to sing at a concert many years ago, I said to my sister, 'Buy red cloth and make me a red coat. Put trimmings on it.'"

"And you sang in this?"

"No, mademoiselle,—you are too fast again," and he laughed delightedly at her precipitancy. "I sang in one long years ago, when I was young. Afterwards, to save,—for we Acadiens do not waste, you know,—I wore it to drive in. In time it fell to pieces."

"And you liked it so much that you had another made?"

"Exactly, mademoiselle. You have guessed it now," and his tones were triumphant.

Her curiosity on the subject of the coat being satisfied, she returned to Rose, and finally asked a series of questions with regard to her aunt.

Her chatter ceased, however, when they reached the Bay, and, overcome with admiration, she gazed silently at the place where

From shore to shore the shining waters lay,
Beneath the sun, as placid as a cheek.

Emmanuel, discovering that her eyes were full of tears, delicately refrained from further conversation until they reached the corner, when he asked, softly, "To the inn, or to Madame de ForÊt's?"

Bidiane started. "To Madame de ForÊt's—no, no, to the inn, otherwise my aunt might be offended."

He drew up before the veranda, where Mirabelle Marie and Claude both happened to be standing. There were at first incredulous glances, then a great burst of noise from the woman and an amazed grunt from the man.

Bidiane flew up the steps and embraced them, and Emmanuel lingered on in a trance of ecstasy. He could not tear himself away, and did not attempt to do so until the trio vanished into the house.

---

CHAPTER II.
BIDIANE GOES TO CALL ON ROSE À CHARLITTE.

"Love duty, ease your neighbor's load,
Learn life is but an episode,
And grateful peace will fill your mind."

Aminta. Archbishop O'Brien.

Mirabelle Marie and her husband seated themselves in the parlor with Bidiane close beside them.

"You're only a mite of a thing yet," shrieked Mrs. Watercrow, "though you've growed up; but sakerjÉ! how fine, how fine,—and what a shiny cloth in your coat! How much did that cost?"

"Do not scream at me," said Bidiane, good-humoredly. "I still hear well."

Claude À Sucre roared in a stentorian voice, and clapped his knee. "She comes home Eenglish,—quite Eenglish."

"And the Englishman,—he is still rich," said Mirabelle Marie, greedily, and feeling not at all snubbed. "Does he wear all the time a collar with white wings and a split coat?"

"But you took much money from him," said Bidiane, reproachfully.

"Oh, that Boston,—that divil's hole!" vociferated Mirabelle Marie. "We did not come back some first-class Yankees whitewashÉs. No, no, we are French now,—you bet! When I was a young one my old mother used to ketch flies between her thumb and finger. She'd say, 'Je te squeezerai'" (I will squeeze you). "Well, we were the flies, Boston was my old mother. But you've been in cities, Biddy Ann; you know 'em."

"Ah! but I was not poor. We lived in a beautiful quarter in Paris,—and do not call me Biddy Ann; my name is Bidiane."

"Lord help us,—ain't she stylish!" squealed her delighted aunt. "Go on, Biddy, tell us about the fine ladies, and the elegant frocks, and the dimens; everythin' shines, ain't that so? Did the Englishman shove a dollar bill in yer hand every day?"

"No, he did not," said Bidiane, with dignity. "I was only a little girl to him. He gave me scarcely any money to spend."

"Is he goin' to marry yer,—say now, Biddy, ain't that so?"

Bidiane's quick temper asserted itself. "If you don't stop being so vulgar, I sha'n't say another word to you."

"Aw, shut up, now," said Claude, remonstratingly, to his wife.

Mrs. Watercrow was slightly abashed. "I don't go for to make yeh mad," she said, humbly.

"No, no, of course you did not," said the girl, in quick compunction, and she laid one of her slim white hands on Mirabelle Marie's fat brown ones. "I should not have spoken so hastily."

"Look at that,—she's as meek as a cat," said the woman, in surprise, while her husband softly caressed Bidiane's shoulder.

"The Englishman, as you call him, does not care much for women," Bidiane went on, gently. "Now that he has money he is much occupied, and he always has men coming to see him. He often went out with his mother, but rarely with me or with any ladies. He travels, too, and takes Narcisse with him; and now, tell me, do you like being down the Bay?"

Her aunt shrugged her shoulders. "A long sight more'n Boston."

"Why did you give up the farm?" said the girl to Claude; "the old farm that belonged to your grandfather."

"I be a fool, an' I don' know it teel long after," said Claude, slowly.

"And you speak French here,—the boys, have they learned it?"

"You bet,—they learned in Boston from Acajens. Biddy, what makes yeh come back? Yer a big goose not to stay with the Englishman."

Bidiane surveyed her aunt disapprovingly. "Could I live always depending on him? No, I wish to work hard, to earn some money,—and you, are you not going to pay him for this fine house?"

"God knows, he has money enough."

"But we mus' pay back," said Claude, smiting the table with his fist. "I ain't got much larnin', but I've got a leetle idee, an' I tell you, maw,—don' you spen' the money in that stockin'."

His wife's fat shoulders shook in a hearty laugh.

His face darkened. "You give that to Biddy."

"Yes," said his niece, "give it to me. Come now, and get it, and show me the house."

Mrs. Watercrow rose resignedly, and preceded the girl to the kitchen. "Let's find Claudine. She's a boss cook, mos' as good as Rose À Charlitte. Biddy, be you goin' to stay along of us?"

"I don't know," said the girl, gaily. "Will you have me?"

"You bet! Biddy,"—and she lowered her voice,—"you know 'bout Isidore?"

The girl shuddered. "Yes."

"It was drink, drink, drink, like a fool. One day, when he works back in the woods with some of those Frenchmen out of France, he go for to do like them, an' roast a frog on the biler in the mill ingine. His brain overswelled, overfoamed, an' he fell agin the biler. Then he was dead."

"Hush,—don't talk about him; Claudine may hear you."

"How,—you know her?"

"I know everybody. Mr. Nimmo and his mother talked so often of the Bay. They do not wish Narcisse to forget."

"That's good. Does the Englishman's maw like the little one?"

"Yes, she does."

"Claudine ain't here," and Mirabelle Marie waddled through the kitchen, and directed her sneaks to the back stairway. "We'll skip up to her room."

Bidiane followed her, but when Mrs. Watercrow would have pushed open the door confronting them, she caught her hand.

"The divil," said her surprised relative, "do you want to scare the life out of me?"

"Knock," said Bidiane, "always, always at the door of a bedroom or a private room, but not at that of a public one such as a parlor."

"Am I English?" exclaimed Mirabelle Marie, drawing back and regarding her in profound astonishment.

"No, but you are going to be,—or rather you are going to be a polite Frenchwoman," said Bidiane, firmly.

Mirabelle Marie laughed till the tears ran down her cheeks. She had just had presented to her, in the person of Bidiane, a delicious and first-class joke.

Claudine came out of her room, and silently stared at them until Bidiane took her hand, when her handsome, rather sullen face brightened perceptibly.

Bidiane liked her, and some swift and keen perception told her that in the young widow she would find a more apt pupil and a more congenial associate than in her aunt. She went into the room, and, sitting down by the window, talked at length to her of Narcisse and the Englishman.

At last she said, "Can you see Madame de ForÊt's house from here?"

Mirabelle Marie, who had squatted comfortably on the bed, like an enormous toad, got up and toddled to the window. "It's there ag'in those pines back of the river. There's no other sim'lar."

Bidiane glanced at the cool white cottage against its green background. "Why, it is like a tiny Grand Trianon!"

"An' what's that?"

"It is a villa near Paris, a very fine one, built in the form of a horseshoe."

"Yes,—that's what we call it," interrupted her aunt. "We ain't blind. We say the horseshoe cottage."

"One of the kings of France had the Grand Trianon built for a woman he loved," said Bidiane, reverently. "I think Mr. Nimmo must have sent the plan for this from Paris,—but he never spoke to me about it."

"He is not a man who tells all," said Claudine, in French.

Bidiane and Mirabelle Marie had been speaking English, but they now reverted to their own language.

"When do you have lunch?" asked Bidiane.

"Lunch,—what's that?" asked her aunt. "We have dinner soon."

"And I must descend," said Claudine, hurrying down-stairs. "I smell something burning."

Bidiane was about to follow her, when there was a clattering heard on the stairway.

"It's the young ones," cried Mirabelle Marie, joyfully. "Some fool has told 'em. They'll wring your neck like the blowpipe of a chicken."

The next minute two noisy, rough, yet slightly shy boys had taken possession of their returned cousin and were leading her about the inn in triumph.

Mirabelle Marie tried to keep up with them, but could not succeed in doing so. She was too excited to keep still, too happy to work, so she kept on waddling from one room to another, to the stable, the garden, and even to the corner,—to every spot where she could catch a glimpse of the tail of Bidiane's gown, or the heels of her twinkling shoes. The girl was indefatigable; she wished to see everything at once. She would wear herself out.

Two hours after lunch she announced her determination to call on Rose.

"I'll skip along, too," said her aunt, promptly.

"I wish to be quite alone when I first see this wonderful woman," said Bidiane.

"But why is she wonderful?" asked Mirabelle Marie.

Bidiane did not hear her. She had flitted out to the veranda, wrapping a scarf around her shoulders as she went. While her aunt stood gazing longingly after her, she tripped up the village street, enjoying immensely the impression she created among the women and children, who ran to the doorways and windows to see her pass.

There were no houses along the cutting in the hill through which the road led to the sullen stream of Sleeping Water. Rose's house stood quite alone, and at some distance from the street, its gleaming, freshly painted front towards the river, its curved back against a row of pine-trees.

It was very quiet. There was not a creature stirring, and the warm July sunshine lay languidly on some deserted chairs about a table on the lawn.

Bidiane went slowly up to the hall door and rang the bell.

Rosy-cheeked CÉlina soon stood before her; and smiling a welcome, for she knew very well who the visitor was, she gently opened the door of a long, narrow blue and white room on the right side of the hall.

Bidiane paused on the threshold. This dainty, exquisite apartment, furnished so simply, and yet so elegantly, had not been planned by an architect or furnished by a decorator of the Bay. This bric-À-brac, too, was not Acadien, but Parisian. Ah, how much Mr. Nimmo loved Rose À Charlitte! and she drew a long breath and gazed with girlish and fascinated awe at the tall, beautiful woman who rose from a low seat, and slowly approached her.

Rose was about to address her, but Bidiane put up a protesting hand. "Don't speak to me for a minute," she said, breathlessly. "I want to look at you."

Rose smiled indulgently, and Bidiane gazed on. She felt herself to be a dove, a messenger sent from a faithful lover to the woman he worshipped. What a high and holy mission was hers! She trembled blissfully, then, one by one, she examined the features of this Acadien beauty, whose quiet life had kept her from fading or withering in the slightest degree. She was, indeed, "a rose of dawn."

These were the words written below the large painting of her that hung in Mr. Nimmo's room. She must tell Rose about it, although of course the picture and the inscription must be perfectly familiar to her, through Mr. Nimmo's descriptions.

"Madame de ForÊt," she said at last, "it is really you. Oh, how I have longed to see you! I could scarcely wait."

"Won't you sit down?" said her hostess, just a trifle shyly.

Bidiane dropped into a chair. "I have teased Mrs. Nimmo with questions. I have said again and again, 'What is she like?'—but I never could tell from what she said. I had only the picture to go by."

"The picture?" said Rose, slightly raising her eyebrows.

"Your painting, you know, that is over Mr. Nimmo's writing-table."

"Does he have one of me?" asked Rose, quietly.

"Yes, yes,—an immense one. As broad as that,"—and she stretched out her arms. "It was enlarged from a photograph."

"Ah! when he was here I missed a photograph one day from my album, but I did not know that he had taken it. However, I suspected."

"But does he not write you everything?"

"You only are my kind little correspondent,—with, of course, Narcisse."

"Really, I thought that he wrote everything to you. Dear Madame de ForÊt, may I speak freely to you?"

"As freely as you wish, my dear child."

Bidiane burst into a flood of conversation. "I think it is so romantic,—his devotion to you. He does not talk of it, but I can't help knowing, because Mrs. Nimmo talks to me about it when she gets too worked up to keep still. She really loves you, Madame de ForÊt. She wishes that you would allow her son to marry you. If you only knew how much she admires you, I am sure you would put aside your objection to her son."

Rose for a few minutes seemed lost in thought, then she said, "Does Mrs. Nimmo think that I do not care for her son?"

"No, she says she thinks you care for him, but there is some objection in your mind that you cannot get over, and she cannot imagine what it is."

"Dear little mademoiselle, I will also speak freely to you, for it is well for you to understand, and I feel that you are a good friend, because I have received so many letters from you. It is impossible that I should marry Mr. Nimmo, therefore we will not speak of it, if you please. There is an obstacle,—he knows and agrees to it. Years ago, I thought some day this obstacle might be taken away. Now, I think it is the will of our Lord that it remain, and I am content."

"Oh, oh!" said Bidiane, wrinkling her face as if she were about to cry, "I cannot bear to hear you say this."

Rose smiled gently. "When you are older, as old as I am, you will understand that marriage is not the chief thing in life. It is good, yet one can be happy without. One can be pushed quietly further and further apart from another soul. At first, one cries out, one thinks that the parting will kill, but it is often the best thing for the two souls. I tell you this because I love you, and because I know Mr. Nimmo has taken much care in your training, and wishes me to be an elder sister. Do not seek sorrow, little one, but do not try to run from it. This dear, dear man that you speak of, was a divine being, a saint to me. I did wrong to worship him. To separate from me was a good thing for him. He is now more what I then thought him, than he was at the time. Do you understand?"

"Yes, yes," said Bidiane, breaking into tears, and impulsively throwing herself on her knees beside her, "but you dash my pet scheme to pieces. I wish to see you two united. I thought perhaps if I told you that, although no one knows it but his mother, he just wor—wor—ships you—"

Rose stroked her head. "Warm-hearted child,—and also loyal. Our Lord rewards such devotion. Nothing is lost. Your precious tears remind me of those I once shed."

Bidiane did not recover herself. She was tired, excited, profoundly touched by Rose's beauty and "sweet gravity of soul," and her perfect resignation to her lot. "But you are not happy," she exclaimed at last, dashing away her tears; "you cannot be. It is not right. I love to read in novels, when Mr. Nimmo allows me, of the divine right of passion. I asked him one day what it meant, and he explained. I did not know that it gave him pain,—that his heart must be aching. He is so quiet,—no one would dream that he is unhappy; yet his mother knows that he is, and when she gets too worried, she talks to me, although she is not one-half as fond of me as she is of Narcisse."

A great wave of color came over Rose's face at the mention of her child. She would like to speak of him at once, yet she restrained herself.

"Dear little girl," she said, in her low, soothing voice, "you are so young, so delightfully young. See, I have just been explaining to you, yet you do not listen. You will have to learn for yourself. The experience of one woman does not help another. Yet let me read to you, who think it so painful a thing to be denied anything that one wants, a few sentences from our good archbishop."

Bidiane sprang lightly to her feet, and Rose went to a bookcase, and, taking out a small volume bound in green and gold, read to her: "'Marriage is a high and holy state, and intended for the vast majority of mankind, but those who expand and merge human love in the divine, espousing their souls to God in a life of celibacy, tread a higher and holier path, and are better fitted to do nobler service for God in the cause of suffering humanity.'"

"Those are good words," said Bidiane, with twitching lips.

"It is of course a Catholic view," said Rose; "you are a Protestant, and you may not agree perfectly with it, yet I wish only to convince you that if one is denied the companionship of one that is beloved, it is not well to say, 'Everything is at an end. I am of no use in the world.'"

"I think you are the best and the sweetest woman that I ever saw," said Bidiane, impulsively.

"No, no; not the best," said Rose, in accents of painful humility. "Do not say it,—I feel myself the greatest of sinners. I read my books of devotion, I feel myself guilty of all,—even the blackest of crimes. It seems that there is nothing I have not sinned in my thoughts. I have been blameless in nothing, except that I have not neglected the baptism of children in infancy."

"You—a sinner!" said Bidiane, in profound scepticism. "I do not believe it."

"None are pure in the sight of our spotless Lord," said Rose, in agitation; "none, none. We can only try to be so. Let me repeat to you one more line from our archbishop. It is a poem telling of the struggle of souls, of the search for happiness that is not to be found in the world. This short line is always with me. I cannot reach up to it, I can only admire it. Listen, dear child, and remember it is this only that is important, and both Protestant and Catholic can accept it—'Walking on earth, but living with God.'"

Bidiane flung her arms about her neck. "Teach me to be good like you and Mr. Nimmo. I assure you I am very bad and impatient."

"My dear girl, my sister," murmured Rose, tenderly, "you are a gift and I accept you. Now will you not tell me something of your life in Paris? Many things were not related in your letters."

---

CHAPTER III.
TAKEN UNAWARES.

"Who can speak
The mingled passions that surprised his heart?"

Thomson.

Bidiane nothing loath, broke into a vivacious narrative. "Ah, that Mr. Nimmo, I just idolize him. How much he has done for me! Just figure to yourself what a spectacle I must have been when he first saw me. I was ignorant,—as ignorant as a little pig. I knew nothing. He asked me if I would go down the Bay to a convent. I said, quite violently, 'No, I will not.' Then he went home to Boston, but he did not give me up. I soon received a message. Would I go to France with him and his mother, for it had been decided that a voyage would be good for the little Narcisse? That dazzled me, and I said 'yes.' I left the Bay, but just fancy how utterly stupid, how frightfully from out of the woods I was. I will give one instance: When my uncle put me on the steamer at Yarmouth it was late, he had to hurry ashore. He did not show me the stateroom prepared for me, and I, dazed owl, sat on the deck shivering and drawing my cloak about me. I thought I had paid for that one tiny piece of the steamer and I must not move from it. Then a kind woman came and took me below."

"But you were young, you had never travelled, mademoiselle."

"Don't say mademoiselle, say Bidiane,—please do, I would love it."

"Very well, Bidiane,—dear little Bidiane."

The girl leaned forward, and was again about to embrace her hostess with fervent arms, but suddenly paused to exclaim, "I think I hear wheels!"

She ran to one of the open windows. "Who drives a black buggy,—no, a white horse with a long tail?"

"Agapit LeNoir," said Rose, coming to stand beside her.

"Oh, how is he? I hate to see him. I used to be so rude, but I suppose he has forgiven me. Mrs. Nimmo says he is very good, still I do not think Mr. Nimmo cares much for him."

Rose sighed. That was the one stain on the character of the otherwise perfect Vesper. He had never forgiven Agapit for striking him.

"Why he looks quite smart," Bidiane rattled on. "Does he get on well with his law practice?"

"Very well; but he works hard—too hard. This horse is his only luxury."

"I detest white horses. Why didn't he get a dark one?"

"I think this one was cheaper."

"Is he poor?"

"Not now, but he is economical. He saves his money."

"Oh, he is a screw, a miser."

"No, not that,—he gives away a good deal. He has had a hard life, has my poor cousin, and now he understands the trials of others."

"Poverty is tiresome, but it is sometimes good for one," said Bidiane, wisely.

Rose's white teeth gleamed in sudden amusement. "Ah, the dear little parrot, she has been well trained."

Bidiane leaned out the window. There was Agapit, peering eagerly forward from the hood of his carriage, and staring up with some of the old apprehensiveness with which he used to approach her.

"What a dreadful child I was," reflected Bidiane, with a blush of shame. "He is yet afraid of me."

Agapit, with difficulty averting his eyes from her round, childish face and its tangle of reddish hair, sprang from his seat and fastened his horse to the post sunk in the grass at the edge of the lawn, while Rose, followed by Bidiane, went out to meet him.

"How do you do, Rose," he murmured, taking her hand in his own, while his eyes ran behind to the waiting Bidiane.

The girl, ladylike and modest, and full of contrition for her former misdeeds, was yet possessed by a mischievous impulse to find out whether her power over the burly, youthful, excitable Agapit extended to this thinner, more serious-looking man, with the big black mustache and the shining eye-glasses.

"Ah, fanatic, Acadien imbecile," she said, coolly extending her fingers, "I am glad to see you again."

Though her tone was reassuring, Agapit still seemed to be overcome by some emotion, and for a few seconds did not recover himself. Then he smiled, looked relieved, and, taking a step nearer her, bowed profoundly. "When did you arrive, mademoiselle?"

"But you knew I was here," she said, gaily, "I saw it in your face when you first appeared."

Agapit dropped his eyes nervously. "He is certainly terribly afraid of me," reflected Bidiane again; then she listened to what he was saying.

"The Bay whispers and chatters, mademoiselle; the little waves that kiss the shores of Sleeping Water take her secrets from her and carry them up to the mouth of the Weymouth River—"

"You have a telephone, I suppose," said Bidiane, in an eminently practical tone of voice.

"Yes, I have," and he relapsed into silence.

"Here we are together, we three," said Bidiane, impulsively. "How I wish that Mr. Nimmo could see us."

Rose lost some of her beautiful color. These continual references to her lover were very trying. "I will leave you two to amuse each other for a few minutes, while I go and ask CÉlina to make us some tea À l'anglaise."

"I should not have said that," exclaimed Bidiane, gazing after her; "how easy it is to talk too much. Each night, when I go to bed, I lie awake thinking of all the foolish things I have said during the day, and I con over sensible speeches that I might have uttered. I suppose you never do that?"

"Why not, mademoiselle?"

"Oh, because you are older, and because you are so clever. Really, I am quite afraid of you," and she demurely glanced at him from under her curly eyelashes.

"Once you were not afraid," he remarked, cautiously.

"No; but now you must be very learned."

"I always was fond of study."

"Mr. Nimmo says that some day you will be a judge, and then probably you will write a book. Will you?"

"Some day, perhaps. At present, I only write short articles for magazines and newspapers."

"How charming! What are they about?"

"They are mostly Acadien and historical."

"Do you ever write stories—love stories?"

"Sometimes, mademoiselle."

"Delicious! May I read them?"

"I do not know," and he smiled. "You would probably be too much amused. You would think they were true."

"And are they not?"

"Oh, no, although some have a slight foundation of fact."

Bidiane stared curiously at him, opened her lips, closed them again, set her small white teeth firmly, as if bidding them stand guard over some audacious thought, then at last burst out with it, for she was still excited and animated by her journey, and was bubbling over with delight at being released from the espionage of strangers to whom she could not talk freely. "You have been in love, of course?"

Agapit modestly looked at his boots.

"You find me unconventional," cried Bidiane, in alarm. "Mrs. Nimmo says I will never get over it. I do not know what I shall do,—but here, at least, on the Bay, I thought it would not so much matter. Really, it was a consolation in leaving Paris."

"Mademoiselle, it is not that," he said, hesitatingly. "I assure you, the question has been asked before, with not so much delicacy—But with whom should I fall in love?"

"With any one. It must be a horrible sensation. I have never felt it, but I cry very often over tales of lovers. Possibly you are like Madame de ForÊt, you do not care to marry."

"Perhaps I am waiting until she does, mademoiselle."

"I suppose you could not tell me," she said, in the dainty, coaxing tones of a child, "what it is that separates your cousin from Mr. Nimmo?"

"No, mademoiselle, I regret to say that I cannot."

"Is it something she can ever get over?"

"Possibly."

"You don't want to be teased about it. I will talk of something else; people don't marry very often after they are thirty. That is the dividing line."

Agapit dragged at his mustache with restless fingers.

"You are laughing at me, you find me amusing," she said, with a sharp look at him. "I assure you I don't mind being laughed at. I hate dull people—oh, I must ask you if you know that I am quite Acadien now?"

"Rose has told me something of it."

"Yes, I know. She says that you read my letters, and I think it is perfectly sweet in you. I know what you have done for me. I know, you need not try to conceal it. It was you that urged Mr. Nimmo not to give me up, it is to you that I am indebted for my glimpse of the world. I assure you I am grateful. That is why I speak so freely to you. You are a friend and also a relative. May we not call ourselves cousins?"

"Certainly, mademoiselle,—I am honored," said Agapit, in a stumbling voice.

"You are not used to me yet. I overcome you, but wait a little, you will not mind my peculiarities, and let me tell you that if there is anything I can do for you, I shall be so glad. I could copy papers or write letters. I am only a mouse and you are a lion, yet perhaps I could bite your net a little."

Agapit straightened himself, and stepped out rather more boldly as they went to and fro over the grass.

"I seem only like a prattling, silly girl to you," she said, humbly, "yet I have a little sense, and I can write a good hand—a good round hand. I often used to assist Mr. Nimmo in copying passages from books."

Agapit felt like a hero. "Some day, mademoiselle, I may apply to you for assistance. In the meantime, I thank you."

They continued their slow walk to and fro. Sometimes they looked across the river to the village, but mostly they looked at each other, and Agapit, with acute pleasure, basked in the light of Bidiane's admiring glances.

"You have always stayed here," she exclaimed; "you did not desert your dear Bay as I did."

"But for a short time only. You remember that I was at Laval University in Quebec."

"Oh, yes, I forgot that. Madame de ForÊt wrote me. Do you know, I thought that perhaps you would not come back. However, Mr. Nimmo was not surprised that you did."

"There are a great many young men out in the world, mademoiselle. I found few people who were interested in me. This is my home, and is not one's home the best place to earn one's living?"

"Yes; and also you did not wish to go too far away from your cousin. I know your devotion, it is quite romantic. She adores you, I easily saw that in her letters. Do you know, I imagined"—and she lowered her voice, and glanced over her shoulder—"that Mr. Nimmo wrote to her, because he never seemed curious about my letters from her."

"That is Mr. Nimmo's way, mademoiselle."

"It is a pity that they do not write. It would be such a pleasure to them both. I know that. They cannot deceive me."

"But she is not engaged to him."

"If you reject a man, you reject him," said Bidiane, with animation, "but you know there is a kind of lingering correspondence that decides nothing. If the affair were all broken off, Mr. Nimmo would not keep Narcisse."

Agapit wrinkled his forehead. "True; yet I assure you they have had no communication except through you and the childish scrawls of Narcisse."

Bidiane was surprised. "Does he not send her things?"

"No, mademoiselle."

"But her furniture is French."

"There are French stores in the States, and Rose travels occasionally, you know."

"Hush,—she is coming back. Ah! the adorable woman."

Agapit threw his advancing cousin a glance of affectionate admiration, and went to assist her with the tea things.

Bidiane watched him putting the tray on the table, and going to meet CÉlina, who was bringing out a teapot and cups and saucers. "Next to Mr. Nimmo, he is the kindest man I ever saw," she murmured, curling herself up in a rattan chair. "But we are not talking," she said, a few minutes later.

Rose and Agapit both smiled indulgently at her. Neither of them talked as much as in former days. They were quieter, more subdued.

"Let me think of some questions," said the girl. "Are you, Mr. LeNoir, as furious an Acadien as you used to be?"

Agapit fixed his big black eyes on her, and began to twist the ends of his long mustache. "Mademoiselle, since I have travelled a little, and mingled with other men, I do not talk so loudly and vehemently, but my heart is still the same. It is Acadie forever with me."

"Ah, that is right," she said, enthusiastically. "Not noisy talk, but service for our countrymen."

"Will you not have a cup of tea, and also tell us how you became an Acadien?" said Agapit, who seemed to divine her secret thought.

"Thank you, thank you,—yes, I will do both," and Bidiane's round face immediately became transfigured,—the freckles almost disappeared. One saw only "the tiger dusk and gold" of her eyes, and her reddish crown of hair. "I will tell you of that noblest of men, that angel, who swept down upon the Bay, and bore away a little owl in his pinions,—or talons, is it?—to the marvellous city of Paris, just because he wished to inspire the stupid owl with love for its country."

"But the great-grandfather of the eagle, or, rather, the angel, killed the great-grandfather of the owl," said Agapit; "do not forget that, mademoiselle. Will you have a biscuit?"

"Thank you,—suppose he did, that does not alter the delightfulness of his conduct. Who takes account of naughty grandfathers in this prosaic age? No one but Mr. Nimmo. And do we not put away from us—that is, society people do—all those who are rough and have not good manners? Did Mr. Nimmo do this? No, he would train his little Acadien owl. The first night we arrived in Paris he took me with Narcisse for a fifteen minutes' stroll along the Arcades of the Rue de Rivoli. I was overcome. We had just arrived, we had driven through lighted streets to a magnificent hotel. The bridges across the river gleamed with lights. I thought I must be in heaven. You have read the descriptions of it?"

"Of Paris,—yes," said Agapit, dreamily.

"Every one was speaking French,—the language that I detested. I was dumb. Here was a great country, a great people, and they were French. I had thought that all the world outside the Bay was English, even though I had been taught differently at school. But I did not believe my teachers. I told stories, I thought that they also did. But to return to the Rue de Rivoli,—there were the shops, there were the merchants. Now that I have seen so much they do not seem great things to me, but then—ah! then they were palaces, the merchants were kings and princes offering their plate and jewels and gorgeous robes for sale.

"'Choose,' said Mr. Nimmo to Narcisse and to me, 'choose some souvenir to the value of three francs.' I stammered, I hesitated, I wished everything, I selected nothing. Little Narcisse laid his finger on a sparkling napkin-ring. I could not decide. I was intoxicated, and Mr. Nimmo calmly conducted us home. I got nothing, because I could not control myself. The next day, and for many days, Mr. Nimmo took us about that wonderful city. It was all so ravishing, so spotless, so immense. We did not visit the ugly parts. I had neat and suitable clothes. I was instructed to be quiet, and not to talk loudly or cry out, and in time I learned,—though at first I very much annoyed Mrs. Nimmo. Never, never, did her son lose patience. Madame de ForÊt, it is charming to live in a peaceful, splendid home, where there are no loud voices, no unseemly noises,—to have servants everywhere, even to push the chair behind you at the table."

"Yes, if one is born to it," said Rose, quietly.

"But one gets born to it, dear madame. In a short time, I assure you, I put on airs. I straightened my back, I no longer joked with the servants. I said, quietly, 'Give me this. Give me that,'—and I disliked to walk. I wished always to step in a carriage. Then Mr. Nimmo talked to me."

"What did he say?" asked Agapit, jealously and unexpectedly.

"My dear sir," said Bidiane, drawing herself up, and speaking in her grandest manner, "I beg permission to withhold from you that information. You, I see, do not worship my hero as wildly as I do. I address my remarks to your cousin," and she turned her head towards Rose.

They both laughed, and she herself laughed merrily and excitedly. Then she hurried on: "I had a governess for a time, then afterwards I was sent every day to a boarding-school near by the hotel where we lived. I was taught many things about this glorious country of France, this land from which my forefathers had gone to Acadie. Soon I began to be less ashamed of my nation. Later on I began to be proud. Very often I would be sent for to go to the salon (drawing-room). There would be strangers,—gentlemen and ladies to whom Mrs. Nimmo would introduce me, and her son would say, 'This is a little girl from Acadie.' Immediately I would be smiled on, and made much of, and the fine people would say, 'Ah, the Acadiens were courageous,—they were a brave race,' and they would address me in French, and I could only hang my head and listen to Mr. Nimmo, who would remark, quietly, 'Bidiane has lived among the English,—she is just learning her own language.'

"Ah, then I would study. I took my French grammar to bed, and one day came the grand revelation. I of course had always attended school here on the Bay, but you know, dear Madame de ForÊt, how little Acadien history is taught us. Mr. Nimmo had given me a history of our own people to read. Some histories are dull, but this one I liked. It was late one afternoon; I sat by my window and read, and I came to a story. You, I daresay, know it," and she turned eagerly to Agapit.

"I daresay, mademoiselle, if I were to hear it—"

"It is of those three hundred Acadiens, who were taken from Prince Edward Island by Captain Nichols. I read of what he said to the government, 'My ship is leaking, I cannot get it to England.' Yet he was forced to go, you know,—yet let me have the sad pleasure of telling you that I read of their arrival to within a hundred leagues of the coast of England. The ship had given out, it was going down, and the captain sent for the priest on board,—at this point I ran to the fire, for daylight faded. With eyes blinded by tears I finished the story,—the priest addressed his people. He said that the captain had told him that all could not be saved, that if the Acadiens would consent to remain quiet, he and his sailors would seize the boats, and have a chance for their lives. 'You will be quiet, my dear people,' said the priest. 'You have suffered much,—you will suffer more,' and he gave them absolution. I shrieked with pain when I read that they were quiet, very quiet,—that one Acadien, who ventured in a boat, was rebuked by his wife so that he stepped contentedly back to her side. Then the captain and sailors embarked, they set out for the shore, and finally reached it; and the Acadiens remained calmly on board. They went calmly to the bottom of the sea, and I flung the book far from me, and rushed down-stairs,—I must see Mr. Nimmo. He was in the salon with a gentleman who was to dine with him, but I saw only my friend. I precipitated myself on a chair beside him. 'Ah, tell me, tell me!' I entreated, 'is it all true? Were they martyrs,—these countrymen of mine? Were they patient and afflicted? Is it their children that I have despised,—their religion that I have mocked?'

"'Yes, yes,' he said, gently, 'but you did not understand.'

"'I understand,' I cried, 'and I hate the English. I will no longer be a Protestant. They murdered my forefathers and mothers.'

"He did not reason with me then,—he sent me to bed, and for six days I went every morning to mass in the Madeleine. Then I grew tired, because I had not been brought up to it, and it seemed strange to me. That was the time Mr. Nimmo explained many things to me. I learned that, though one must hate evil, there is a duty of forgiveness—but I weary you," and she sprang up from her chair. "I must also go home; my aunt will wonder where I am. I shall soon see you both again, I hope," and waving her hand, she ran lightly towards the gate.

"An abrupt departure," said Agapit, as he watched her out of sight.

"She is nervous, and also homesick for the Nimmos," said Rose; "but what a dear child. Her letters have made her seem like a friend of years' standing. Perhaps we should have kept her from lingering on those stories of the old time."

"Do not reproach yourself," said Agapit, as he took another piece of cake, "we could not have kept her from it. She was just about to cry,—she is probably crying now," and there was a curious satisfaction in his voice.

"Are you not well to-day, Agapit?" asked Rose, anxiously.

"Mon Dieu, yes,—what makes you think otherwise?"

"You seem subdued, almost dull."

Agapit immediately endeavored to take on a more sprightly air. "It is that child,—she is overcoming. I was not prepared for such life, such animation. She cannot write as she speaks."

"No; her letters were stiff."

"Without doubt, Mr. Nimmo has sent her here to be an amiable distraction for you," said Agapit. "He is afraid that you are getting too holy, too far beyond him. He sends this Parisian butterfly to amuse you. He has plenty of money, he can indulge his whims."

His tone was bitter, and Rose forbore to answer him. He was so good, this cousin of hers, and yet his poverty and his long-continued struggle to obtain an education had somewhat soured him, and he had not quite fulfilled the promise of his earlier years. He was also a little jealous of Vesper.

If Vesper had been as generous towards him as he was towards other people, Agapit would have kept up his old admiration for him. As it was, they both possessed indomitable pride along different lines, and all through these years not a line of friendly correspondence had passed between them,—they had kept severely apart.

But for this pride, Rose would have been allowed to share all that she had with her adopted brother, and would not have been obliged to stand aside and, with a heart wrung with compassion, see him suffer for the lack of things that she might easily have provided.

However, he was getting on better now. He had a large number of clients, and was in a fair way to make a good living for himself.

They talked a little more of Bidiane's arrival, that had made an unusual commotion in their quiet lives, then Agapit, having lingered longer than usual, hurried back to his office and his home, in the town of Weymouth, that was some miles distant from Sleeping Water.

A few hours later, Bidiane laid her tired, agitated head on her pillow, after putting up a very fervent and Protestant petition that something might enable her to look into the heart of her Catholic friend, Rose À Charlitte, and discover what the mysterious obstacle was that prevented her from enjoying a happy union with Mr. Nimmo.

---

"Il est de ces longs jours d'indicible malaise
OÙ l'on voudrait dormir du lourd sommeil des morts,
De ces heures d'angoisse oÙ l'existence pÈse
Sur l'Âme et sur le corps."

Two or three weeks went by, and, although Bidiane's headquarters were nominally at the inn, she visited the horseshoe cottage morning, noon, and night.

Rose always smiled when she heard the rustling of her silk-lined skirts, and often murmured:

"Sa robe fait froufrou, froufrou,
Ses petits pieds font toc, toc, toc."

"I wonder how long she is going to stay here?" said Agapit, one day, to his cousin.

"She does not know,—she obeys Mr. Nimmo blindly, although sometimes she chatters of earning her own living."

"I do not think he would permit that," said Agapit, hastily.

"Nor I, but he does not tell her so."

"He is a kind of Grand Monarque among you women. He speaks, and you listen; and now that Bidiane has broken the ice and we talk more freely of him, I may say that I do not approve of his keeping your boy any longer, although it is a foolish thing for me to mention, since you have never asked my advice on the subject."

"My dear brother," said Rose, softly, "in this one thing I have not agreed with you, because you are not a mother, and cannot understand. I feared to bring back my boy when he was delicate, lest he should die of the separation from Mr. Nimmo. It was better for me to cry myself to sleep for many nights than for me to have him for a few weeks, and then, perhaps, lay his little body in the cold ground. Where would then be my satisfaction? And now that he is strong, I console myself with the thought of the fine schools that he attends, I follow him every hour of the day, through the letters that Mr. Nimmo sends to Bidiane. As I dust my room in the morning, I hold conversations with him.

"I say, 'How goes the Latin, little one, and the Greek? They are hard, but do not give up. Some day thou wilt be a clever man.' All the time I talk to him. I tell him of every happening on the Bay. Naturally I cannot put all this in my letters to him, that are few and short on account of—well you know why I do not write too much. Agapit, I do not dare to bring him back. He gives that dear young man an object in life; he also interests his mother, who now loves me, through my child. I speak of the schools, and yet it is not altogether for that, for have we not a good college for boys here on the Bay? It is something higher. It is for the good of souls that he stays away. Not yet, not yet, can I recall him. It would not seem right, and I cannot do what is wrong; also there is his father."

Agapit, with a resigned gesture, drew on his gloves. He had been making a short call and was just about to return home.

"Are you going to the inn?" asked Rose.

"Why should I call there?" he said, a trifle irritably. "I have not the time to dance attendance on young girls."

Rose was lost in gentle amazement at Agapit's recent attitude towards Bidiane. Her mind ran back to the long winter and summer evenings when he had come to her house, and had sat for hours reading the letters from Paris. He had taken a profound interest in the little renegade. Step by step he had followed her career. He had felt himself in a measure responsible for the successful issue of the venture in taking her abroad. And had he not often spoken delightedly of her return, and her probable dissemination among the young people of the stock of new ideas that she would be sure to bring with her?

This was just what she had done. She had enlarged the circle of her acquaintance, and every one liked her, every one admired her. Day after day she flashed up and down the Bay, on the bicycle that she had brought with her from Paris, and, as she flew by the houses, even the old women left their windows and hobbled to the door to catch a gay salutation from her.

Only Agapit was dissatisfied, only Agapit did not praise her, and Rose on this day, as she stood wistfully looking into his face, carried on an internal soliloquy. It must be because she represents Mr. Nimmo. She has been educated by him, she reveres him. He has only lent her to the Bay, and will some day take her away, and Agapit, who feels this, is jealous because he is rich, and because he will not forgive. It is strange that the best of men and women are so human; but our dear Lord will some day melt their hearts; and Rose, who had never disliked any one and had not an enemy in the world, checked a sigh and endeavored to turn her thoughts to some more agreeable subject.

Agapit, however, still stood before her, and while he was there it was difficult to think of anything else. Then he presently asked a distracting question, and one that completely upset her again, although it was put in a would-be careless tone of voice.

"Does the Poirier boy go much to the inn?"

Rose tried to conceal her emotion, but it was hard for her to do so, as she felt that she had just been afforded a painful lightning glance into Agapit's mind. He felt that he was growing old. Bidiane was associating with the girls and young men who had been mere children five years before. The Poirier boy, in particular, had grown up with amazing rapidity and precociousness. He was handsomer, far handsomer than Agapit had ever been, he was also very clever, and very much made of on account of his being the most distinguished pupil in the college of Sainte-Anne, that was presided over by the Eudist fathers from France.

"Agapit," she said, suddenly, and in sweet, patient alarm, "are we getting old, you and I?"

"We shall soon be thirty," he said, gruffly, and he turned away.

Rose had never before thought much on the subject of her age. Whatever traces the slow, painful years had left on her inner soul, there were no revealing marks on the outer countenance of her body. Her glass showed her still an unruffled, peaceful face, a delicate skin, an eye undimmed, and the same beautiful abundance of shining hair.

"But, Agapit," she said, earnestly, "this is absurd. We are in our prime. Only you are obliged to wear glasses. And even if we were old, it would not be a terrible thing—there is too much praise of youth. It is a charming time, and yet it is a time of follies. As for me, I love the old ones. Only as we grow older do we find rest."

"The follies of youth," repeated Agapit, sarcastically, "yes, such follies as we have had,—the racking anxiety to find food to put in one's mouth, to find sticks for the fire, books for the shelf. Yes, that is fine folly. I do not wonder that you sigh for age."

Rose followed him to the front door, where he stood on the threshold and looked down at the river.

"Some days I wish I were there," he said, wearily.

Rose had come to the end of her philosophy, and in real alarm she examined his irritated, disheartened face. "I believe that you are hungry," she said at last.

"No, I am not,—I have a headache. I was up all last night reading a book on Commercial Law. I could not eat to-day, but I am not hungry."

"You are starving—come, take off your gloves," she said, peremptorily. "You shall have such a fine little dinner. I know what CÉlina is preparing, and I will assist her so that you may have it soon. Go lie down there in the sitting-room."

"I do not wish to stay," said Agapit, disagreeably; "I am like a bear."

"The first true word that you have spoken," she said, shaking a finger at him. "You are not like my good Agapit to-day. See, I will leave you for a time—Jovite, Jovite," and she went to the back door and waved her hand in the direction of the stable. "Go take out Monsieur LeNoir's horse. He stays to dinner."

After dinner she persuaded him to go down to the inn with her. Bidiane was in the parlor, sitting before a piano that Vesper had had sent from Boston for her. Two young Acadien girls were beside her, and when they were not laughing and exchanging jokes, they sang French songs, the favorite one being "Un Canadien Errant," to which they returned over and over again.

Several shy young captains from schooners in the Bay were sitting tilted back on chairs on the veranda, each one with a straw held between his teeth to give him countenance. Agapit joined them, while Rose went in the parlor and assisted the girls with their singing. She did not feel much older than they did. It was curious how this question of age oppressed some people; and she glanced through the window at Agapit's now reasonably contented face.

"I am glad you came with him," whispered Bidiane, mischievously. "He avoids me now, and I am quite afraid of him. The poor man, he thought to find me a blue-stocking, discussing dictionaries and encyclopÆdias; he finds me empty-headed and silly, so he abandons me to the younger set, although I admire him so deeply. You, at least, will never give me up," and she sighed and laughed at the same time, and affectionately squeezed Rose's hand.

Rose laughed too. She was becoming more light-hearted under Bidiane's half-nonsensical, half-sensible influence, and the two young Acadien girls politely averted their surprised eyes from the saint who would condescend to lay aside for a minute her crown of martyrdom. All the Bay knew that she had had some trouble, although they did not know what it was.

---

CHAPTER V.
BIDIANE PLAYS AN OVERTURE.

"I've tried the force of every reason on him,
Soothed and caressed, been angry, soothed again."

Addison.

A few days later, Bidiane happened to be caught in a predicament, when none of her new friends were near, and she was forced to avail herself of Agapit's assistance.

She had been on her wheel nearly to Weymouth to make a call on one of her numerous and newly acquired girl friends. Merrily she was gliding homeward, and being on a short stretch of road bounded by hay-fields that contained no houses, and fancying that no one was near her, she lifted up her voice in a saucy refrain, "L'homme qui m'aura, il n'aura pas tout ce qu'il voudra" (The man that gets me, will not get all he wants).

"La femme qui m'aura, elle n'aura pas tout ce qu'elle voudra" (The woman that gets me, she'll not get all she wants), chanted Agapit, who was coming behind in his buggy.

Suddenly the girl's voice ceased; in the twinkling of an eye there had been a rip, a sudden evacuation of air from one of the rubber tubes on her wheel, and she had sprung to the road.

"Good afternoon," said Agapit, driving up, "you have punctured a tire."

"Yes," she replied, in dismay, "the wretched thing! If I knew which wicked stone it was that did it, I would throw it into the Bay."

"What will you do?"

"Oh, I do not know. I wish I had leather tires."

"I will take you to Sleeping Water, mademoiselle, if you wish."

"But I do not care to cause you that trouble," and she gazed mischievously and longingly up and down the road.

"It will not be a trouble," he said, gravely.

"Anything is a trouble that one does not enjoy."

"But there is duty, mademoiselle."

"Ah, yes, duty, dear duty," she said, making a face. "I have been instructed to love it, therefore I accept your offer. How fortunate for me that you happened to be driving by! Almost every one is haying. What shall we do with the wheel?"

"We can perhaps lash it on behind. I have some rope. No, it is too large. Well, we can at least wheel it to the post-office in Belliveau's Cove,—or stay, give me your wrench. I will take off the wheel, carry it to Meteghan River, and have it mended. I am going to ChÉticamp to-night. To-morrow I will call for it and bring it to you."

"Oh, you are good,—I did not know that there is a repair shop at Meteghan River."

"There is,—they even make wheels."

"But the outside world does not know that. The train conductor told that if anything went wrong with my bicycle, I would have to send it to Yarmouth."

"The outside world does not know of many things that exist in Clare. Will you get into the buggy, mademoiselle? I will attend to this."

Bidiane meekly ensconced herself under the hood, and took the reins in her hands. "What are you going to do with the remains?" she asked, when Agapit put the injured wheel in beside her.

"We might leave them at Madame LeBlanc's," and he pointed to a white house in the distance. "She will send them to you by some passing cart."

"That is a good plan,—she is quite a friend of mine."

"I will go on foot, if you will drive my horse."

They at once set out, Bidiane driving, and Agapit walking silently along the grassy path at the side of the road.

The day was tranquil, charming, and a perfect specimen of "the divine weather" that Saint-Mary's Bay is said to enjoy in summer. Earlier in the afternoon there had been a soft roll of pearl gray fog on the Bay, in and out of which the schooners had been slipping like phantom ships. Now it had cleared away, and the long blue sweep of water was open to them. They could plainly see the opposite shores of long Digby Neck,—each fisherman's cottage, each comfortable farmhouse, each bit of forest sloping to the water's edge. Over these hills hung the sun, hot and glowing, as a sun should be in haying time. On Digby Neck the people were probably making hay. Here about them there had been a general desertion of the houses for work in the fields. Men, women, and children were up on the slopes on their left, and down on the banks on their right, the women's cotton dresses shining in gay spots of color against the green foliage of the evergreen and hardwood trees that grew singly or in groups about the extensive fields of grass.

Madame LeBlanc was not at home, so Agapit pinned a note to the bicycle, and left it standing outside her front gate with the comfortable assurance that, although it might be the object of curious glances, no one would touch it until the return of the mistress of the house.

Then he entered the buggy, and, with one glance into Bidiane's eyes, which were dancing with merriment, he took the reins from her and drove on briskly.

She stared at the magnificent panorama of purple hills and shining water spread out before them, and, remembering the company that she was in, tried to concentrate her attention on the tragic history of her countrymen. Her most earnest effort was in vain; she could not do so, and she endeavored to get further back, and con over the romantic exploits of Champlain and De Monts, whose oddly shaped ships had ploughed these waters; but here again she failed. Her mind came back, always irresistibly back, from the ancient past to the man of modern times seated beside her.

She was sorry that he did not like her; she had tried hard to please him. He really was wiser than any one she knew; could she not bring about a better understanding with him? If he only knew how ignorant she felt, how anxious she was to learn, perhaps he would not be so hard on her.

It was most unfortunate that she should have had on her bicycling dress. She had never heard him speak against the wheel as a means of exercise, yet she felt intuitively that he did not like it. He adored modest women, and in bicycling they were absolutely forced to occasionally show their ankles. Gradually and imperceptibly she drew her trim-gaitered feet under her blue skirt; then she put up a cautious hand to feel that her jaunty sailor hat was set straight on her coils of hair. Had he heard, she wondered, that six other Acadien girls, inspired by her example, were to have wheels? He would think that she had set the Bay crazy. Perhaps he regarded it as a misfortune that she had ever come back to it.

If he were any other man she would be furiously angry with him. She would not speak to him again. And, with an abrupt shrug of her shoulders, she watched the squawking progress of a gull from the Bay back to the woods, and then said, impulsively, "It is going to rain."

Agapit came out of his reverie and murmured an assent. Then he looked again into her yellowish brown, certainly charming eyes when full of sunlight, as they were at present from their unwinking stare at the bright sky.

"Up the Bay, Digby Neck was our barometer," she said, thoughtfully. "When it grew purple, we were to have rain. Here one observes the gulls, and the sign never fails,—a noisy flight is rain within twenty-four hours. The old gull is telling the young ones to stay back by the lake in the forest, I suppose."

Agapit tried to shake off his dreaminess and to carry on a conversation with her, but failed dismally, until he discovered that she was choking with suppressed laughter.

"Oh, pardon, pardon, monsieur; I was thinking—ah! how delicious is one's surprise at some things—I am thinking how absurd. You that I fancied would be a brother—you almost as angelic as Mr. Nimmo—you do not care for me at all. You try so hard, but I plague you, I annoy. But what will you? I cannot make myself over. I talk all the Acadienism that I can, but one cannot forever linger on the old times. You yourself say that one should not."

"So you think, mademoiselle, that I dislike you?"

"Think it, my dear sir,—I know it. All the Bay knows it."

"Then all the Bay is mistaken; I esteem you highly."

"Actions speak louder than words," and her teasing glance played about his shining glasses. "In order to be polite you perjure yourself."

"Mademoiselle!"

"I am sorry to be so terribly plain-spoken," she said, nodding her head shrewdly, yet childishly. "But I understand perfectly that you think I have a feather for a brain. You really cannot stoop to converse with me. You say, 'Oh, that deceived Mr. Nimmo! He thinks he has accomplished a wonderful thing. He says, "Come now, see what I have done for a child of the Bay; I will send her back to you. Fall down and worship her."'"

Agapit smiled despite himself. "Mademoiselle, you must not make fun of yourself."

"But why not? It is my chief amusement. I am the most ridiculous mortal that ever lived, and I know how foolish I am; but why do you not exercise your charity? You are, I hear, kind and forbearing with the worst specimens of humanity on the Bay. Why should you be severe with me?"

Agapit winced as if she had pinched him. "What do you wish me to do?"

"Already it is known that you avoid me," she continued, airily; "you who are so much respected. I should like to have your good opinion, and, ridiculous as I am, you know that I am less so than I used to be."

She spoke with a certain dignity, and Agapit was profoundly touched. "Mademoiselle," he said, in a low voice, "I am ashamed of myself. You do not understand me, and I assert again that I do not dislike you."

"Then why don't you come to see me?" she asked, pointedly.

"I cannot tell you," he said, and his eyes blazed excitedly. "Do not urge the question. However, I will come—yes, I will. You shall not complain of me in future."

Bidiane felt slightly subdued, and listened in silence to his energetic remarks suddenly addressed to the horse, who had taken advantage of his master's wandering attention by endeavoring to draw the buggy into a ditch where grew some luscious bunches of grass.

"There comes Pius Poirier," she said, after a time.

The young Acadien was on horseback. His stolid, fine-featured face was as immovable as marble, as he jogged by, but there was some play between his violet eyes and Bidiane's tawny ones that Agapit did not catch, but strongly suspected.

"Do you wish to speak to him?" he inquired, coldly, when Bidiane stretched her neck outside the buggy to gaze after him.

"No," she said, composedly, "I only want to see how he sits his horse. He is my first admirer," she added, demurely, but with irrepressible glee.

"Indeed,—I should fancy that mademoiselle might have had several."

"What,—and I am only seventeen? You are crazy, my dear sir,—I am only beginning that sort of thing. It is very amusing to have young men come to see you; although, of course," she interpolated, modestly, "I shall not make a choice for some years yet."

"I should hope not," said her companion, stiffly.

"I say I have never had an admirer; yet sometimes gay young men would stare at me in the street,—I suppose on account of this red hair,—and Mr. Nimmo would be very much annoyed with them."

"A city is a wicked place; it is well that you have come home."

"With that I console myself when I am sometimes lonely for Paris," said Bidiane, wistfully. "I long to see those entrancing streets and parks, and to mingle with the lively crowds of people; but I say to myself what Mr. Nimmo often told me, that one can be as happy in one place as in another, and home is the best of all to keep the heart fresh. 'Bidiane,' he said, one day, when I was extolling the beauties of Paris, 'I would give it all for one glimpse of the wind-swept shores of your native Bay.'"

"Ah, he still thinks that!"

"Yes, yes; though I never after heard him say anything like it. I only know his feelings through his mother."

Agapit turned the conversation to other subjects. He never cared to discuss Vesper Nimmo for any length of time.

When they reached the Sleeping Water Inn, Bidiane hospitably invited him to stay to supper.

"No, thank you,—I must hurry on to ChÉticamp."

"Good-by, then; you were kind to bring me home. Shall we not be better friends in future?"

"Yes, yes," said Agapit, hurriedly. "I apologize, mademoiselle," and jumping into his buggy, he drove quickly away.

Bidiane's gay face clouded. "You are not very polite to me, sir. Sometimes you smile like a sunbeam, and sometimes you glower like a rain-cloud, but I'll find out what is the matter with you, if it takes me a year. It is very discomposing to be treated so."

---

CHAPTER VI.
A SNAKE IN THE GRASS INTERFERES WITH THE
EDUCATION OF MIRABELLE MARIE.

"Fair is the earth and fair is the sky;
God of the tempest, God of the calm,
What must be heaven when here is such balm?"

—Aminta.

Bidiane, being of a practical turn of mind, and having a tremendous fund of energy to bestow upon the world in some way or other, was doing her best to follow the hint given her by Vesper Nimmo, that she should, as a means of furthering her education, spend some time at the Sleeping Water Inn, with the object of imparting to Mirabelle Marie a few ideas hitherto outside her narrow range of thought.

Sometimes the girl became provoked with her aunt, sometimes she had to check herself severely, and rapidly mutter Vesper's incantation, "Do not despise any one; if you do, it will be at a great loss to yourself."

At other times Bidiane had no need to think of the incantation. Her aunt was so good-natured, so forgiving, she was so full of pride in her young niece, that it seemed as if only the most intense provocation could justify any impatience with her.

Mirabelle Marie loved Bidiane almost as well as she loved her own children, and it was only some radical measure, such as the changing of her sneaks at sundown for a pair of slippers, or the sitting in the parlor instead of the kitchen, that excited her rebellion. However, she readily yielded,—these skirmishes were not the occurrences that vexed Bidiane's soul. The renewed battles were the things that discouraged her. No victory was sustained. Each day she must contend for what had been conceded the day before, and she was tortured by the knowledge that so little hold had she on Mirabelle Marie's slippery soul that, if she were to leave Sleeping Water on any certain day, by the next one matters would at once slip back to their former condition.

"Do not be discouraged," Vesper wrote her. "The Bay was not built in a day. Some of your ancestors lived in camps in the woods."

This was an allusion on his part to the grandmother of Mrs. Watercrow, who had actually been a squaw, and Bidiane, as a highly civilized being, winced slightly at it. Very little of the Indian strain had entered her veins, except a few drops that were exhibited in a passion for rambling in the woods. She was more like her French ancestors, but her aunt had the lazy, careless blood, as had also her children.

One of the chief difficulties that Bidiane had to contend with, in her aunt, was her irreligion. Mirabelle Marie had weak religious instincts. She had as a child, and as a very young woman, been an adherent of the Roman Catholic Church, and had obtained some grasp of its doctrines. When, in order to become "stylish," she had forsaken this church, she found herself in the position of a forlorn dog who, having dropped his substantial bone, finds himself groping for a shadow. Protestantism was an empty word to her. She could not comprehend it; and Bidiane, although a Protestant herself, shrewdly made up her mind that there was no hope for her aunt save in the church of her forefathers. However, in what way to get her back to it,—that was the question. She scolded, entreated, reasoned, but all in vain. Mirabelle Marie lounged about the house all day Sunday, very often, strange to say, amusing herself with declamations against the irreligion of the people of Boston.

Bidiane's opportunity to change this state of affairs at last came, and all unthinkingly she embraced it.

The opportunity began on a hot and windy afternoon, a few days after her drive with Agapit. She sat on the veranda reading, until struck by a sudden thought which made her close her book, and glance up and down the long road, to see if the flying clouds of dust were escorting any approaching traveller to the inn. No one was coming, so she hastily left the house and ran across the road to the narrow green field that lay between the inn and the Bay.

The field was bounded by straggling rows of raspberry bushes, and over the bushes hung a few apple-trees,—meek, patient trees, their backs bent from stooping before the strong westerly winds, their short, stubby foliage blown all over their surprised heads.

There was a sheep-pen in the corner of the field next the road, and near it was a barred gate, opening on a winding path that led down to the flat shore. Bidiane went through the gate, frowned slightly at a mowing-machine left out-of-doors for many days by the careless Claude, then laughed at the handle of its uplifted brake, that looked like a disconsolate and protesting arm raised to the sky.

All the family were in the hay field. Two white oxen drew the hay wagon slowly to and fro, while Claudine and the two boys circled about it, raking together scattered wisps left from the big cocks that Claude threw up to Mirabelle Marie.

The mistress of the house was in her element. She gloried in haying, which was the only form of exercise that appealed in the least to her. Her face was overspread by a grin of delight, her red dress fluttered in the strong breeze, and she gleefully jumped up and down on top of the load, and superimposed her fat jolly weight on the masses of hay.

Bidiane ran towards them, dilating her small nostrils as she ran to catch the many delicious odors of the summer air. The strong perfume of the hay overpowered them all, and, in an intoxication of delight, she dropped on a heap of it, and raised an armful to her face.

A squeal from Claudine roused her. Her rake had uncovered a mouse's nest, and she was busily engaged in killing every one of the tiny velvety creatures.

"But why do you do it?" asked Bidiane, running up to her.

Claudine stared at her. She was a magnificent specimen of womanhood as she stood in the blazing light of the sun, and Bidiane, even in the midst of her subdued indignation, thought of some lines in the Shakespeare that she had just laid down:

"'Tis not your inky brows, your black silk hair,
Your bugle eyeballs, nor your cheek of cream,
That can entame my spirits to your worship."

Claudine was carrying on a vigorous line of reasoning. She admired Bidiane intensely, and she quietly listened with pleasure to what she called her rocamboles of the olden times, which were Bidiane's tales of Acadien exploits and sufferings. She was a more apt pupil than the dense and silly Mirabelle Marie.

"If I was a mouse I wouldn't like to be killed," she said, presently, going on with her raking; and Bidiane, having made her think, was satisfied.

"Now, Claudine," she said, "you must be tired. Give me your rake, and do you go up to the house and rest."

"Yes, go, Claudine," said Mirabelle Marie, from her height, "you look drug out."

"I am not tired," said Claudine, in French, "and I shall not give my rake to you, Bidiane. You are not used to work."

Bidiane bubbled over into low, rippling laughter. "I delicate,—ah, that is good! Give me your rake, Claude. You go up to the barn now, do you not?"

Claude nodded, and extended a strong hand to assist his wife in sliding to the ground. Then, accompanied by his boys, he jogged slowly after the wagon to the barn, where the oxen would be unyoked, and the grasping pitcher would lift the load in two or three mouthfuls to the mows.

Bidiane threw down her rake and ran to the fence for some raspberries, and while her hands were busy with the red fruit, her bright eyes kept scanning the road. She watched a foot-passenger coming slowly from the station, pausing at the corner, drifting in a leisurely way towards the inn, and finally, after a glance at Mirabelle Marie's conspicuous gown, climbing the fence, and moving deliberately towards her.

"H'm—a snake in the grass," murmured Bidiane, keeping an eye on the new arrival, and presently she, too, made her way towards her aunt and Claudine, who had ceased work and were seated on the hay.

"This is Nannichette," said Mirabelle Marie, somewhat apprehensively, when Bidiane reached them.

"Yes, I know," said the girl, and she nodded stiffly to the woman, who was almost as fat and as easy-going as Mirabelle Marie herself.

Nannichette was half Acadien and half English, and she had married a pure Indian who lived back in the woods near the Sleeping Water Lake. She was not a very desirable acquaintance for Mirabelle Marie, but she was not a positively bad woman, and no one would think of shutting a door against her, although her acquaintance was not positively sought after by the scrupulous Acadiens.

"We was gabbin' about diggin' for gold one day, Nannichette and I," said Mirabelle Marie, insinuatingly. "She knows a heap about good places, and the good time to dig. You tell us, Biddy,—I mean Bidiane,—some of yer yarns about the lake. Mebbe there's some talk of gold in 'em."

Bidiane sat down on the hay. If she talked, it would at least prevent Nannichette from pouring her nonsense into her aunt's ear, so she began. "I have not yet seen this lake of L'Eau Dormante, but I have read of it. Long, long ago, before the English came to this province, and even before the French came, there was an Indian encampment on the shores of this deep, smooth, dark lake. Many canoes shot gaily across its glassy surface, many camp-fires sent up their smoke from among the trees to the clear, blue sky. The encampment was an old, old one. The Indians had occupied it for many winters; they planned to occupy it for many more, but one sweet spring night, when they were dreaming of summer roamings, a band of hostile Indians came slipping behind the tree-trunks. A bright blaze shot up to the clear sky, and the bosom of Sleeping Water looked as if some one had drawn a bloody finger across it. Following this were shrieks and savage yells, and afterward a profound silence. The Indians left, and the shuddering trees grew closer together to hide the traces of the savage invaders—no, the marks of devastation," she said, stopping suddenly and correcting herself, for she had a good memory, and at times was apt to repeat verbatim the words of some of her favorite historians or story-tellers.

"The green running vines, also," she continued, "made haste to spread over the blackened ground, and the leaves fell quietly over the dead bodies and warmly covered them. Years went by, the leaf-mould had gathered thick over the graves of the Indians, and then, on a memorable day, the feast of Sainte-Anne's, the French discovered the lovely, silent Sleeping Water, the gem of the forest, and erected a fort on its banks. The royal flag floated over the trees, a small space of ground was cleared for the planting of corn, and a garden was laid out, where seeds from old France grew and flourished, for no disturbing gales from the Bay ever reached this sanctuary of the wildwood.

"All went merrily as a marriage bell until one winter night, when the bosom of the lake was frosted with ice, and the snow-laden branches of the trees hung heavily earthward. Then, in the hush before morning, a small detachment of men on snowshoes, arrayed in a foreign uniform, and carrying hatchets in their hands—"

"More Injuns!" gasped Mirabelle Marie, clapping her hand to her mouth in lively distress at Bidiane's tragic manner.

"No, no! I didn't say tomahawks," said Bidiane, who started nervously at the interruption; "the hatchets weren't for killing,—they were to cut the branches. These soldiers crept stealthily and painfully through the underbrush, where broken limbs and prickly shrubs stretched out detaining arms to hold them back; but they would not be held, for the lust of murder was in their hearts. When they reached the broad and open lake—"

"You jist said it was frozen," interrupted the irrepressible Mirabelle Marie.

"I beg your pardon,—the ice-sealed sheet of water,—the soldiers threw away their hatchets and unslung their guns, and again a shout of horror went up to the clear vault of heaven. White men slew white men, for the invaders were not Indians, but English soldiers, and there were streaks of crimson on the snow where the French soldiers laid themselves down to die.

"There seemed to be a curse on the lake, and it was deserted for many years, until a band of sorrowing Acadien exiles was forced to take refuge in the half-ruined fort. They summered and wintered there, until they all died of a strange sickness and were buried by one man who, only, survived. He vowed that the lake was haunted, and would never be an abode for human beings; so he came to the shore and built himself a log cabin, that he occupied in fear and trembling until at last the time came when the French were no longer persecuted."

"Agapit LeNoir also says that the lake is haunted," exclaimed Claudine, in excited French. "He hates the little river that comes stealing from it. He likes the Bay, the open Bay. There is no one here that loves the river but Rose À Charlitte."

"But dere is gold dere,—heaps," said the visitor, in English, and her eyes glistened.

"Only foolish people say that," remarked Claudine, decidedly, "and even if there should be gold there, it would be cursed."

"You not think that," said Nannichette, shrinking back.

"Oh, how stupid all this is!" said Bidiane. "Up the Bay I used to hear this talk of gold. You remember, my aunt?"

Mirabelle Marie's shoulders shook with amusement. "Mon jheu, yes, on the stony Dead Man's Point, where there ain't enough earth to fricasser les cailloux" (fricassee the pebbles); "it's all dug up like graveyards. Come on, Nannichette, tell us ag'in of yer fantome."

Nannichette became suddenly shy, and Mirabelle Marie took it upon herself to be spokeswoman. "She was rockin' her baby, when she heard a divil of a noise. The ceiling gapped at her, jist like you open yer mouth, and a fantome voice says—"

"'Dere is gole in Sleepin' Water Lake,'" interrupted Nannichette, hastily. "'Only women shall dig,—men cannot fine.'"

"An' Nannichette was squshed,—she fell ag'in the floor with her baby."

"And then she ran about to see if she could find some women foolish enough to believe this," said Bidiane, with fine youthful disdain.

A slow color crept into Nannichette's brown cheek. "Dere is gole dere," she said, obstinately. "De speerit tell me where to look."

"That was Satan who spoke to you, Nannichette," said Claudine, seriously; "or maybe you had had a little rum. Come now, hadn't you?"

Nannichette scowled, while Mirabelle Marie murmured, with reverent admiration, "I dessay the divil knows where there is lots of gold."

"It drives me frantic to hear you discuss this subject," said Bidiane, suddenly springing to her feet. "Oh, if you knew how ignorant it sounds, how way back in the olden times! What would the people in Paris say if they could hear you? Oh, please, let us talk of something else; let us mention art."

"What's dat?" asked Nannichette, pricking up her ears.

"It is all about music, and writing poetry, and making lovely pictures, and all kinds of elegant things,—it elevates your mind and soul. Don't talk about hateful things. What do you want to live back in the woods for? Why don't you come out to the shore?"

"Dat's why I wan' de gole," said Nannichette, triumphantly. "Of'en I use to hunt for some of Cap'en Kidd's pots."

"Good gracious!" said Bidiane, with an impatient gesture, "how much money do you suppose that man had? They are searching for his treasure all along the coast. I don't believe he ever had a bit. He was a wicked old pirate,—I wouldn't spend his money if I found it—"

Mirabelle Marie and Nannichette surveyed each other's faces with cunning, glittering eyes. There was a secret understanding between them; no speech was necessary, and they contemplated Bidiane as two benevolent wild beasts might survey an innocent and highly cultured lamb who attempted to reason with them.

Bidiane dimly felt her powerlessness, and, accompanied by Claudine, went back to her raking, and left the two sitting on the hay.

While the girl was undressing that night, Claudine tapped at her door. "It is all arranged, Bidiane. They are going to dig."

Bidiane impatiently shook her hanging mass of hair, and stamped her foot on the floor. "They shall not."

"Nannichette did not go away," continued Claudine. "She hung about the stable, and Mirabelle Marie took her up some food. I was feeding the pig, and I overheard whispering. They are to get some women together, and Nannichette will lead them to the place the spirit told her of."

"Oh, the simpleton! She shall not come here again, and my aunt shall not accompany her—but where do they wish to go?"

"To the Sleeping Water Lake."

"Claudine, you know there is no gold there. The Indians had none, the French had none,—where would the poor exiles get it?"

"All this is reasonable, but there are people who are foolish,—always foolish. I tell you, this seeking for gold is like a fever. One catches it from another. I had an uncle who thought there was a treasure hid on his farm; he dug it all over, then he went crazy."

Bidiane's head, that, in the light of her lamp, had turned to a dull red-gold, sank on her breast. "I have it," she said at last, flinging it up, and choking with irrepressible laughter. "Let them go,—we will play them a trick. Nothing else will cure my aunt. Listen,—" and she laid a hand on the shoulder of the young woman confronting her, and earnestly unfolded a primitive plan.

Claudine at once fell in with it. She had never yet disapproved of a suggestion of Bidiane, and after a time she went chuckling to bed.

---

CHAPTER VII.
GHOSTS BY SLEEPING WATER.

"Which apparition, it seems, was you."

—Tatler.

The next day Claudine's left eyelid trembled in Bidiane's direction.

The girl followed her to the pantry, where she heard, murmured over a pan of milk, "They go to-night, as soon as it is dark,—Mirabelle Marie, Suretta, and MosÉe-DÉlice."

"Very well," said Bidiane, curling her lip, "we will go too."

Accordingly, that evening, when Mirabelle Marie clapped her rakish hat on her head,—for nothing would induce her to wear a handkerchief,—and said that she was going to visit a sick neighbor, Bidiane demurely commended her thoughtfulness, and sent an affecting message to the invalid.

However, the mistress of the inn had no sooner disappeared than her younger helpmeets tied black handkerchiefs on their heads, and slipped out to the yard, each carrying a rolled-up sheet and a paper of pins. With much suppressed laughter they glided up behind the barn, and struck across the fields to the station road. When half-way there, Bidiane felt something damp and cold touch her hand, and, with a start and a slight scream, discovered that her uncle's dog, Bastarache, in that way signified his wish to join the expedition.

"Come, then, good dog," she said, in French, for he was a late acquisition and, having been brought up in the woods, understood no English, "thou, too, shalt be a ghost."

It was a dark, furiously windy night, for the hot gale that had been blowing over the Bay for three days was just about dying away with a fiercer display of energy than before.

The stars were out, but they did not give much light, and Bidiane and Claudine had only to stand a little aside from the road, under a group of spruces, in order to be completely hidden from the three women as they went tugging by. They had met at the corner, and, in no fear of discovery, for the night was most unpleasant and there were few people stirring, they trudged boldly on, screaming neighborhood news at the top of their voices, in order to be heard above the noise of the wind.

Bidiane and Claudine followed them at a safe distance. "Mon Dieu, but Mirabelle Marie's fat legs will ache to-morrow," said Claudine, "she that walks so little."

"If it were an honest errand that she was going on, she would have asked for the horse. As it is, she was ashamed to do so."

The three women fairly galloped over the road to the station, for, at first, both tongues and heels were excited, and even Mirabelle Marie, although she was the only fat one of the party, managed to keep up with the others.

To Claudine, Bidiane, and the dog, the few miles to the station were a mere bagatelle. However, after crossing the railway track, they were obliged to go more slowly, for the three in front had begun to flag. They also had stopped gossiping, and when an occasional wagon approached, they stepped into the bushes beside the road until it had passed by.

The dog, in great wonderment of mind, chafed at the string that Bidiane took from her pocket and fastened around his neck. He scented his mistress on ahead, and did not understand why the two parties might not be amicably united.

A mile beyond the station, the three gold-seekers left the main road and plunged into a rough wood-track that led to the lake. Here the darkness was intense; the trees formed a thick screen overhead, through which only occasional glimpses of a narrow lane of stars could be obtained.

"This is terrible," gasped Bidiane, as her foot struck a root; "lift your feet high, Claudine."

Claudine gave her a hand. She was almost hysterical from listening to the groaning on ahead. "Since the day of my husband's death, I have not laughed so much," she said, winking away the nervous tears in her eyes. "I do not love fun as much as some people, but when I laugh, I laugh hard."

"My aunt will be in bed to-morrow," sighed Bidiane; "what a pity that she is such a goose."

"She is tough," giggled Claudine, "do not disturb yourself. It is you that I fear for."

At last, the black, damp, dark road emerged on a clearing. There stood the Indian's dwelling,—small and yellow, with a fertile garden before it, and a tiny, prosperous orchard at the back.

"You must enter this house some day," whispered Claudine. "Everything shines there, and they are well fixed. Nannichette has a sewing-machine, and a fine cook-stove, and when she does not help her husband make baskets, she sews and bakes."

"Will her husband approve of this expedition?"

"No, no, he must have gone to the shore, or Nannichette would not undertake it,—listen to what Mirabelle Marie says."

The fat woman had sunk exhausted on the doorstep of the yellow house. "Nannichette, I be dÈche if I go a step furder, till you gimme checque chouse pour mouiller la langue" (give me something to wet my tongue).

"All right," said Nannichette, in the soft, drawling tones that she had caught from the Indians, and she brought her out a pitcher of milk.

Mirabelle Marie put the pitcher to her lips, and gurgled over the milk a joyful thanksgiving that she had got away from the rough road, and the rougher wind, that raged like a bull; then she said, "Your husband is away?"

"No," said Nannichette, in some embarrassment, "he ain't, but come in."

Mirabelle Marie rose, and with her companions went into the house, while Bidiane and Claudine crept to the windows.

"Dear me, this is the best Indian house that I ever saw," said Bidiane, taking a survey, through the cheap lace curtains, of the sewing-machine, the cupboard of dishes, and the neat tables and chairs inside. Then she glided on in a voyage of discovery around the house, skirting the diminutive bedrooms, where half a dozen children lay snoring in comfortable beds, and finally arriving outside a shed, where a tall, slight Indian was on his knees, planing staves for a tub by the light of a lamp on a bracket above him.

His wife's work lay on the floor. When not suffering from the gold fever, she twisted together the dried strips of maple wood and scented grasses, and made baskets that she sold at a good price.

The Indian did not move an eyelid, but he plainly saw Bidiane and Claudine, and wondered why they were not with the other women, who, in some uneasiness of mind, stood in the doorway, looking at him over each other's shoulders.

After his brief nod and taciturn "Hullo, ladies," his wife said, "We go for walk in woods."

"What for you lie?" he said, in English, for the Micmacs of the Bay are accomplished linguists, and make use of three languages. "You go to dig gold," and he grunted contemptuously.

No one replied to him, and he continued, "Ladies, all religions is good. I cannot say, you go hell 'cause you Catholic, an' I go heaven 'cause I Protestant. All same with God, if you believe your religion. But your priesties not say to dig gold."

He took up the stave that he had laid down, and went on with his work of smoothing it, while the four "ladies," Mirabelle Marie, Suretta, MosÉe-DÉlice, and his wife, appeared to be somewhat ashamed of themselves.

"'Pon my soul an' body, there ain't no harm in diggin' gold," said Mirabelle Marie. "That gives us fun."

"How many you be?" he asked.

"Four," said Nannichette, who was regarding her lord and master with some shyness; for stupid as she was, she recognized the fact that he was the more civilized being, and that the prosperity of their family was largely due to him.

The Indian's liquid eyes glistened for an instant towards the window, where stood Bidiane and Claudine. "Take care, ladies, there be ghosties in the woods."

The four women laughed loudly, but in a shaky manner; then taking each a handful of raspberries, from a huge basketful that Nannichette offered them, and that was destined for the preserve pot on the morrow, they once more plunged into the dark woods.

Bidiane and Claudine restrained the leaping dog, and quietly followed them. The former could not conceal her delight when they came suddenly upon the lake. It lay like a huge, dusky mirror, turned up to the sky with a myriad stars piercing its glassy bosom.

"Stop," murmured Claudine.

The four women had paused ahead of them. They were talking and gesticulating violently, for all conversation was forbidden while digging. One word spoken aloud, and the charm would be broken, the spirit would rush angrily from the spot.

Therefore they were finishing up their ends of talk, and Nannichette was assuring them that she would take them to the exact spot revealed to her in the vision.

Presently they set off in Indian file, Nannichette in front, as the one led by the spirit, and carrying with her a washed and polished spade, that she had brought from her home.

Claudine and Bidiane were careful not to speak, for there was not a word uttered now by the women in front, and the pursuers needed to follow them with extreme caution. On they went, climbing silently over the grassy mounds that were now the only reminders of the old French fort, or stumbling unexpectedly and noisily into the great heap of clam shells, whose contents had been eaten by the hungry exiles of long ago.

At last they stopped. Nannichette stared up at the sky, down at the ground, across the lake on her right, and into the woods on her left, and then pointed to a spot in the grass, and with a magical flourish of the spade began to dig.

Having an Indian husband, she was accustomed to work out-of-doors, and was therefore able to dig for a long time before she became sensible of fatigue, and was obliged mutely to extend the spade to Suretta.

Not so enduring were the other women. Their ancestors had ploughed and reaped, but Acadiennes of the present day rarely work on the farms, unless it is during the haying season. Suretta soon gave out. MosÉe-DÉlice took her place, and Mirabelle Marie hung back until the last.

Bidiane and Claudine withdrew among the trees, stifling their laughter and trying to calm the dog, who had finally reached a state of frenzy at this mysterious separation.

"My unfortunate aunt!" murmured Bidiane; "do let us put an end to this."

Claudine was snickering convulsively. She had begun to array herself in one of the sheets, and was transported with amusement and anticipation.

Meanwhile, doubt and discord had reared their disturbing heads among the members of the digging party. Mirabelle Marie persisted in throwing up the spade too soon, and the other women, regarding her with glowing, eloquent looks, quietly arranged that the honorable agricultural implement, now perverted to so unbecoming a use, should return to her hands with disquieting frequency.

The earth was soft here by the lake, yet it was heavy to lift out, for the hole had now become quite deep. Suddenly, to the horror and anger of Nannichette and the other two women, both of whom were beginning to have mysterious warnings and impressions that they were now on the brink of discovery of one pot of gold, and perhaps two, there was an impatient exclamation from Mirabelle Marie.

"The divil!" she cried, and her voice broke out shrilly in the deathly silence; "Bidiane was right. It ain't no speerit you saw. I'm goin'," and she scrambled out of the hole.

With angry reproaches for her precipitancy and laziness, the other women fell upon her with their tongues. She had given them this long walk to the lake, she had spoiled everything, and, as their furious voices smote the still air, Bidiane, Claudine, and the dog emerged slowly and decently from the heavy gloom behind them like ghosts rising from the lake.

"I will give you a bit of my sheet," Bidiane had said to Bastarache; consequently he stalked beside them like a diminutive bogey in a graceful mantle of white.

"Ah, mon jheu! chesque j'vois?" (what do I see), screamed Suretta, who was the first to catch sight of them. "Ten candles to the Virgin if I get out of this!" and she ran like a startled deer.

With various expressions of terror, the others followed her. They carried with them the appearance of the white ethereal figures, standing against the awful black background of the trees, and as they ran, their shrieks and yells of horror, particularly those from Mirabelle Marie, were so heartrending that Bidiane, in sudden compunction, screamed to her, "Don't you know me, my aunt? It is Bidiane, your niece. Don't be afraid!"

Mirabelle Marie was making so much noise herself that she could scarcely have heard a trumpet sounding in her ears, and fear lent her wings of such extraordinary vigor in flight that she was almost immediately out of sight.

Bidiane turned to the dog, who was tripping and stumbling inside his snowy drapery, and to Claudine, who was shrieking with delight at him.

"Go then, good dog, console your mistress," she said. "Follow those piercing screams that float backward," and she was just about to release him when she was obliged to go to the assistance of Claudine, who had caught her foot, and had fallen to the ground, where she lay overcome by hysterical laughter.

Bidiane had to get water from the lake to dash on her face, and when at last they were ready to proceed on their way, the forest was as still as when they had entered it.

"Bah, I am tired of this joke," said Bidiane. "We have accomplished our object. Let us throw these things in the lake. I am ashamed of them;" and she put a stone inside their white trappings, and hurled them into Sleeping Water, which mutely received and swallowed them.

"Now," she said, impatiently, "let us overtake them. I am afraid lest Mirabelle Marie stumble, she is so heavy."

Claudine, leaning against a tree and mopping her eyes, vowed that it was the best joke that she had ever heard of; then she joined Bidiane, and they hurriedly made their way to the yellow cottage.

It was deserted now, except for the presence of the six children of mixed blood, who were still sleeping like six little dark logs, laid three on a bed.

"We shall overtake them," said Bidiane; "let us hurry."

However, they did not catch up to them on the forest path, nor even on the main road, for when the terrified women had rushed into the presence of the Indian and had besought him to escort them away from the spirit-haunted lake, that amused man, with a cheerful grunt, had taken them back to the shore by a short cut known only to himself.

Therefore, when Bidiane and Claudine arrived breathlessly home, they found Mirabelle Marie there before them. She sat in a rocking-chair in the middle of the kitchen, surrounded by a group of sympathizers, who listened breathlessly to her tale of woe, that she related with chattering teeth.

Bidiane ran to her and threw her arms about her neck.

"Mon jheu, Biddy, I've got such a fright. I'm mos' dead. Three ghosties came out of Sleepin' Water, and chased us,—we were back for gold. Suretta an' MosÉe-DÉlice have run home. They're mos' scairt to pieces. Oh, I'll never sin again. I wisht I'd made my Easter duties. I'll go to confession to-morrer."

"It was I, my aunt," cried Bidiane, in distress.

"It was awful," moaned Mirabelle Marie. "I see the speerit of me mother, I see the speerit of me sister, I see the speerit of me leetle lame child."

"It was the dog," exclaimed Bidiane, and, gazing around the kitchen for him, she discovered Agapit sitting quietly in a corner.

"Oh, how do you do?" she said, in some embarrassment; then she again gave her attention to her distressed aunt.

"The dogue,—Biddy, you ain't crazy?"

"Yes, yes, the dog and Claudine and I. See how she is laughing. We heard your plans, we followed you, we dressed in sheets."

"The dogue," reiterated Mirabelle Marie, in blank astonishment, and pointing to Bastarache, who lay under the sofa solemnly winking at her. "Ain't he ben plumped down there ever since supper, Claude?"

"Yes, he's ben there."

"But Claude sleeps in the evenings," urged Bidiane. "I assure you that Bastarache was with us."

"Oh, the dear leetle liar," said Mirabelle Marie, affectionately embracing her. "But I'm glad to git back again to yeh."

"I'm telling the truth," said Bidiane, desperately. "Can't you speak, Claudine?"

"We did go," said Claudine, who was still possessed by a demon of laughter. "We followed you."

"Followed us to Sleepin' Water! You're lyin', too. SakerjÉ, it was awful to see me mother and me sister and the leetle dead child," and she trotted both feet wildly on the floor, while her rolling eye sought comfort from Bidiane.

"What shall I do?" said Bidiane. "Mr. LeNoir, you will believe me. I wanted to cure my aunt of her foolishness. We took sheets—"

"Sheets?" repeated Mirabelle. "Whose sheets?"

"Yours, my aunt,—oh, it was very bad in us, but they were old ones; they had holes."

"What did you do with 'em?"

"We threw them in the lake."

"Come, now, look at that, ha, ha," and Mirabelle Marie laughed in a quavering voice. "I can see Claudine throwing sheets in the lake. She would make pickin's of 'em. Don't lie, Bidiane, me girl, or you'll see ghosties. You want to help your poor aunt,—you've made up a nice leetle lie, but don't tell it. See, Jude and Edouard are heatin' some soup. Give some to Agapit LeNoir and take a cup yourself."

Bidiane, with a gesture of utter helplessness, gave up the discussion and sat down beside Agapit.

"You believe me, do you not?" she asked, under cover of the joyful bustle that arose when the two boys began to pass around the soup.

"Yes," he replied, making a wry face over his steaming cup.

"And what do you think of me?" she asked, anxiously.

Agapit, although an ardent Acadien, and one bent on advancing the interests of his countrymen in every way, had yet little patience with the class to which Mirabelle Marie belonged. Apparently kind and forbearing with them, he yet left them severely alone. His was the party of progress, and he had been half amused, half scornful of the efforts that Bidiane had put forth to educate her deficient relative.

"On general principles," he said, coolly, "it is better not to chase a fat aunt through dark woods; yet, in this case, I would say it has done good."

"I did not wish to be heartless," said Bidiane, with tears in her eyes. "I wished to teach her a lesson."

"Well, you have done so. Hear her swear that she will go to mass,—she will, too. The only way to work upon such a nature is through fear."

"I am glad to have her go to mass, but I did not wish her to go in this way."

"Be thankful that you have attained your object," he said, dryly. "Now I must go. I hoped to spend the evening with you, and hear you sing."

"You will come again, soon?" said Bidiane, following him to the door.

"It is a good many miles to come, and a good many to go back, mademoiselle. I have not always the time—and, besides that, I have soon to go to Halifax on business."

"Well, I thank you for keeping your promise to come," said Bidiane, humbly, and with gratitude. She was completely unnerved by the events of the evening, and was in no humor to find fault.

Agapit clapped his hat firmly on his head as a gust of wind whirled across the yard and tried to take it from him.

"We are always glad to see you here," said Bidiane, wistfully, as she watched him step across to the picket fence, where his white horse shone through the darkness; "though I suppose you have pleasant company in Weymouth. I have been introduced to some nice English girls from there."

"Yes, there are nice ones," he said. "I should like to see more of them, but I am usually busy in the afternoons and evenings."

"Do not work too hard,—that is a mistake. One must enjoy life a little."

He gathered up the reins in his hands and paused a minute before he stepped into the buggy. "I suppose I seem very old to you."

She hesitated for an instant, and the wind dying down a little seemed to take the words from her lips and softly breathe them against his dark, quiet face. "Not so very old,—not as old as you did at first. If I were as old as you, I should not do such silly things."

He stared solemnly at her wind-blown figure swaying lightly to and fro on the gravel, and at the little hands put up to keep her dishevelled hair from her eyes and cheeks, which were both glowing from her hurried scamper home. "Are you really worried because you played this trick on your aunt?"

"Yes, terribly, she has been like a mother to me. I would be ashamed for Mr. Nimmo to know."

"And will you lie awake to-night and vex yourself about it?"

"Oh, yes, yes,—how can you tell? Perhaps you also have troubles."

Agapit laughed in sudden and genuine amusement. "Mademoiselle, my cousin, let me say something to you that you may perhaps remember when you are older. It is this: you have at present about as much comprehension and appreciation of real heart trouble, and of mental struggles that tear one first this way, then that way,—you have about as much understanding of them as has that kitten sheltering itself behind you."

Bidiane quietly stowed away this remark among the somewhat heterogeneous furniture of her mind; then she said, "I feel quite old when I talk to my aunt and to Claudine."

"You are certainly ahead of them in some mental experiences, but you are not yet up to some other people."

"I am not up to Madame de ForÊt," she said, gently, "nor to you. I feel sure now that you have some troubles."

"And what do you imagine they are?"

"I imagine that they are things that you will get over," she said, with spirit. "You are not a coward."

He smiled, and softly bade her good night.

"Good night, mon cousin," she said, gravely, and taking the crying kitten in her arms, she put her head on one side and listened until the sound of the carriage wheels grew faint in the distance.

---

"Could but our ancestors retrieve their fate,
And see their offspring thus degenerate,
How we contend for birth and names unknown;
And build on their past acts, and not our own;
They'd cancel records and their tombs deface,
And then disown the vile, degenerate race;
For families is all a cheat,
'Tis personal virtue only, makes us great."

The True Born Englishman. Defoe.

Bidiane was late for supper, and Claudine was regretfully remarking that the croquettes and the hot potatoes in the oven would all be burnt to cinders, when the young person herself walked into the kitchen, her face a fiery crimson, a row of tiny beads of perspiration at the conjunction of her smooth forehead with her red hair.

"I have had a glorious ride," she said, opening the door of the big oven and taking out the hot dishes.

Claudine laid aside the towel with which she was wiping the cups and saucers that Mirabelle Marie washed. "Go sit down at the table, Bidiane; you must be weary."

The girl, nothing loath, went to the dining-room, while Claudine brought her in hot coffee, buttered toast, and preserved peaches and cream, and then returning to the kitchen watched her through the open door, as she satisfied the demands of a certainly prosperous appetite.

"And yet, it is not food I want, as much as drink," said Bidiane, gaily, as she poured herself out a second glass of milk. "Ah, the bicycle, Claudine. If you rode, you would know how one's mouth feels like a dry bone."

"I think I would like a wheel," said Claudine, modestly. "I have enough money saved."

"Have you? Then you must get one, and I will teach you to ride."

"How would one go about it?"

"We will do it in this way," said Bidiane, in a business-like manner, for she loved to arrange the affairs of other people. "How much money have you?"

"I have one hundred dollars."

"'Pon me soul an' body, I'd have borrered some if I'd known that," interrupted Mirabelle Marie, with a chuckle.

"Good gracious," observed Bidiane, "you don't want more than half that. We will give fifty to one of the men on the schooners. Isn't La Sauterelle going to Boston, to-morrow?"

"Yes; the cook was just in for yeast."

"Has he a head for business?"

"Pretty fair."

"Does he know anything about machines?"

"He once sold sewing-machines, and he also would show how to work them."

"The very man,—we will give him the fifty dollars and tell him to pick you out a good wheel and bring it back in the schooner."

"Then there will be no duty to pay," said Claudine, joyfully.

"H'm,—well, perhaps we had better pay the duty," said Bidiane; "it won't be so very much. It is a great temptation to smuggle things from the States, but I know we shouldn't. By the way, I must tell Mirabelle Marie a good joke I just heard up the Bay. My aunt,—where are you?"

Mirabelle Marie came into the room and seated herself near Claudine.

"Marc À Jaddus À Dominique's little girl gave him away," said Bidiane, laughingly. "She ran over to the custom-house in Belliveau's Cove and told the man what lovely things her papa had brought from Boston, in his schooner, and the customs man hurried over, and Marc had to pay—I must tell you, too, that I bought some white ribbon for AlzÉlie Gauterot, while I was in the Cove," and Bidiane pulled a little parcel from her pocket.

Mirabelle Marie was intensely interested. Ever since the affair of the ghosts, which Bidiane had given up trying to persuade her was not ghostly, but very material, she had become deeply religious, and took her whole family to mass and vespers every Sunday.

Just now the children of the parish were in training for their first communion. She watched the little creatures daily trotting up the road towards the church to receive instruction, and she hoped that her boys would soon be among them. In the small daughter of her next-door neighbor, who was to make her first communion with the others, she took a special interest, and in her zeal had offered to make the dress, which kind office had devolved upon Bidiane and Claudine.

"Also, I have been thinking of a scheme to save money," said Bidiane. "For a veil we can just take off this fly screen," and she pointed to white netting on the table. "No one but you and Claudine will know. It is fine and soft, and can be freshly done up."

"Mon jheu! but you are smart, and a real Acadien brat," said her aunt. "Claudine, will you go to the door? Some divil rings,—that is, some lady or gentleman," she added, as she caught a menacing glance from Bidiane.

"If you keep a hotel you must always be glad to see strangers," said Bidiane, severely. "It is money in your pocket."

"But such a trouble, and I am sleepy."

"If you are not careful you will have to give up this inn,—however, I must not scold, for you do far better than when I first came."

"It is the political gentleman," said Claudine, entering, and noiselessly closing the door behind her. "He who has been going up and down the Bay for a day or two. He wishes supper and a bed."

"SakerjÉ!" muttered Mirabelle Marie, rising with an effort. "If I was a man I guess I'd let pollyticks alone, and stay to hum. I s'ppose he's got a nest with some feathers in it. I guess you'd better ask him out, though. There's enough to start him, ain't there?" and she waddled out to the kitchen.

"Ah, the political gentleman," said Bidiane. "It was he for whom I helped Maggie Guilbaut pick blackberries, yesterday. They expected him to call, and were going to offer him berries and cream."

Mirabelle Marie, on going to the kitchen, had left her niece sitting composedly at the table, only lifting an eyelid to glance at the door by which the stranger would enter; but when she returned, as she almost immediately did, to ask the gentleman whether he would prefer tea to coffee, a curious spectacle met her gaze.

Bidiane, with a face that was absolutely furious, had sprung to her feet and was grasping the sides of her bicycle skirt with clenched hands, while the stranger, who was a lean, dark man, with a pale, rather pleasing face, when not disfigured by a sarcastic smile, stood staring at her as if he remembered seeing her before, but had some difficulty in locating her among his acquaintances.

Upon her aunt's appearance, Bidiane found her voice. "Either I or that man must leave this house," she said, pointing a scornful finger at him.

Mirabelle Marie, who was not easily shocked, was plainly so on the present occasion. "Whist, Bidiane," she said, trying to pull her down on her chair; "this is the pollytickle genl'man,—county member they call 'im."

"I do not care if he is member for fifty counties," said Bidiane, in concentrated scorn. "He is a libeller, a slanderer, and I will not stay under the same roof with him,—and to think it was for him I picked the blackberries,—we cannot entertain you here, sir."

The expression of disagreeable surprise with which the man with the unpleasant smile had regarded her gave way to one of cool disdain. "This is your house, I think?" he said, appealing to Mirabelle Marie.

"Yessir," she said, putting down her tea-caddy, and arranging both her hands on her hips, in which position she would hold them until the dispute was finished.

"And you do not refuse me entertainment?" he went on, with the same unpleasant smile. "You cannot, I think, as this is a public house, and you have no just reason for excluding me from it."

"My aunt," said Bidiane, flashing around to her in a towering passion, "if you do not immediately turn this man out-of-doors, I shall never speak to you again."

"I be dÈche," sputtered the confused landlady, "if I see into this hash. Look at 'em, Claudine. This genl'man'll be mad if I do one thing, an' Biddy'll take my head off if I do another. SakerjÉ! You've got to fit it out yourselves."

"Listen, my aunt," said Bidiane, excitedly, and yet with an effort to control herself. "I will tell you what happened. On my way here I was in a hotel in Halifax. I had gone there with some people from the steamer who were taking charge of me. We were on our way to our rooms. We were all speaking English. No one would think that there was a French person in the party. We passed a gentleman, this gentleman, who stood outside his door; he was speaking to a servant. 'Bring me quickly,' he said, 'some water,—some hot water. I have been down among the evil-smelling French of Clare. I must go again, and I want a good wash first.'"

Mirabelle Marie was by no means overcome with horror at the recitation of this trespass on the part of her would-be guest; but Claudine's eyes blazed and flashed on the stranger's back until he moved slightly, and shrugged his shoulders as if he felt their power.

"Imagine," cried Bidiane, "he called us 'evil-smelling,'—we, the best housekeepers in the world, whose stoves shine, whose kitchen floors are as white as the beach! I choked with wrath. I ran up to him and said, 'Moi, je suis Acadienne'" (I am an Acadienne). "Did I not, sir?"

The stranger lifted his eyebrows indulgently and satirically, but did not speak.

"And he was astonished," continued Bidiane. "Ma foi, but he was astonished! He started, and stared at me, and I said, 'I will tell you what you are, sir, unless you apologize.'"

"I guess yeh apologized, didn't yeh?" said Mirabelle Marie, mildly.

"The young lady is dreaming," said the stranger, coolly, and he seated himself at the table. "Can you let me have something to eat at once, madame? I have a brother who resembles me; perhaps she saw him."

Bidiane grew so pale with wrath, and trembled so violently that Claudine ran to support her, and cried, "Tell us, Bidiane, what did you say to this bad man?"

Bidiane slightly recovered herself. "I said to him, 'Sir, I regret to tell you that you are lying.'"

The man at the table surveyed her in intense irritation. "I do not know where you come from, young woman," he said, hastily, "but you look Irish."

"And if I were not Acadien I would be Irish," she said, in a low voice, "for they also suffer for their country. Good-by, my aunt, I am going to Rose À Charlitte. I see you wish to keep this story-teller."

"Hole on, hole on," ejaculated Mirabelle Marie in distress. "Look here, sir, you've gut me in a fix, and you've gut to git me out of it."

"I shall not leave your house unless you tell me to do so," he said, in cool, quiet anger.

Bidiane stretched out her hands to him, and with tears in her eyes exclaimed, pleadingly, "Say only that you regret having slandered the Acadiens. I will forget that you put my people to shame before the English, for they all knew that I was coming to Clare. We will overlook it. Acadiens are not ungenerous, sir."

"As I said before, you are dreaming," responded the stranger, in a restrained fury. "I never was so put upon in my life. I never saw you before."

Bidiane drew herself up like an inspired prophetess. "Beware, sir, of the wrath of God. You lied before,—you are lying now."

The man fell into such a repressed rage that Mirabelle Marie, who was the only unembarrassed spectator, inasmuch as she was weak in racial loves and hatreds, felt called upon to decide the case. The gentleman, she saw, was the story-teller. Bidiane, who had not been particularly truthful as a child, had yet never told her a falsehood since her return from France.

"I'm awful sorry, sir, but you've gut to go. I brought up this leetle girl, an' her mother's dead."

The gentleman rose,—a gentleman no longer, but a plain, common, very ugly-tempered man. These Acadiens were actually turning him, an Englishman, out of the inn. And he had thought the whole people so meek, so spiritless. He was doing them such an honor to personally canvass them for votes for the approaching election. His astonishment almost overmastered his rage, and in a choking voice he said to Mirabelle Marie, "Your house will suffer for this,—you will regret it to the end of your life."

"I know some business," exclaimed Claudine, in sudden and irrepressible zeal. "I know that you wish to make laws, but will our men send you when they know what you say?"

He snatched his hat from the seat behind him. His election was threatened. Unless he chained these women's tongues, what he had said would run up and down the Bay like wildfire,—and yet a word now would stop it. Should he apologize? A devil rose in his heart. He would not.

"Do your worst," he said, in a low, sneering voice. "You are a pack of liars yourselves," and while Bidiane and Claudine stiffened themselves with rage, and Mirabelle Marie contemptuously muttered, "Get out, ole beast," he cast a final malevolent glance on them, and left the house.

For a time the three remained speechless; then Bidiane sank into her chair, pushed back her half-eaten supper, propped her red head on her hand, and burst into passionate weeping.

Claudine stood gloomily watching her, while Mirabelle Marie sat down, and shifting her hands from her hips, laid them on her trembling knees. "I guess he'll drive us out of this, Biddy,—an' I like Sleepin' Water."

Bidiane lifted her face to the ceiling, just as if she were "taking a vowel," her aunt reflected, in her far from perfect English. "He shall not ruin us, my aunt,—we will ruin him."

"What'll you do, sissy?"

"I will tell you something about politics," said Bidiane, immediately becoming calm. "Mr. Nimmo has explained to me something about them, and if you listen, you will understand. In the first place, do you know what politics are?" and hastily wiping her eyes, she intently surveyed the two women who were hanging on her words.

"Yes, I know," said her aunt, joyfully. "It's when men quit work, an' gab, an' git red in the face, an' pass the bottle, an' pick rows, to fine out which shall go up to the city of Boston to make laws an' sit in a big room with lots of other men."

Bidiane, with an impatient gesture, turned to Claudine. "You know better than that?"

"Well, yes,—a little," said the black-eyed beauty, contemptuously.

"My aunt," said Bidiane, solemnly, "you have been out in the world, and yet you have many things to learn. Politics is a science, and deep, very deep."

"Is it?" said her aunt, humbly. "An' what's a science?"

"A science is—well, a science is something wonderfully clever—when one knows a great deal. Now this Dominion of Canada in which we live is large, very large, and there are two parties of politicians in it. You know them, Claudine?"

"Yes, I do," said the young woman, promptly; "they are Liberals and Conservatives."

"That is right; and just now the Premier of the Dominion is a Frenchman, my aunt,—I don't believe you knew that,—and we are proud of him."

"An' what's the Premier?"

"He is the chief one,—the one who stands over the others, when they make the laws."

"Oh, the boss!—you will tell him about this bad man."

"No, it would grieve him too much, for the Premier is always a good man, who never does anything wrong. This bad man will impose on him, and try to get him to promise to let him go to Ottawa—oh, by the way, Claudine, we must explain about that. My aunt, you know that there are two cities to which politicians go to make the laws. One is the capital."

"Yes, I know,—in Boston city."

"Nonsense,—Boston is in the United States. We are in Canada. Halifax is the capital of Nova Scotia."

"But all our folks go to Boston when they travels," said Mirabelle Marie, in a slightly injured tone.

"Yes, yes, I know,—the foolish people; they should go to Halifax. Well, that is where the big house is in which they make the laws. I saw it when I was there, and it has pictures of kings and queens in it. Now, when a man becomes too clever for this house, they send him to Ottawa, where the Premier is."

"Yes, I remember,—the good Frenchman."

"Well, this bad man now wishes to go to Halifax; then if he is ambitious,—and he is bad enough to be anything,—he may wish to go to Ottawa. But we must stop him right away before he does more mischief, for all men think he is good. Mr. Guilbaut was praising him yesterday."

"He didn't say he is bad?"

"No, no, he thinks him very good, and says he will be elected; but we know him to be a liar, and should a liar make laws for his country?"

"A liar should stay to hum, where he is known," was the decisive response.

"Very good,—now should we not try to drive this man out of Clare?"

"But what can we do?" asked Mirabelle Marie. "He is already out an' lying like the divil about us—that is, like a man out of the woods."

"We can talk," said her niece, seriously. "There are women's rights, you know."

"Women's rights," repeated her aunt, thoughtfully. "It is not in the prayer-book."

"No, of course not."

"Come now, Biddy, tell us what it is."

"It is a long subject, my aunt. It would take too many words to explain, though Mr. Nimmo has often told me about it. Women who believe that—can do as men. Why should we not vote,—you, and I, and Claudine?"

"I dunno. I guess the men won't let us."

"I should like to vote," said Bidiane, stoutly, "but even though we cannot, we can tell the men on the Bay of this monster, and they will send him home."

"All right," said her aunt; while Claudine, who had been sitting with knitted brows during the last few minutes, exclaimed, "I have it, Bidiane; let us make bombance" (feasting). "Do you know what it means?"

No, Bidiane did not, but Mirabelle Marie did, and immediately began to make a gurgling noise in her throat. "Once I helped to make it in the house of an aunt. Glory! that was fun. But the tin, Claudine, where'll you git that?"

"My one hundred dollars," cried the black-eyed assistant. "I will give them to my country, for I hate that man. I will do without the wheel."

"But what is this?" asked Bidiane, reproachfully. "What are you agreeing to? I do not understand."

"Tell her, Claudine," said Mirabelle Marie, with a proud wave of her hand. "She's English, yeh know."

Claudine explained the phrase, and for the next hour the three, with chairs drawn close together, nodded, talked, and gesticulated, while laying out a feminine electioneering campaign.

CHAPTER IX.
LOVE AND POLITICS.

One morning, three weeks later, Rose, on getting up and going out to the sunny yard where she kept her fancy breed of fowls, found them all overcome by some strange disorder. The morning was bright and inspiring, yet they were all sleeping heavily and stupidly under, instead of upon, their usual roosting-place.

She waked up one or two, ran her fingers through their showy plumage, and, after receiving remonstrating glances from reproachful and recognizing eyes, softly laid them down again, and turned her attention to a resplendent red and gold cock, who alone had not succumbed to the mysterious malady, and was staggering to and fro, eyeing her with a doubtful, yet knowing look.

"Come, FiddÉding," she said, gently, "tell me what has happened to these poor hens?"

FiddÉding, instead of enlightening her, swaggered towards the fence, and, after many failures, succeeded in climbing to it and in propping his tail against a post.

Then he flapped his gorgeous wings, and opened his beak to crow, but in the endeavor lost his balance, and with a dismal squawk fell to the ground. Sheepishly resigning himself to his fate, he tried to gain the ranks of the somniferous hens, but, not succeeding, fell down where he was, and hid his head under his wing.

A slight noise caught Rose's attention, and looking up, she found Jovite leaning against the fence, and grinning from ear to ear.

"Do you know what is the matter with the hens?" she asked.

"Yes, madame; if you come to the stable, I will show you what they have been taking."

Rose, with a grave face, visited the stable, and then instructed him to harness her pony to the cart and bring him around to the front of the house.

Half an hour later she was driving towards Weymouth. As it happened to be Saturday, it was market-day, and the general shopping-time for the farmers and the fishermen all along the Bay, and even from back in the woods. Many of them, with wives and daughters in their big wagons, were on their way to sell butter, eggs, and farm produce, and obtain, in exchange, groceries and dry goods, that they would find in larger quantities and in greater varieties in Weymouth than in the smaller villages along the shore.

Upon reaching Weymouth, she stopped on the principal street, that runs across a bridge over the lovely Sissiboo River, and leaving the staid and sober pony to brush the flies from himself without the assistance of her whip, she knocked at the door of her cousin's office.

"Come in," said a voice, and she was speedily confronted by Agapit, who sat at a table facing the door.

He dropped his book and sprang up, when he saw her. "Oh! ma chÈre, I am glad to see you. I was just feeling dull."

She gently received and retained both his hands in hers. "One often does feel dull after a journey. Ah! but I have missed you."

"It has only been two weeks—"

"And you have come back with that same weary look on your face," she said, anxiously. "Agapit, I try to put that look in the back of my mind, but it will not stay."

He lightly kissed her fingers, and drew a chair beside his own for her. "It amuses you to worry."

"My cousin!"

"I apologize,—you are the soul of angelic concern for the minds and bodies of your fellow mortals. And how goes everything in Sleeping Water? I have been quite homesick for the good old place."

Rose, in spite of the distressed expression that still lingered about her face, began to smile, and said, impulsively, "Once or twice I have almost recalled you, but I did not like to interrupt. Yours was a case at the supreme court, was it not, if that is the way to word it?"

"Yes, Rose; but has anything gone wrong? You mentioned nothing in your letters," and, as he spoke, he took off his glasses and began to polish them with his handkerchief.

"Not wrong, exactly, yet—" and she laughed. "It is Bidiane."

The hand with which Agapit was manipulating his glasses trembled slightly, and hurriedly putting them on, he pushed back the papers on the table before him, and gave her an acute and undivided attention. "Some one wants to marry her, I suppose," he said, hastily. "She is quite a flirt."

"No, no, not yet,—Pius Poirier may, by and by, but do not be too severe with her, Agapit. She has no time to think of lovers now. She is—but have you not heard? Surely you must have—every one is laughing about it."

"I have heard nothing. I returned late last night. I came directly here this morning. I intended to go to see you to-morrow."

"I thought you would, but I could not wait. Little Bidiane should be stopped at once, or she will become notorious and get into the papers,—I was afraid it might already be known in Halifax."

"My dear Rose, there are people in Halifax who never heard of Clare, and who do not know that there are even a score of Acadiens left in the country; but what is she doing?" and he masked his impatience under an admirable coolness.

"She says she is making bombance," said Rose, and she struggled to repress a second laugh; "but I will begin from the first, as you know nothing. The very day you left, that Mr. Greening, who has been canvassing the county for votes, went to our inn, and Bidiane recognized him as a man who had spoken ill of the Acadiens in her presence in Halifax."

"What had he said?"

"He said that they were 'evil-smelling,'" said Rose, with reluctance.

"Oh, indeed,—he did," and Agapit's lip curled. "I would not have believed it of Greening. He is rather a decent fellow. Sarcastic, you know, but not a fool, by any means. Bidiane, I suppose, cut him."

"No, she did not cut him; he had not been introduced. She asked him to apologize, and he would not. Then she told Mirabelle Marie to request him to leave the house. He did so."

"Was he angry?"

"Yes, and insulting; and you can figure to yourself into what kind of a state our quick-tempered Bidiane became. She talked to Claudine and her aunt, and they agreed to pass Mr. Greening's remark up and down the Bay."

Agapit began to laugh. Something in his cousin's strangely excited manner, in the expression of her face, usually so delicately colored, now so deeply flushed and bewildered over Bidiane's irrepressibility, amused him intensely, but most of all he laughed from sheer gladness of heart, that the question to be dealt with was not one of a lover for their distant and youthful cousin.

Rose was delighted to see him in such good spirits. "But there is more to come, Agapit. The thing grew. At first, Bidiane contented herself with flying about on her wheel and telling all the Acadien girls what a bad man Mr. Greening was to say such a thing, and they must not let their fathers vote for him. Following this, Claudine, who is very excited in her calm way, began to drive Mirabelle Marie about. They stayed at home only long enough to prepare meals, then they went. It is all up and down the Bay,—that wretched epithet of the unfortunate Mr. Greening,—and while the men laugh, the women are furious. They cannot recover from it."

"Well, 'evil-smelling' is not a pretty adjective," said Agapit, with his lips still stretched back from his white teeth. "At Bidiane's age, what a rage I should have been in!"

"But you are in the affair now," said Rose, helplessly, "and you must not be angry."

"I!" he ejaculated, suddenly letting fall a ruler that he had been balancing on his finger.

"Yes,—at first there was no talk of another candidate. It was only, 'Let the slanderous Mr. Greening be driven away;' but, as I said, the affair grew. You know our people are mostly Liberals. Mr. Greening is the new one; you, too, are one. Of course there is old Mr. Gray, who has been elected for some years. One afternoon the blacksmith in Sleeping Water said, jokingly, to Bidiane, 'You are taking away one of our candidates; you must give us another.' He was mending her wheel at the time, and I was present to ask him to send a hoe to Jovite. Bidiane hesitated a little time. She looked down the Bay, she looked up here towards Weymouth, then she shot a quick glance at me from her curious yellow eyes, and said, 'There is my far-removed cousin, Agapit LeNoir. He is a good Acadien; he is also clever. What do you want of an Englishman?' 'By Jove!' said the blacksmith, and he slapped his leather apron,—you know he has been much in the States, Agapit, and he is very wide in his opinions,—'By Jove!' he said, 'we couldn't have a better. I never thought of him. He is so quiet nowadays, though he used to be a firebrand, that one forgets him. I guess he'd go in by acclamation.' Agapit, what is acclamation? I searched in my dictionary, and it said, 'a clapping of hands.'"

Agapit was thunderstruck. He stared at her confusedly for a few seconds, then he exclaimed, "The dear little diablette!"

"Perhaps I should have told you before," said Rose, eagerly, "but I hated to write anything against Bidiane, she is so charming, though so self-willed. But yesterday I began to think that people may suppose you have allowed her to make use of your name. She chatters of you all the time, and I believe that you will be asked to become one of the members for this county. Though the talk has been mostly among the women, they are influencing the men, and last evening Mr. Greening had a quarrel with the Comeaus, and went away."

"I must go see her,—this must be stopped," said Agapit, rising hastily.

Rose got up, too. "But stay a minute,—hear all. The naughty thing that Bidiane has done is about money, but I will not tell you that. You must question her. This only I can say: my hens are all quite drunk this morning."

"Quite drunk!" said Agapit, and he paused with his arms half in a dust coat that he had taken from a hook on the wall. "What do you mean?"

Rose suffocated a laugh in her throat, and said, seriously, "When Jovite got up this morning, he found them quite weak in their legs. They took no breakfast, they wished only to drink. He had to watch to keep them from falling in the river. Afterwards they went to sleep, and he searched the stable, and found some burnt out matches, where some one had been smoking and sleeping in the barn, also two bottles of whiskey hidden in a barrel where one had broken on some oats that the hens had eaten. So you see the affair becomes serious when men prowl about at night, and open hen-house doors, and are in danger of setting fire to stables."

Agapit made a grimace. He had a lively imagination, and had readily supplied all these details. "I suppose you do not wish to take me back to Sleeping Water?"

Rose hesitated, then said, meekly, "Perhaps it would be better for me not to do it, nor for you to say that I have talked to you. Bidiane speaks plainly, and, though I know she likes me, she is most extremely animated just now. Claudine, you know, spoils her. Also, she avoids me lately,—you will not be too severe with her. It is so loving that she should work for you. I think she hopes to break down some of your prejudice that she says still exists against her."

Rose could not see her cousin's face, for he had abruptly turned his back on her, and was staring out the window.

"You will remember, Agapit," she went on, with gentle persistence; "do not be irritable with her; she cannot endure it just at present."

"And why should I be irritable?" he demanded, suddenly wheeling around. "Is she not doing me a great honor?"

Rose fell back a few steps, and clasped her amazed hands. This transfigured face was a revelation to her. "You, too, Agapit!" she managed to utter.

"Yes, I, too," he said, bravely, while a dull, heavy crimson mantled his cheeks. "I, too, as well as the Poirier boy, and half a dozen others; and why not?"

"You love her, Agapit?"

"Does it seem like hatred?"

"Yes—that is, no—but certainly you have treated her strangely, but I am glad, glad. I don't know when anything has so rejoiced me,—it takes me back through long years," and, sitting down, she covered her face with her nervous hands.

"I did not intend to tell you," said her cousin, hurriedly, and he laid a consoling finger on the back of her drooping head. "I wish now I had kept it from you."

"Ah, but I am selfish," she cried, immediately lifting her tearful face to him. "Forgive me,—I wish to know everything that concerns you. Is it this that has made you unhappy lately?"

With some reluctance he acknowledged that it was.

"But now you will be happy, my dear cousin. You must tell her at once. Although she is young, she will understand. It will make her more steady. It is the best thing that could happen to her."

Agapit surveyed her in quiet, intense affection. "Softly, my dear girl. You and I are too absorbed in each other. There is the omnipotent Mr. Nimmo to consult."

"He will not oppose. Oh, he will be pleased, enraptured,—I know that he will. I have never thought of it before, because of late years you have seemed not to give your thoughts to marriage, but now it comes to me that, in sending her here, one object might have been that she would please you; that you would please her. I am sure of it now. He is sorry for the past, he wishes to atone, yet he is still proud, and cannot say, 'Forgive me.' This young girl is the peace-offering."

Agapit smiled uneasily. "Pardon me for the thought, but you dispose somewhat summarily of the young girl."

Rose threw out her hands to him. "Your happiness is perhaps too much to me, yet I would also make her happy in giving her to you. She is so restless, so wayward,—she does not know her own mind yet."

"She seems to be leading a pretty consistent course at present."

Rose's face was like an exquisitely tinted sky at sunrise. "Ah! this is wonderful, it overcomes me; and to think that I should not have suspected it! You adore this little Bidiane. She is everything to you, more than I am,—more than I am."

"I love you for that spice of jealousy," said Agapit, with animation. "Go home now, dear girl, and I will follow; or do you stay here, and I will start first."

"Yes, yes, go; I will remain a time. I will be glad to think this over."

"You will not cry," he said, anxiously, pausing with his hand on the door-knob.

"I will try not to do so."

"Probably I will have to give her up," he said, doggedly. "She is a creature of whims, and I must not speak to her yet; but I do not wish you to suffer."

Rose was deeply moved. This was no boyish passion, but the unspeakably bitter, weary longing of a man. "If I could not suffer with others I would be dead," she said, simply. "My dear cousin, I will pray for success in this, your touching love-affair."

"Some day I will tell you all about it," he said, abruptly. "I will describe the strange influence that she has always had over me,—an influence that made me tremble before her even when she was a tiny girl, and that overpowered me when she lately returned to us. However, this is not the occasion to talk; my acknowledgment of all this has been quite unpremeditated. Another day it will be more easy—"

"Ah, Agapit, how thou art changed," she said, gliding easily into French; "how I admire thee for thy reserve. That gives thee more power than thou hadst when young. Thou wilt win Bidiane,—do not despair."

"In the meantime there are other, younger men," he responded, in the same language. "I seem old, I know that I do to her."

"Old, and thou art not yet thirty! I assure thee, Agapit, she respects thee for thy age. She laughs at thee, perhaps, to thy face, but she praises thee behind thy back."

"She is not beautiful," said Agapit, irrelevantly, "yet every one likes her."

"And dost thou not find her beautiful? It seems to me that, when I love, the dear one cannot be ugly."

"Understand me, Rose," said her cousin, earnestly; "once when I loved a woman she instantly became an angel, but one gets over that. Bidiane is even plain-looking to me. It is her soul, her spirit, that charms me,—that little restless, loving heart. If I could only put my hand on it, and say, 'Thou art mine,' I should be the happiest man in the world. She charms me because she changes. She is never the same; a man would never weary of her."

Rose's face became as pale as death. "Agapit, would a man weary of me?"

He did not reply to her. Choked by some emotion, he had again turned to the door.

"I thank the blessed Virgin that I have been spared that sorrow," she murmured, closing her eyes, and allowing her flaxen lashes to softly brush her cheeks. "Once I could only grieve,—now I say perhaps it was well for me not to marry. If I had lost the love of a husband,—a true husband,—it would have killed me very quickly, and it would also have made him say that all women are stupid."

"Rose, thou art incomparable," said Agapit, half laughing, half frowning, and flinging himself back to the table. "No man would tire of thee. Cease thy foolishness, and promise me not to cry when I am gone."

She opened her eyes, looked as startled as if she had been asleep, but submissively gave the required promise.

"Think of something cheerful," he went on.

She saw that he was really distressed, and, disengaging her thoughts from herself by a quiet, intense effort, she roguishly murmured, "I will let my mind run to the conversation that you will have with this fair one—no, this plain one—when you announce your love."

Agapit blushed furiously, and hurried from the room, while Rose, as an earnest of her obedience to him, showed him, at the window, until he was out of sight, a countenance alight with gentle mischief and entire contentment of mind.

CHAPTER X.
A CAMPAIGN BEGUN IN BRIBERY.

"After madness acted, question asked."

Tennyson.

Before the day was many hours older, Agapit was driving his white horse into the inn yard.

There seemed to be more people about the house then there usually were, and Bidiane, who stood at the side door, was handing a long paper parcel to a man. "Take it away," Agapit heard her say, in peremptory tones; "don't you open it here."

The Acadien to whom she was talking happened to be, Agapit knew, a ne'er-do-weel. He shuffled away, when he caught sight of the young lawyer, but Bidiane ran delightedly towards him. "Oh, Mr. LeNoir, you are as welcome as Mayflowers in April!"

Her face was flushed, there were faint dark circles around the light brown eyes that harmonized so much better with her red hair than blue ones would have done. The sun shone down into these eyes, emphasizing this harmony between them and the hair, and Agapit, looking deeply into them, forgot immediately the mentor's part that he was to act, and clasped her warmly and approvingly by the hand.

"Come in," she said; but Agapit, who would never sit in the house if it were possible to stay out-of-doors, conducted her to one of the rustic seats by the croquet lawn. He sat down, and she perched in the hammock, sitting on one foot, swinging the other, and overwhelming him with questions about his visit to Halifax.

"And what have you been doing with yourself since I have been away?" he asked, with a hypocritical assumption of ignorance.

"You know very well what I have been doing," she said, rapidly. "Did not I see Rose driving in to call on you this morning? And you have come down to scold me. I understand you perfectly; you cannot deceive me."

Agapit was silent, quite overcome by this mark of feminine insight.

"I will never do it again," she went on, "but I am going to see this through. It is such fun—'Claude,' said my aunt to her husband, when we first decided to make bombance, 'what politics do you belong to?' 'I am a Conservative,' he said; because, you know, my aunt has always told him to vote as the English people about him did. She has known nothing of politics. 'No, you are not,' she replied, 'you are a Liberal;' and Claudine and I nearly exploded with laughter to hear her trying to convince him that he must be a Liberal like our good French Premier, and that he must endeavor to drive the Conservative candidate out. Claude said, 'But we have always been Conservatives, and our house is to be their meeting-place on the day of election.' 'It is the meeting-place for the Liberals,' said my aunt. But Claude would not give in, so he and his party will have the laundry, while we will have the parlor; but I can tell you a secret," and she leaned forward and whispered, "Claude will vote for the Liberal man. Mirabelle Marie will see to that."

"You say Liberal man,—there are two—"

"But one is going to retire."

"And who will take his place?"

"Never mind," she said, smiling provokingly. "The Liberals are going to have a convention to-morrow evening in the Comeauville schoolhouse, and women are going. Then you will see—why there is Father Duvair. What does he wish?"

She sprang lightly from the hammock, and while she watched the priest, Agapit watched her, and saw that she grew first as pale as a lily, then red as a rose.

The parish priest was walking slowly towards the inn. He was a young man of tall, commanding presence, and being a priest "out of France," he had on a soutane (cassock) and a three-cornered hat. On the Bay are Irish priests, Nova Scotian priests, Acadien priests, and French-Canadian priests, but only the priests "out of France" hold to the strictly French customs of dress. The others dress as do the Halifax ecclesiastics, in tall silk or shovel hats and black broadcloth garments like those worn by clergymen of Protestant denominations.

"Bon jour, mademoiselle," he said to Bidiane.

"Bon jour, monsieur le curÉ," she replied, with deep respect.

"Is Madame Corbineau within?" he went on, after warmly greeting Agapit, who was an old favorite of his.

"Yes, monsieur le curÉ,—I will take you to her," and she led the way to the house.

In a few minutes she came dejectedly back. "You are in trouble," said Agapit, tenderly; "what is it?"

She glanced miserably at him from under her curling eyelashes. "When Mirabelle Marie went into the parlor, Father Duvair said politely, so politely, 'I wish to buy a little rum, madame; can you sell me some?' My aunt looked at me, and I said, 'Yes, monsieur le curÉ,' for I knew if we set the priest against us we should have trouble,—and then we have not been quite right, I know that."

"Where did you get the rum?" asked Agapit, kindly.

"From a schooner,—two weeks ago,—there were four casks. It is necessary, you know, to make bombance. Some men will not vote without."

"And you have been bribing."

"Not bribing," she said, and she dropped her head; "just coaxing."

"Where did you get the money to buy it?"

For some reason or other she evaded a direct answer to this question, and after much deliberation murmured, in the lowest of voices, that Claudine had had some money.

"Bidiane, she is a poor woman."

"She loves her country," said the girl, flashing out suddenly at him, "and she is not ashamed of it. However, Claude bought the rum and found the bottles, and we always say, 'Take it home,—do not drink it here.' We know that the priests are against drinking, so we had to make haste, for Claudine said they would get after us. Therefore, just now, I at once gave in. Father Duvair said, 'I would like to buy all you have; how much is it worth?' I said fifty dollars, and he pulled the money out of his pocket and Mirabelle Marie took it, and then he borrowed a nail and a hammer and went down in the cellar, and Claudine whispered loudly as he went through the kitchen, 'I wonder whether he will find the cask under the coal?' and he heard her, for she said it on purpose, and he turned and gave her a quick look as he passed."

"I don't understand perfectly," said Agapit, with patient gravity. "This seems to be a house divided against itself. Claudine spends her money for something she hates, and then informs on herself."

Bidiane would not answer him, and he continued, "Is Father Duvair at present engaged in the work of destruction in the cellar?"

"I just told you that he is."

"How much rum will he find there?"

"Two casks," she said, mournfully. "It is what we were keeping for the election."

"And you think it wise to give men that poison to drink?" asked Agapit, in an impartial and judicial manner.

"A little does not hurt; why, some of the women say that it makes their husbands good-natured."

"If you were married, would you like your husband to be a drunkard?"

"No," she said, defiantly; "but I would not mind his getting drunk occasionally, if he would be gentlemanly about it."

Her tone was sharp and irritated, and Agapit, seeing that her nerves were all unstrung, smiled indulgently instead of chiding her.

She smiled, too, rather uncertainly; then she said, "Hush, here is Father Duvair coming back."

That muscular young priest was sauntering towards them, his stout walking-stick under his arm, while he slowly rubbed his damp hands with his white handkerchief.

Agapit stood up when he saw him, and went to meet him, but Bidiane sat still in her old seat in the hammock.

Agapit drew a cheque-book from his pocket, and, resting it on the picket fence, wrote something quickly on it, tore out the leaf, and extended it towards the priest.

"This is for you, father; will you be good enough to hand it to some priest who is unexpectedly called upon to make certain outlays for the good of his parishioners?"

Father Duvair bowed slightly, and, without offering to take it, went on wiping his hands.

"How are you getting on with your business, Agapit?"

"I am fully occupied. My income supports me, and I am even able to lay up a little."

"Are you able to marry?"

"Yes, father, whenever I wish."

A gleam of humor appeared in Father Duvair's eyes, and he glanced towards the apparently careless girl seated in the hammock.

"You will take the cheque, father," said Agapit, "otherwise it will cause me great pain."

The priest reluctantly took the slip of paper from him, then, lifting his hat, he said to Bidiane, "I have the honor to wish you good morning, mademoiselle."

"Monsieur le curÉ," she said, disconsolately, rising and coming towards him, "you must not think me too wicked."

"Mademoiselle, you do not do yourself justice," he said, gravely.

Bidiane's eyes wandered to the spots of moisture on his cassock. "I wish that rum had been in the Bay," she said; "yet, monsieur le curÉ, Mr. Greening is a very bad man."

"Charity, charity, mademoiselle. We all speak hastily at times. Shall I tell you what I think of you?"

"Yes, yes, monsieur le curÉ, if you please."

"I think that you have a good heart, but a hasty judgment. You will, like many others, grow wise as you grow older, yet, mademoiselle, we do not wish you to lose that good heart. Do you not think that Mr. Greening has had his lesson?"

"Yes, I do."

"Then, mademoiselle, you will cease wearying yourself with—with—"

"With unwomanly exertions against him," said Bidiane, with a quivering lip and a laughing eye.

"Hardly that,—but you are vexing yourself unnecessarily."

"Don't you think that my good cousin here ought to go to Parliament?" she asked, wistfully.

Father Duvair laughed outright, refused to commit himself, and went slowly away.

"I like him," said Bidiane, as she watched him out of sight, "he is so even-tempered, and he never scolds his flock as some clergymen do. Just to think of his going down into that cellar and letting all that liquor run out. His boots were quite wet, and did you notice the splashes on his nice black cassock?"

"Yes; who will get the fifty dollars?"

"Dear me, I forgot all about it. I have known a good deal of money to go into my aunt's big pocket, but very little comes out. Just excuse me for a minute,—I may get it if I pounce upon her at once."

Bidiane ran to the house, from whence issued immediately after a lively sound of squealing. In a few minutes she appeared in the doorway, cramming something in her pocket and looking over her shoulder at her aunt, who stood slapping her sides and vowing that she had been robbed.

"I have it all but five dollars," said the girl, breathlessly. "The dear old thing was stuffing it into her stocking for Mr. Nimmo. 'You sha'n't rob Peter to pay Paul,' I said, and I snatched it away from her. Then she squealed like a pig, and ran after me."

"You will give this to Claudine?"

"I don't know. I think I'll have to divide it. We had to give that maledicted Jean Drague three dollars for his vote. That was my money."

"Where did you see Jean Drague?"

"I went to his house. Some one told me that the Conservative candidate had called, and had laid seven dollars on the mantelpiece. I also called, and there were the seven dollars, so I took them up, and laid down ten instead."

Agapit did not speak, but contented himself with twisting the ends of his mustache in a vigorous manner.

"And the worst of it is that we are not sure of him now," she said, drearily. "I wonder what Mr. Nimmo would say if he knew how I have been acting?"

"I have been wondering, myself."

"Some of you will be kind enough to tell him, I suppose," she said. "Oh, dear, I'm tired," and leaning her head against the hammock supports, she began to cry wearily and dejectedly.

Agapit was nearly frantic. He got up, walked to and fro about her, half stretched out his hand to touch her burnished head, drew it back upon reflecting that the eyes of the street, the neighbors, and the inn might be upon him, and at last said, desperately, "You ought to have a husband, Bidiane. You are a very torrent of energy; you will always be getting into scrapes."

"Why don't you get married yourself?" and she turned an irritated eye upon him.

"I cannot," said Agapit, in sudden calm, and with an inspiration; "the woman that I love does not love me."

"Are you in love?" asked Bidiane, immediately drying her eyes. "Who is she?"

"I cannot tell you."

"Oh, some English girl, I imagine," she said, disdainfully.

"Suppose Mr. Greening could hear you?"

"I am not talking against the English," she retorted, snappishly, "but I should think that you, of all men, would want to marry a woman of your own nation,—the dear little Acadien nation,—the only thing that I love," and she wound up with a despairing sob.

"The girl that I love is an Acadien," said Agapit, in a lower voice, for two men had just driven into the yard.

"Is it Claudine?"

"Claudine has a good education," he said, coldly, "yet she is hardly fitted to be my wife."

"I daresay it is Rose."

"It is not Rose," said Agapit; and rendered desperate by the knowledge that he must not raise his voice, must not seem excited, must not stand too close to her, lest he attract the attention of some of the people at a little distance from them, and yet that he must snatch this, the golden moment, to press his suit upon her, he crammed both hands in his coat pockets, and roamed distractedly around the square of grass.

"Do I know her?" asked Bidiane when, after a time, he came back to the hammock.

"A little,—not thoroughly. You do not appreciate her at her full value."

"Well," said Bidiane, resignedly, "I give it up. I daresay I will find out in time. I can't go over the names of all the girls on the Bay—I wish I knew what it is that keeps our darling Rose and Mr. Nimmo apart."

"I wish I could tell you."

"Is it something that can be got over?"

"Yes."

She swung herself more vigorously in her delight. "If they could only marry, I would be willing to die an old maid."

"But I thought you had already made up your mind to do that," said Agapit, striking an attitude of pretended unconcern.

"Oh, yes, I forgot,—I have made up my mind that I am not suited to matrimony. Just fancy having to ask a man every time you wanted a little money,—and having to be meek and patient all the time. No, indeed, I wish to have my own way rather more than most women do," and, in a gay and heartless derision of the other sex, she hummed a little tune.

"Just wait till you fall in love," said Agapit, threateningly.

"A silly boy asked me to marry him, the other evening. Just as if I would! Why, he is only a baby."

"That was Pius Poirier," said Agapit, delightedly and ungenerously.

"I shall not tell you. I did wrong to mention him," said Bidiane, calmly.

"He is a diligent student; he will get on in the world," said Agapit, more thoughtfully.

"But without me,—I shall never marry."

"I know a man who loves you," said Agapit, cautiously.

"Do you?—well, don't tell me. Tell him, if you have his confidence, that he is a goose for his pains," and Bidiane reclined against her hammock cushions in supreme indifference.

"But he is very fond of you," said Agapit, with exquisite gentleness, "and very unhappy to think that you do not care for him."

Bidiane held her breath and favored him with a sharp glance. Then she sat up very straight. "What makes you so pale?"

"I am sympathizing with that poor man."

"But you are trembling, too."

"Am I?" and with the pretence of a laugh he turned away.

"Mon cousin," she said, sweetly, "tell that poor man that I am hoping soon to leave Sleeping Water, and to go out in the world again."

"No, no, Bidiane, you must not," he said, turning restlessly on his heel, and coming back to her.

"Yes, I am. I have become very unhappy here. Every one is against me, and I am losing my health. When I came, I was intoxicated with life. I could run for hours. I was never tired. It was a delight to live. Now I feel weary, and like a consumptive. I think I shall die young. My parents did, you know."

"Yes; they were both drowned. You will pardon me, if I say that I think you have a constitution of iron."

"You are quite mistaken," she said, with dignity. "Time will show that I am right. Unless I leave Sleeping Water at once, I feel that I shall go into a decline."

"May I ask whether you think it a good plan to leave a place immediately upon matters going wrong with one living in it?"

"It would be for me," she said, decidedly.

"Then, mademoiselle, you will never find rest for the sole of your foot."

"I am tired of Sleeping Water," she said, excitedly quitting the hammock, and looking as if she were about to leave him. "I wish to get out in the world to do something. This life is unendurable."

"Bidiane,—dear Bidiane,—you will not leave us?"

"Yes, I will," she said, decidedly; "you are not willing for me to have my own way in one single thing. You are not in the least like Mr. Nimmo," and holding her head well in the air, she walked towards the house.

"Not like Mr. Nimmo," said Agapit, with a darkening brow. "Dear little fool, one would think you had never felt that iron hand in the velvet glove. Because I am more rash and loud-spoken, you misjudge me. You are so young, so foolish, so adorable, so surprised, so intoxicated with what I have said, that you are beside yourself. I am not discouraged, oh, no," and, with a sudden hopeful smile overspreading his face, he was about to spring into his buggy and drive away, when Bidiane came sauntering back to him.

"I am forgetting the duties of hospitality," she said, stiffly. "Will you not come into the house and have something to eat or drink after your long drive?"

"Bidiane," he said, in a low, eager voice, "I am not a harsh man."

"Yes, you are," she said, with a catching of her breath. "You are against me, and the whole Bay will laugh at me,—and I thought you would be pleased."

"Bidiane," he muttered, casting a desperate glance about him, "I am frantic—oh, for permission to dry those tears! If I could only reveal my heart to you, but you are such a child, you would not understand."

"Will you do as I wish you to?" she asked, obstinately.

"Yes, yes, anything, my darling one."

"Then you will take Mr. Greening's place?"

"Oh, the baby,—you do not comprehend this question. I have talked to no one,—I know nothing,—I am not one to put myself forward."

"If you are requested or elected to-night,—or whatever they call it,—will you go up to Halifax to 'make the laws,' as my aunt says?" inquired Bidiane, smiling slightly, and revealing to him just the tips of her glittering teeth.

"Yes, yes,—anything to please you."

She was again about to leave him, but he detained her. "I, also, have a condition to make in this campaign of bribery. If I am nominated, and run an election, what then,—where is my reward?"

She hesitated, and he hastened to dissipate the cloud overspreading her face. "Never mind, I bind myself with chains, but I leave you free. Go, little one, I will not detain you,—I exact nothing."

"Thank you," she said, soberly, and, instead of hurrying away, she stood still and watched him leaving the yard.

Just before he reached Weymouth, he put his hand in his pocket to take out his handkerchief. To his surprise there came fluttering out with it a number of bills. He gathered them together, counted them, found that he had just forty-five dollars, and smiling and muttering, "The little sharp-eyes,—I did not think that she took in my transaction with Father Duvair," he went contentedly on his way.

CHAPTER XI.
WHAT ELECTION DAY BROUGHT FORTH.

"Oh, my companions, now should we carouse, now we should strike the ground with a free foot, now is the time to deck the temples of the gods."

Ode 37. Horace.

It was election time all through the province of Nova Scotia, and great excitement prevailed, for the Bluenoses are nothing if not keen politicians.

In the French part of the county of Digby there was an unusual amount of interest taken in the election, and considerable amusement prevailed with regard to it.

Mr. Greening had been spirited away. His unwise and untrue remark about the inhabitants of the township Clare had so persistently followed him, and his anger with the three women at the Sleeping Water Inn had at last been so stubbornly and so deeply resented by the Acadiens, who are slow to arouse but difficult to quiet when once aroused, that he had been called upon to make a public apology.

This he had refused to do, and the discomfited Liberals had at once relegated him to private life. His prospective political career was ruined. Thenceforward he would lead the life of an unostentatious citizen. He had been chased and whipped out of public affairs, as many another man has been, by an unwise sentence that had risen up against him in his day of judgment.

The surprised Liberals had not far to go to seek his successor. The whole French population had been stirred by the cry of an Acadien for the Acadiens; and Agapit LeNoir, nolens volens, but in truth quite volens, had been called to become the Liberal nominee. There was absolutely nothing to be said against him. He was a young man,—not too young,—he was of good habits; he was well educated, well bred, and he possessed the respect not only of the population along the Bay, but of many of the English residents of the other parts of the county, who had heard of the diligent young Acadien lawyer of Weymouth.

The wise heads of the Liberal party, in welcoming this new representative to their ranks, had not the slightest doubt of his success.

Without money, without powerful friends, without influence, except that of a blameless career, and without asking for a single vote, he would be swept into public life on a wave of public opinion. However, they did not tell him this, but in secret anxiety they put forth all their efforts towards making sure the calling and election of their other Liberal candidate, who would, from the very fact of Agapit's assured success, be more in danger from the machinations of the one Conservative candidate that the county had returned for years.

One Liberal and one Conservative candidate had been elected almost from time immemorial. This year, if the campaign were skilfully directed in the perilously short time remaining to them, there might be returned, on account of Agapit's sudden and extraordinary popularity, two Liberals and no Conservative at all.

Agapit, in truth, knew very little about elections, although he had always taken a quiet interest in them. He had been too much occupied with his struggle for daily bread for mind and body, to be able to afford much time for outside affairs, and he showed his inexperience immediately after his informal nomination by the convention, and his legal one by the sheriff, by laying strict commands upon Bidiane and her confederates that they should do no more canvassing for him.

Apparently they subsided, but they had gone too far to be wholly repressed, and Mirabelle Marie and Claudine calmly carried on their work of baking enormous batches of pies and cakes, for a whole week before the election took place, and of laying in a stock of confectionery, fruit, and raisins, and of engaging sundry chickens and sides of beef, and also the ovens of neighbors to roast them in.

"For men-folks," said Mirabelle Marie, "is like pigs; if you feed 'em high, they don' squeal."

Agapit did not know what Bidiane was doing. She was shy and elusive, and avoided meeting him, but he strongly suspected that she was the power behind the throne in making these extensive preparations. He was not able to visit the inn except very occasionally, for, according to instructions from headquarters, he was kept travelling from one end of the county to the other, cramming himself with information en route, and delivering it, at first stumblingly, but always modestly and honestly, to Acadien audiences, who wagged delighted heads, and vowed that this young fellow should go up to sit in Parliament, where several of his race had already honorably acquitted themselves. What had they been thinking of, the last five years? Formerly they had always had an Acadien representative, but lately they had dropped into an easy-going habit of allowing some Englishman to represent them. The English race were well enough, but why not have a man of your own race? They would take up that old habit again, and this time they would stick to it.

At last the time of canvassing and lecturing was over, and the day of the election came. The Sleeping Water Inn had been scrubbed from the attic to the cellar, every article of furniture was resplendent, and two long tables spread with every variety of dainties known to the Bay had been put up in the two large front rooms of the house.

In these two rooms, the smoking-room and the parlor, men were expected to come and go, eating and drinking at will,—Liberal men, be it understood. The Conservatives were restricted to the laundry, and Claude ruefully surveyed the cold stove, the empty table, and the hard benches set apart for him and his fellow politicians.

He was exceedingly confused in his mind. Mirabelle Marie had explained to him again and again the reason for the sudden change in her hazy beliefs with regard to the conduct of state affairs, but Claude was one Acadien who found it inconsistent to turn a man out of public life on account of one unfortunate word, while so many people in private life could grow, and thrive, and utter scores of unfortunate words without rebuke.

However, his wife had stood over him until he had promised to vote for Agapit, and in great dejection of spirit he smoked his pipe and tried not to meet the eyes of his handful of associates, who did not know that he was to withhold his small support from them.

From early morn till dewy eve the contest went on between the two parties. All along the shore, and back in the settlements in the woods, men left their work, and, driving to the different polling-places, registered their votes, and then loitered about to watch others do likewise.

It was a general holiday, and not an Acadien and not a Nova Scotian would settle down to work again until the result of the election was known.

Bidiane early retreated to one of the upper rooms of the house, and from the windows looked down upon the crowd about the polling-booth at the corner, or crept to the staircase to listen to jubilant sounds below, for Mirabelle Marie and Claudine were darting about, filling the orders of those who came to buy, but in general insisting on "treating" the Liberal tongues and palates weary from much talking.

Bidiane did not see Agapit, although she had heard some one say that he had gone down the Bay early in the morning. She saw the Conservative candidate, Mr. Folsom, drive swiftly by, waving his hat and shouting a hopeful response to the cheering that greeted him from some of the men at the corner, and her heart died within her at the sound.

Shortly before noon she descended from her watch-tower, and betook herself to the pantry, where she soberly spent the afternoon in washing dishes, only turning her head occasionally as Mirabelle Marie or Claudine darted in with an armful of soiled cups and saucers and hurried ejaculations such as "They vow Agapit'll go in. There's an awful strong party for him down the Bay. Every one's grinning over that story about old Greening. They say we'll not know till some time in the night—Bidiane, you look pale as a ghost. Go lie down,—we'll manage. I never did see such a time,—and the way they drink! Such thirsty throats! More lemonade glasses, Biddy. It's lucky Father Duvair got that rum, or we'd have 'em all as drunk as goats." And the girl washed on, and looked down the road from the little pantry window, and in a fierce, silent excitement wished that the thing might soon be over, so that her throbbing head would be still.

Soon after five o'clock, when the legal hour for closing the polling-places arrived, they learned the majority for Agapit, for he it was that obtained it in all the villages in the vicinity of Sleeping Water.

"He's in hereabouts," shouted Mirabelle Marie, joyfully, as she came plunging into the pantry, "an' they say he'll git in everywheres. The ole Conservative ain't gut a show at all. Oh, ain't you glad, Biddy?"

"Of course she's glad," said Claudine, giving Mrs. Corbineau a push with her elbow, "but let her alone, can't you? She's tired, so she's quiet about it."

As it grew dark, the returns from the whole, or nearly the whole county came pouring in. Men mounted on horseback, or driving in light carts, came dashing up to the corner to receive the latest news from the crowd about the telephone office, and receiving it, dashed on again to impart the news to others. Soon they knew quite surely, although there were some backwoods districts still to be heard from. In them the count could be pretty accurately reckoned, for it did not vary much from year to year. They could be relied on to remain Liberal or Conservative, as the case might be.

Bidiane, who had again retreated up-stairs, for nothing would satisfy her but being alone, heard, shortly after it grew quite dark, a sudden uproar of joyous and incoherent noises below.

She ran to the top of the front staircase. The men, many of whom had been joined by their wives, had left the dreary polling-place, which was an unused shop, and had sought the more cheerful shelter of the inn. Soft showers of rain were gently falling, but many of the excited Acadiens stood heedlessly on the grass outside, or leaned from the veranda to exchange exultant cries with those of their friends who went driving by. Many others stalked about the hall and front rooms, shaking hands, clapping shoulders, congratulating, laughing, joking, and rejoicing, while Mirabelle Marie, her fat face radiant with glee, plunged about among them like a huge, unwieldy duck, flourishing her apron, and making more noise and clatter than all the rest of the women combined.

Agapit was in,—in by an overwhelming majority. His name headed the lists; the other Liberal candidate followed him at a respectful distance, and the Conservative candidate was nowhere at all.

Bidiane trembled like a leaf; then, pressing her hands over her ears, she ran to hide herself in a closet.

In the meantime, the back of the house was gloomy. One by one the Conservatives were slipping away home; still, a few yet lingered, and sat dispiritedly looking at each other and the empty wash-tubs in the laundry, while they passed about a bottle of weak raspberry vinegar and water, which was the only beverage Mirabelle and Claudine had allowed them.

Claude, as in honor bound, sat with them until his wife, who gloried in including every one within reach in what she called her "jollifications," came bounding in, and ordered them all into the front of the house, where the proceedings of the day were to be wound up with a supper.

Good-humored raillery greeted Claude and his small flock of Conservatives when Mirabelle Marie came driving them in before her.

"Ah, Joe À Jack, where is thy doubloon?" called out a Liberal. "Thou hast lost it,—thy candidate is in the Bay. It is all up with him. And thou, Guillaume,—away to the shore with thee. You remember, boys, he promised to swallow a dog-fish, tail first, if Agapit LeNoir went in."

A roar of laughter greeted this announcement, and the unfortunate Guillaume was pushed into a seat, and had a glass thrust into his hand. "Drink, cousin, to fortify thee for thy task. A dog-fish,—sakerjÉ! but it will be prickly swallowing."

"Biddy Ann, Biddy Ann," shrieked her aunt, up the staircase, "come and hear the good news," but Bidiane, who was usually social in her instincts, was now eccentric and solitary, and would not respond.

"Skedaddle up-stairs and hunt her out, Claudine," said Mrs. Corbineau; but Bidiane, hearing the request, cunningly ran to the back of the house, descended the kitchen stairway, and escaped out-of-doors. She would go up to the horseshoe cottage and see Rose. There, at least, it would be quiet; she hated this screaming.

Her small feet went pit-a-pat over the dark road. There were lights in all the windows. Everybody was excited to-night. Everybody but herself. She was left out of the general rejoicing, and a wave of injured feeling and of desperate dissatisfaction and bodily fatigue swept over her. And she had fancied that Agapit's election would plunge her into a tumult of joy.

However, she kept on her way, and dodging a party of hilarious young Acadiens, who were lustily informing the neighborhood that the immortal Malbrouck had really gone to the wars at last, she took to the wet grass and ran across the fields to the cottage.

There were two private bridges across Sleeping Water just here, the Comeau bridge and Rose À Charlitte's. Bidiane trotted nimbly over the former, jumped a low stone wall, and found herself under the windows of Rose's parlor.

Why, there was the hero of the day talking to Rose! What was he doing here? She had fancied him the centre of a crowd of men,—he, speech-making, and the cynosure of all eyes,—and here he was, quietly lolling in an easy chair by the fire that Rose always had on cool, rainy evenings. However, he had evidently just arrived, for his boots were muddy, and his white horse, instead of being tied to the post, was standing patiently by the door,—a sure sign that his master was not to stay long.

Well, she would go home. They looked comfortable in there, and they were carrying on an animated conversation. They did not want her, and, frowning impatiently, she uttered an irritable "Get away!" to the friendly white horse, who, taking advantage of one of the few occasions when he was not attached to the buggy, which was the bane of his existence, had approached, and was extending a curious and sympathetically quivering nose in her direction.

The horse drew back, and, moving his ears sensitively back and forth, watched her going down the path to the river.

CHAPTER XII.
BIDIANE FALLS IN A RIVER.

George Meredith.

Five minutes later, Agapit left Rose, and, coming out-of-doors, stared about for his horse, Turenne, who was nowhere to be seen.

While he stood momentarily expecting to see the big, familiar white shape loom up through the darkness, he fancied that he heard some one calling his name.

He turned his head towards the river. There was a fine, soft wind blowing, the sky was dull and moist, and, although the rain had ceased for a time, it was evidently going to fall again. Surely he had been mistaken about hearing his name, unless Turenne had suddenly been gifted with the power of speech. No,—there it was again; and now he discovered that it was uttered in the voice that, of all the voices in the world, he loved best to hear, and it was at present ejaculating, in peremptory and impatient tones, "Agapit! Agapit!"

He precipitated himself down the hill, peering through the darkness as he went, and on the way running afoul of his white nag, who stood staring with stolid interest at a small round head beside the bridge, and two white hands that were clinging to its rustic foundations.

"Do help me out," said Bidiane; "my feet are quite wet."

Agapit uttered a confused, smothered exclamation, and, stooping over, seized her firmly by the shoulders, and drew her out from the clinging embrace of Sleeping Water.

"I never saw such a river," said Bidiane, shaking herself like a small wet dog, and avoiding her lover's shocked glance. "It is just like jelly."

"Come up to the house," he ejaculated.

"No, no; it would only frighten Rose. She is getting to dislike this river, for people talk so much against it. I will go home."

"Then let me put you on Turenne's back," said Agapit, pointing to his horse as he stood curiously regarding them.

"No, I might fall off—I have had enough frights for to-night," and she shuddered. "I shall run home. I never take cold. Ma foi! but it is good to be out of that slippery mud."

Agapit hurried along beside her. "How did it happen?"

"I was just going to cross the bridge. The river looked so sleepy and quiet, and so like a mirror, that I wondered if I could see my face, if I bent close to it. I stepped on the bank, and it gave way under me, and then I fell in; and to save myself from being sucked down I clung to the bridge, and waited for you to come, for I didn't seem to have strength to drag myself out."

Agapit could not speak for a time. He was struggling with an intense emotion that would have been unintelligible to her if he had expressed it. At last he said, "How did you know that I was here?"

"I saw you," said Bidiane, and she slightly slackened her pace, and glanced at him from the corners of her eyes.

"Through the window?"

"Yes."

"Why did you not come in?"

"I did not wish to do so."

"You are jealous," he exclaimed, and he endeavored to take her hand.

"Let my hand alone,—you flatter yourself."

"You were frightened there in the river, little one," he murmured.

Bidiane paused for an instant, and gazed over her shoulder. "Your old horse is nearly on my heels, and his eyes are like carriage lamps."

"Back!" exclaimed Agapit, to the curious and irrepressible Turenne.

"You say nothing of your election," remarked Bidiane. "Are you glad?"

He drew a rapid breath, and turned his red face towards her again. "My mind is in a whirl, little cousin, and my pulses are going like hammers. You do not know what it is to sway men by the tongue. When one stands up, and speaks, and the human faces spreading out like a flower-bed change and lighten, or grow gloomy, as one wishes, it is majestic,—it makes a man feel like a deity."

"You will get on in the world," said Bidiane, impulsively. "You have it in you."

"But must I go alone?" he said, passionately. "Bidiane, you, though so much younger, you understand me. I have been happy to-day, yes, happy, for amid all the excitement, the changing faces, the buzzing of talk in my ears, there has been one little countenance before me—"

"Yes,—Rose's."

"You treat me as if I were a boy," he said, vehemently, "on this day when I was so important. Why are you so flippant?"

"Don't be angry with me," she said, coaxingly.

"Angry," he muttered, in a shocked voice. "I am not angry. How could I be with you, whom I love so much?"

"Easily," she murmured. "I scarcely wished to see you to-day. I almost dreaded to hear you had been elected, for I thought you would be angry because we—because Claudine, and my aunt, and I, talked against Mr. Greening, and drove him out, and suggested you. I know men don't like to be helped by women."

"Your efforts counted," he said, patiently, and yet with desperate haste, for they were rapidly nearing the inn, "yet you know Sleeping Water is a small district, and the county is large. There was in some places great dissatisfaction with Mr. Greening, but don't talk of him. My dear one, will you—"

"You don't know the worst thing about me," she interrupted, in a low voice. "There was one dreadful thing I did."

He checked an oncoming flow of endearing words, and stared at her. "You have been flirting," he said at last.

"Worse than that," she said, shamefacedly. "If you say first that you will forgive me, I will tell you about it—no, I will not either. I shall just tell you, and if you don't want to overlook it you need not—why, what is the matter with you?"

"Nothing, nothing," he muttered, with an averted face. He had suddenly become as rigid as marble, and Bidiane surveyed him in bewildered surprise, until a sudden illumination broke over her, when she lapsed into nervous amusement.

"You have always been very kind to me, very interested," she said, with the utmost gentleness and sweetness; "surely you are not going to lose patience now."

"Go on," said Agapit, stonily, "tell me about this—this escapade."

"How bad a thing would I have to do for you not to forgive me?" she asked.

"Bidiane—de grÂce, continue."

"But I want to know," she said, persistently. "Suppose I had just murdered some one, and had not a friend in the world, would you stand by me?"

He would not reply to her, and she went on, "I know you think a good deal of your honor, but the world is full of bad people. Some one ought to love them—if you were going to be hanged to-morrow I would visit you in your cell. I would take you flowers and something to eat, and I might even go to the scaffold with you."

Agapit in dumb anguish, and scarcely knowing what he did, snatched his hat from his head and swung it to and fro.

"You had better put on your hat," she said, amiably, "you will take cold."

Agapit, suddenly seized her by the shoulders and, holding her firmly, but gently, stared into her eyes that were full of tears. "Ah! you amuse yourself by torturing me," he said, with a groan of relief. "You are as pure as a snowdrop, you have not been flirting."

"Oh, I am so angry with you for being hateful and suspicious," she said, proudly, and with a heaving bosom, and she averted her face to brush the tears from her eyes. "You know I don't care a rap for any man in the world but Mr. Nimmo, except the tiniest atom of respect for you."

Agapit at once broke into abject apologies, and being graciously forgiven, he humbly entreated her to continue the recital of her misdeeds.

"It was when we began to make bombance" she said, in a lofty tone. "Every one assured us that we must have rum, but Claudine would not let us take her money for it, because her husband drank until he made his head queer and had that dreadful fall. She said to buy anything with her money but liquor. We didn't know what to do until one day a man came in and told us that if we wanted money we should go to the rich members of our party. He mentioned Mr. Smith, in Weymouth, and I said, 'Well, I will go and ask him for money to buy something for these wicked men to stop them from voting for a wretch who calls us names.' 'But you must not say that,' replied the man, and he laughed. 'You must go to Mr. Smith and say, "There is an election coming on, and there will be great doings at the Sleeping Water Inn, and it ought to be painted."' 'But it has just been painted,' I said. 'Never mind,' he told me, 'it must be painted.' Then I understood, and Claudine and I went to Mr. Smith, and asked him if it would not be a wise thing to paint the inn, and he laughed and said, 'By all manner of means, yes,—give it a good thick coat and make it stick on well,' and he gave us some bills."

"How many?" asked Agapit, for Bidiane's voice was sinking lower and lower.

"One hundred dollars,—just what Claudine had."

"And you spent it, dearest child?"

"Yes, it just melted away. You know how money goes. But I shall pay it back some day."

"How will you get the money?"

"I don't know," she said, with a sigh. "I shall try to earn it."

"You may earn it now, in the quarter of a minute," he said, fatuously.

"And you call yourself an honest man—you talk against bribery and corruption, you doubt poor lonely orphans when they are going to confess little peccadilloes, and fancy in your wicked heart that they have committed some awful sin!" said Bidiane, in low, withering tones. "I think you had better go home, sir."

They had arrived in front of the inn, and, although Agapit knew that she ought to go at once and put off her wet shoes, he still lingered, and said, delightedly, in low, cautious tones, "But, Bidiane, you have surely a little affection for me—and one short kiss—very short—certainly it would not be so wicked."

"If you do not love a man, it is a crime to embrace him," she said, with cold severity.

"Then I look forward to more gracious times," he replied. "Good night, little one, in twenty minutes I must be in Belliveau's Cove."

Bidiane, strangely subdued in appearance, stood watching him as, with eyes riveted on her, he extended a grasping hand towards Turenne's hanging bridle. When he caught it he leaped into the saddle, and Bidiane, supposing herself to be rid of him, mischievously blew him a kiss from the tips of her fingers.

In a trice he had thrown himself from Turenne's back and had caught her as she started to run swiftly to the house.

"Do not squeal, dear slippery eel," he said, laughingly, "thou hast called me back, and I shall kiss thee. Now go," and he released her, as she struggled in his embrace, laughing for the first time since her capture by the river. "Once I have held you in my arms—now you will come again," and shaking his head and with many a backward glance, he set off through the rain and the darkness towards his waiting friends and supporters, a few miles farther on.

An hour later, Claudine left the vivacious, unwearied revellers below, and went up-stairs to see whether Bidiane had returned home. She found her in bed, staring thoughtfully at the ceiling.

"Claudine," she said, turning her brown eyes on her friend and admirer, "how did you feel when Isidore asked you to marry him?"

"How did I feel—misÉricorde, how can I tell? For one thing, I wished that he would give up the drink."

"But how did you feel towards him?" asked Bidiane, curiously. "Was it like being lost in a big river, and swimming about for ages, and having noises in your head, and some one else was swimming about trying to find you, and you couldn't touch his hand for a long time, and then he dragged you out to the shore, which was the shore of matrimony?"

Claudine, who found nothing in the world more delectable than Bidiane's fancies, giggled with delight. Then she asked her where she had spent the evening.

Bidiane related her adventure, whereupon Claudine said, dryly, "I guess the other person in your river must be Agapit LeNoir."

"Would you marry him if he asked you?" said Bidiane.

"Mercy, how do I know—has he said anything of me?"

"No, no," replied Bidiane, hastily. "He wants to marry me."

"That's what I thought," said Claudine, soberly. "I can't tell you what love is. You can't talk it. I guess he'll teach you if you give him a chance. He's a good man, Bidiane. You'd better take him—it's an opening for you, too. He'll get on out in the world."

Bidiane laid her head back on her pillow, and slipped again into a hazy, dreamy condition of mind, in which the ever recurring subject of meditation was the one of the proper experience and manifestation of love between men and the women they adore.

"I don't love him, yet what makes me so cross when he looks at another woman, even my beloved Rose?" she murmured; and with this puzzling question bravely to the fore she fell asleep.

CHAPTER XIII.
CHARLITTE COMES BACK.

J. F. H.

The last golden days of summer had come, and the Acadien farmers were rejoicing in a bountiful harvest. Day by day huge wagons, heaped high with grain, were driven to the threshing-mills, and day by day the stores of vegetables and fruit laid in for the winter were increased in barn and store-house.

Everything had done well this year, even the flower gardens, and some of the more pious of the women attributed their abundance of blossoms to the blessing of the seeds by the parish priests.

Agapit LeNoir, who now naturally took a broader and wider interest in the affairs of his countrymen, sat on Rose À Charlitte's lawn, discussing matters in general. Soon he would have to go to Halifax for his first session of the local legislature. Since his election he had come a little out of the shyness and reserve that had settled upon him in his early manhood. He was now usually acknowledged to be a rising young man, and one sure to become a credit to his nation and his province. He would be a member of the Dominion Parliament some day, the old people said, and in his more mature age he might even become a Senator. He had obtained just what he had needed,—a start in life. Everything was open to him now. With his racial zeal and love for his countrymen, he could become a representative man,—an Acadien of the Acadiens.

Then, too, he would marry an accomplished wife, who would be of great assistance to him, for it was a well-known fact that he was engaged to his lively distant relative, Bidiane LeNoir, the young girl who had been educated abroad by the Englishman from Boston.

Just now he was talking to this same relative, who, instead of sitting down quietly beside him, was pursuing an erratic course of wanderings about the trees on the lawn. She professed to be looking for a robin's deserted nest, but she was managing at the same time to give careful attention to what her lover was saying, as he sat with eyes fixed now upon her, now upon the Bay, and waved at intervals the long pipe that he was smoking.

"Yes," he said, continuing his subject, "that is one of the first things I shall lay before the House—the lack of proper schoolhouse accommodation on the Bay."

"You are very much interested in the schoolhouses," said Bidiane, sarcastically. "You have talked of them quite ten minutes."

His face lighted up swiftly. "Let us return, then, to our old, old subject,—will you not reconsider your cruel decision not to marry me, and go with me to Halifax this autumn?"

"No," said Bidiane, decidedly, yet with an evident liking for the topic of conversation presented to her. "I have told you again and again that I will not. I am surprised at your asking. Who would comfort our darling Rose?"

"Possibly, I say, only possibly, she is not as dependent upon us as you imagine."

"Dependent! of course she is dependent. Am I not with her nearly all the time. See, there she comes,—the beauty! She grows more charming every day. She is like those lovely Flemish women, who are so tall, and graceful, and simple, and elegant, and whose heads are like burnished gold. I wish you could see them, Agapit. Mr. Nimmo says they have preserved intact the admirable naÏvetÉ of the women of the Middle Ages. Their husbands are often brutal, yet they never rebel."

"Is naÏvetÉ justifiable under those circumstances, mignonne?"

"Hush,—she will hear you. Now what does that boy want, I wonder. Just see him scampering up the road."

He wished to see her, and was soon stumbling through a verbal message. Bidiane kindly but firmly followed him in it, and, stopping him whenever he used a corrupted French word, made him substitute another for it.

"No, Raoul, not j'Étions but j'Étais" (I was). "Petit mieux" (a little better), "not p'tit mieux. La rue not la street. Ces jeunes demoiselles" (those young ladies), "not ces jeunes ladies."

"They are so careless, these Acadiens of ours," she said, turning to Agapit, with a despairing gesture. "This boy knows good French, yet he speaks the impure. Why do his people say becker for baiser" (kiss) "and gueule for bouche" (mouth) "and Échine for dos" (back)? "It is so vulgar!"

"Patience," muttered Agapit, "what does he wish?"

"His sister Lucie wants you and me to go up to Grosses Coques this evening to supper. Some of the D'Entremonts are coming from Pubnico. There will be a big wagon filled with straw, and all the young people from here are going, Raoul says. It will be fun; will you go?"

"Yes, if it will please you."

"It will," and she turned to the boy. "Run home, Raoul, and tell Lucie that we accept her invitation. Thou art not vexed with me for correcting thee?"

"Nenni" (no), said the child, displaying a dimple in his cheek.

Bidiane caught him and kissed him. "In the spring we will have great fun, thou and I. We will go back to the woods, and with a sharp knife tear the bark from young spruces, and eat the juicy bobillon inside. Then we will also find candy. Canst thou dig up the fern roots and peel them until thou findest the tender morsel at the bottom?"

"Oui," laughed the child, and Bidiane, after pushing him towards Rose, for an embrace from her, conducted him to the gate.

"Is there any use in asking Rose to go with us this evening?" she said, coming back to Agapit, and speaking in an undertone.

"No, I think not."

"Why is it that she avoids all junketing, and sits only with sick people?"

He murmured an uneasy, unintelligible response, and Bidiane again directed her attention to Rose. "What are you staring at so intently, ma chÈre?"

"That beautiful stranger," said Rose, nodding towards the Bay. "It is a new sail."

"Every woman on the Bay knows the ships but me," said Bidiane, discontentedly. "I have got out of it from being so long away."

"And why do the girls know the ships?" asked Agapit.

Bidiane discreetly refused to answer him.

"Because they have lovers on board. Your lover stays on shore, little one."

"And poor Rose looks over the sea," said Bidiane, dreamily. "I should think that you might trust me now with the story of her trouble, whatever it is, but you are so reserved, so fearful of making wild statements. You don't treat me as well even as you do a business person,—a client is it you call one?"

Agapit smiled happily. "Marry me, then, and in becoming your advocate I will deal plainly with you as a client, and state fully to you all the facts of this case."

"I daresay we shall have frightful quarrels when we are married," said Bidiane, cheerfully.

"I daresay."

"Just see how Rose stares at that ship."

"She is a beauty," said Agapit, critically, "and foreign rigged."

There was "a free wind" blowing, and the beautiful stranger moved like a graceful bird before it. Rose—the favorite occupation in whose quiet life was to watch the white sails that passed up and down the Bay—still kept her eyes fixed on it, and presently said, "The stranger is pointing towards Sleeping Water."

"I will get the marine glass," said Bidiane, running to the house.

"She is putting out a boat," said Rose, when she came back. "She is coming in to the wharf."

"Allow me to see for one minute, Rose," said Agapit, and he extended his hand for the glass; then silently watched the sailors running about and looking no larger than ants on the distant deck.

"They are not going to the wharf," said Bidiane. "They are making for that rock by the inn bathing-house. Perhaps they will engage in swimming."

A slight color appeared in Rose's cheeks, and she glanced longingly at the glass that Agapit still held. The mystery of the sea and the magic of ships and of seafaring lives was interwoven with her whole being. She felt an intense gentle interest in the strange sail and the foreign sailors, and nothing would have given her greater pleasure than to have shown them some kindness.

"I wish," she murmured, "that I were now at the inn. They should have a jug of cream, and some fresh fruit."

The horseshoe cottage being situated on rising ground, a little beyond the river, afforded the three people on the lawn an uninterrupted view of the movements of the boat. While Bidiane prattled on, and severely rebuked Agapit for his selfishness in keeping the glass to himself, Rose watched the boat touching the big rocks, where one man sprang from it, and walked towards the inn.

She could see his figure in the distance, looking at first scarcely larger than a black lead pencil, but soon taking on the dimensions of a rather short, thick-set man. He remained stationary on the inn veranda for a few minutes, then, leaving it, he passed down the village street.

"It is some stranger from abroad, asking his way about," said Bidiane; "one of the numerous Comeau tribe, no doubt. Oh, I hope he will go on the drive to-night."

"Why, I believe he is coming here," she exclaimed, after another period of observation of the stranger's movements; "he is passing by all the houses. Yes, he is turning in by the cutting through the hill. Who can he be?"

Rose and Agapit, grown strangely silent, did not answer her, and, without thinking of examining their faces, she kept her eyes fixed on the man rapidly approaching them.

"He is neither old nor young," she said, vivaciously. "Yes, he is, too,—he is old. His hair is quite gray. He swaggers a little bit. I think he must be the captain of the beautiful stranger. There is an indefinable something about him that doesn't belong to a common sailor; don't you think so, Agapit?"

Her red head tilted itself sideways, yet she still kept a watchful eye on the newcomer. She could now see that he was quietly dressed in dark brown clothes, that his complexion was also brown, his eyes small and twinkling, his lips thick, and partly covered by a short, grizzled mustache. He wore on his head a white straw hat, that he took off when he neared the group.

His face was now fully visible, and there was a wild cry from Rose. "Ah, Charlitte, Charlitte,—you have come back!"

CHAPTER XIV.
BIDIANE RECEIVES A SHOCK.

Montgomery.

Bidiane flashed around upon her companions. Rose—pale, trembling, almost unearthly in a beauty from which everything earthly and material seemed to have been purged away—stood extending her hands to the wanderer, her only expression one of profound thanksgiving for his return.

Agapit, on the contrary, sat stock-still, his face convulsed with profound and bitter contempt, almost with hatred; and Bidiane, in speechless astonishment, stared from him to the others.

Charlitte was not dead,—he had returned; and Rose was not surprised,—she was even glad to see him! What did it mean, and where was Mr. Nimmo's share in this reunion? She clenched her hands, her eyes filled with despairing tears, and, in subdued anger, she surveyed the very ordinary-looking man, who had surrendered one of his brown hands to Rose, in pleased satisfaction.

"You are more stunning than ever, Rose," he said, coolly kissing her; "and who is this young lady?" and he pointed a sturdy forefinger at Bidiane, who stood in the background, trembling in every limb.

"It is Bidiane LeNoir, Charlitte, from up the Bay. Bidiane, come shake hands with my husband."

"I forbid," said Agapit, calmly. He had recovered himself, and, with a face as imperturbable as that of the sphinx, he now sat staring up into the air.

"Agapit," said Rose, pleadingly, "will you not greet my husband after all these years?"

"No," he said, "I will not," and coolly taking up his pipe he lighted it, turned away from them, and began to smoke.

Rose, with her blue eyes dimmed with tears, looked at her husband. "Do not be displeased. He will forgive in time; he has been a brother to me all the years that you have been away."

Charlitte understood Agapit better than she did, and, shrugging his shoulders as if to beg her not to distress herself, he busied himself with staring at Bidiane, whose curiosity and bewilderment had culminated in a kind of stupefaction, in which she stood surreptitiously pinching her arm in order to convince herself that this wonderful reappearance was real,—that the man sitting so quietly before her was actually the husband of her beloved Rose.

Charlitte's eyes twinkled mischievously, as he surveyed her. "Were you ever shipwrecked, young lady?" he asked.

Bidiane shuddered, and then, with difficulty, ejaculated, "No, never."

"I was," said Charlitte, unblushingly, "on a cannibal island. All the rest of the crew were eaten. I was the only one spared, and I was left shut up in a hut in a palm grove until six months ago, when a passing ship took me off and brought me to New York."

Bidiane, by means of a vigorous effort, was able to partly restore her mind to working order. Should she believe this man or not? She felt dimly that she did not like him, yet she could not resist Rose's touching, mute entreaty that she should bestow some recognition on the returned one. Therefore she said, confusedly, "Those cannibals, where did they live?"

"In the South Sea Islands, 'way yonder," and Charlitte's eyes seemed to twinkle into immense distance.

Rose was hanging her head. This recital pained her, and before Bidiane could again speak, she said, hurriedly, "Do not mention it. Our Lord and the blessed Virgin have brought you home. Ah! how glad Father Duvair will be, and the village."

"Good heavens!" said Charlitte. "Do you think I care for the village. I have come to see you."

For the first time Rose shrank from him, and Agapit brought down his eyes from the sky to glance keenly at him.

"Charlitte," faltered Rose, "there have been great changes since you went away. I—I—" and she hesitated, and looked at Bidiane.

Bidiane shrank behind a spruce-tree near which she was standing, and from its shelter looked out like a small red squirrel of an inquiring turn of mind. She felt that she was about to be banished, and in the present dazed state of her brain she dreaded to be alone.

Agapit's inexorable gaze sought her out, and, taking his pipe from his mouth, he sauntered over to her. "Wilt thou run away, little one? We may have something to talk of not fit for thy tender ears."

"Yes, I will," she murmured, shocked into unexpected submission by the suppressed misery of his voice. "I will be in the garden," and she darted away.

The coast was now clear for any action the new arrival might choose to take. His first proceeding was to stare hard at Agapit, as if he wished that he, too, would take himself away; but this Agapit had no intention of doing, and he smoked on imperturbably, pretending not to see Charlitte's irritated glances, and keeping his own fixed on the azure depths of the sky.

"You mention changes," said Charlitte, at last, turning to his wife. "What changes?"

"You have just arrived, you have heard nothing,—and yet there would be little to hear about me, and Sleeping Water does not change much,—yet—"

Charlitte's cool glance wandered contemptuously over that part of the village nearest them. "It is dull here,—as dull as the cannibal islands. I think moss would grow on me if I stayed."

"But it would break my heart to leave it," said Rose, desperately.

"I would take good care of you," he said, jocularly. "We would go to New Orleans. You would amuse yourself well. There are young men there,—plenty of them,—far smarter than the boys on the Bay."

Rose was in an agony. With frantic eyes she devoured the cool, cynical face of her husband, then, with a low cry, she fell on her knees before him. "Charlitte, Charlitte, I must confess."

Charlitte at once became intensely interested, and forgot to watch Agapit, who, however, got up, and, savagely biting his pipe, strolled to a little distance.

"I have done wrong, my husband," sobbed Rose.

Charlitte's eyes twinkled. Was he going to hear a confession of guilt that would make his own seem lighter?

"Forgive me, forgive me," she moaned. "My heart is glad that you have come back, yet, oh, my husband, I must tell you that it also cries out for another."

"For Agapit?" he said, kindly, stroking her clenched hands.

"No,—no, no, for a stranger. You know I never loved you as a woman should love her husband. I was so young when I married. I thought only of attending to my house. Then you went away; I was sorry, so sorry, when news came of your death, but my heart was not broken. Five years ago this stranger came, and I felt—oh, I cannot tell you—but I found what this love was. Then I had to send him away, but, although he was gone, he seemed to be still with me. I thought of him all the time,—the wind seemed to whisper his words in my ear as I walked. I saw his handsome face, his smiling eyes. I went daily over the paths his feet used to take. After a long, long time, I was able to tear him from my mind. Now I know that I shall never see him again, that I shall only meet him after I die, yet I feel that I belong to him, that he belongs to me. Oh, my husband, this is love, and is it right that, feeling so, I should go with you?"

"Who is this man?" asked Charlitte. "What is he called?"

Rose winced. "Vesper is his name; Vesper Nimmo,—but do not let us talk of him. I have put him from my mind."

"Did he make love to you?"

"Oh, yes; but let us pass that over,—it is wicked to talk of it now."

Charlitte, who was not troubled with any delicacy of feeling, was about to put some searching and crucial questions to her, but forbore, moved, despite himself, by the anguish and innocence of the gaze bent upon him. "Where is he now?"

"In Paris. I have done wrong, wrong," and she again buried her face in her hands, and her whole frame shook with emotion. "Having had one husband, it would have been better to have thought only of him. I do not think one should marry again, unless—"

"Nonsense," said Charlitte, abruptly. "The fellow should have married you. He got tired, I guess. By this time he's had half a dozen other fancies."

Rose shrank from him in speechless horror, and, seeing it, Charlitte made haste to change the subject of conversation. "Where is the boy?"

"He is with him," she said, hurriedly.

"That was pretty cute in you," said Charlitte, with a good-natured vulgar laugh. "You were afraid I'd come home and take him from you,—you always were a little fool, Rose. Get up off the grass, and sit down, and don't distress yourself so. This isn't a hanging matter, and I'm not going to bully you; I never did."

"No, never," she said, with a fresh outburst of tears. "You were always kind, my husband."

"I think our marriage was all a mistake," he said, good-humoredly, "but we can't undo it. I knew you never liked me,—if you had, I might never—that is, things might have been different. Tell me now when that fool, Agapit, first began to set you against me?"

"He has not set me against you, my husband; he rarely speaks of you."

"When did you first find out that I wasn't dead?" said Charlitte, persistently; and Rose, who was as wax in his hands, was soon saying, hesitatingly, "I first knew that he did not care for you when Mr. Nimmo went away."

"How did you know?"

"He broke your picture, my husband,—oh, do not make me tell what I do not wish to."

"How did he break it?" asked Charlitte, and his face darkened.

"He struck it with his hand,—but I had it mended."

"He was mad because I was keeping you from the other fellow. Then he told you that you had better give him the mitten?"

"Yes," said Rose, sighing heavily, and sitting mute, like a prisoner awaiting sentence.

"You have not done quite right, Rose," said her husband, mildly, "not quite right. It would have been better for you to have given that stranger the go by. He was only amusing himself. Still, I can't blame you. You're young, and mighty fine looking, and you've kept on the straight through your widowhood. I heard once from some sailors how you kept the young fellows off, and you always said you'd had a good husband. I shall never forget that you called me good, Rose, for there are some folks that think I am pretty bad."

"Then they are evil folks," she said, tremulously; "are we not all sinners? Does not our Lord command us to forgive those who repent?"

A curious light came into Charlitte's eyes, and he put his tongue in his cheek. Then he went on, calmly. "I'm on my way from Turk's Island to Saint John, New Brunswick,—I've got a cargo of salt to unload there, and, 'pon my word, I hadn't a thought of calling here until I got up in the Bay, working towards Petit Passage. I guess it was old habit that made me run for this place, and I thought I'd give you a call, and see if you were moping to death, and wanted to go away with me. If you do, I'll be glad to have you. If not, I'll not bother you."

A deadly faintness came over Rose. "Charlitte, are you not sorry for your sin? Ah! tell me that you repent. And will you not talk to Father Duvair? So many quiet nights I think of you and pray that you may understand that you are being led into this wickedness. That other woman,—she is still living?"

"What other woman? Oh, Lord, yes,—I thought that fool Agapit had had spies on me."

Rose was so near fainting that she only half comprehended what he said.

"I wish you'd come with me," he went on, jocosely. "If you happened to worry I'd send you back to this dull little hole. You're not going to swoon, are you? Here, put your head on this," and he drew up to her a small table on which Bidiane had been playing solitaire. "You used not to be delicate."

"I am not now," she whispered, dropping her head on her folded arms, "but I cannot hold myself up. When I saw you come, I thought it was to say you were sorry. Now—"

"Come, brace up, Rose," he said, uneasily. "I'll sit down beside you for awhile. There's lots of time for me to repent yet," and he chuckled shortly and struck his broad chest with his fist. "I'm as strong as a horse; there's nothing wrong with me, except a little rheumatism, and I'll outgrow that. I'm only fifty-two, and my father died at ninety. Come on, girl,—don't cry. I wish I hadn't started this talk of taking you away. You'd be glad of it, though, if you'd go. Listen till I tell you what a fine place New Orleans is—"

Rose did not listen to him. She still sat with her flaxen head bowed on her arms, that rested on the little table. She was a perfect picture of silent, yet agitated distress.

"You are not praying, are you?" asked her husband, in a disturbed manner. "I believe you are. Come, I'll go away."

For some time there was no movement in the half prostrated figure, then the head moved slightly, and Charlitte caught a faint sentence, "Repent, my husband."

"Yes, I repent," he said, hastily. "Good Lord, I'll do anything. Only cheer up and let me out of this."

The grief-stricken Rose pushed back the hair from her tear-stained face and slowly raised her head from her arms.

It was only necessary for her to show that face to her husband. So impressed was it with the stamp of intense anguish of mind, of grief for his past delinquencies of conduct, of a sorrow nobly, quietly borne through long years, that even he—callous, careless, and thoughtless—was profoundly moved.

For a long time he was silent. Then his lip trembled and he turned his head aside. "'Pon my word, Rose,—I didn't think you'd fret like this. I'll do better; let me go now."

One of her hands stole with velvety clasp to his brown wrists, and while the gentle touch lasted he sat still, listening with an averted face to the words whispered in his ear.

Agapit, in the meantime, was walking in the garden with Bidiane. He had told her all that she wished to know with regard to the recreant husband, and in a passionate, resentful state of mind she was storming to and fro, scarcely knowing what she said.

"It is abominable, treacherous!—and we stand idly here. Go and drive him away, Agapit. He should not be allowed to speak to our spotless Rose. I should think that the skies would fall—and I spoke to him, the traitor! Go, Agapit,—I wish you would knock him down."

Agapit, with an indulgent glance, stood at a little distance from her, softly murmuring, from time to time, "You are very young, Bidiane."

"Young! I am glad that I am young, so that I can feel angry. You are stolid, unfeeling. You care nothing for Rose. I shall go myself and tell that wretch to his face what I think of him."

She was actually starting, but Agapit caught her gently by the arm. "Bidiane, restrain yourself," and drawing her under the friendly shade of a solitary pine-tree that had been left when the garden was made, he smoothed her angry cheeks and kissed her hot forehead.

"You condone his offence,—you, also, some day, will leave me for some woman," she gasped.

"This from you to me," he said, quietly and proudly, "when you know that we Acadiens are proud of our virtue,—of the virtue of our women particularly; and if the women are pure, it is because the men are so."

"Rose cannot love that demon," exclaimed Bidiane.

"No, she does not love him, but she understands what you will understand when you are older,—the awful sacredness of the marriage tie. Think of one of the sentences that she read to us last Sunday from Thomas À Kempis: 'A pure heart penetrates heaven and hell.' She has been in a hell of suffering herself. I think when in it she wished her husband were dead. Her charity is therefore infinite towards him. Her sins of thought are equal in her chastened mind to his sins of body."

"But you will not let her go away with him?"

"She will not wish to go, my treasure. She talks to him, and repent, repent, is, I am sure, the burden of her cry. You do not understand that under her gentleness is a stern resolve. She will be soft and kind, yet she would die rather than live with Charlitte or surrender her child to him."

"But he may wish to stay here," faltered Bidiane.

"He will not stay with her, chÉrie. She is no longer a girl, but a woman. She is not resentful, yet Charlitte has sinned deeply against her, and she remembers,—and now I must return to her. Charlitte has little delicacy of feeling, and may stay too long."

"Wait a minute, Agapit,—is it her money that he is after?"

"No, little one, he is not mercenary. He would not take money from a woman. He also would not give her any unless she begged him to do so. I think that his visit is a mere caprice that, however, if humored, would degenerate into a carrying away of Rose,—and now au revoir."

Bidiane, in her excited, overstrained condition of mind, bestowed one of her infrequent caresses on him, and Agapit, in mingled surprise and gratification, found a pair of loving arms flung around his neck, and heard a frantic whisper: "If you ever do anything bad, I shall kill you; but you will not, for you are good."

"Thank you. If I am faithless you may kill me," and, reluctantly leaving her, he strode along the summit of the slight hill on which the house stood, until he caught sight of the tableau on the lawn.

Charlitte was just leaving his wife. His head was hanging on his breast; he looked ashamed of himself, and in haste to be gone, yet he paused and cast an occasional stealthy and regretful glance at Rose, who, with a face aglow with angelic forgiveness, seemed to be bestowing a parting benediction on him.

The next time that he lifted his head, his small, sharp eyes caught sight of Agapit, whereupon he immediately snatched his hand from Rose, and hastily began to descend the hill towards the river.

Rose remained standing, and silently watched him. She did not look at Agapit,—her eyes were riveted on her husband. Something within her seemed to cry out as his feet carried him down the hill to the brink of the inexorable stream, where the bones of so many of his countrymen lay.

"Adieu, my husband," she called, suddenly and pleadingly, "thou wilt not forget."

Charlitte paused just before he reached the bridge, and, little dreaming that his feet were never to cross its planks, he swept a glance over the peaceful Bay, the waiting boat, and the beautiful ship. Then he turned and waved his hand to his wife, and for one instant, they remembered afterwards, he put a finger on his breast, where lay a crucifix that she had just given him.

"Adjheu, Rose," he called, loudly, "I will remember." At the same minute, however, that the smile of farewell lighted up his face, an oath slipped to his lips, and he stepped back from the bridge.

CHAPTER XV.
THE BEAUTIFUL STRANGER GOES AWAY WITHOUT
HER CAPTAIN.

"Repentance is the relinquishment of any practice from the conviction that it has offended God. Sorrow, fear, and anxiety are properly not parts but adjuncts of repentance, yet they are too closely connected with it to be easily separated."

—Rambler.

Charlitte did not plan to show himself at all in Sleeping Water. He possessed a toughened conscience and moral fibre calculated to stand a considerably heavy strain, yet some blind instinct warned him that he had better seek no conversation with his friends of former days.

For this reason he had avoided the corner on his way to Rose's house, but he had not been able to keep secret the news of his arrival. Some women at the windows had recognized him, and a few loungers at the corner had strolled down to his boat, and had conversed with the sailors, who, although Norwegians, yet knew enough English to tell their captain's name, which, according to a custom prevailing among Acadiens, was simply the French name turned into English. Charlitte de ForÊt had become Charlitte Forrest.

Emmanuel de la Rive was terribly excited. He had just come from the station with the afternoon mail, and, on hearing that Charlitte was alive, and had actually arrived, he had immediately put himself at the head of a contingent of men, who proposed to go up to the cottage and ascertain the truth of the case. If it were so,—and it must be so,—what a wonderful, what an extraordinary occurrence! Sleeping Water had never known anything like this, and he jabbered steadily all the way up to the cottage.

Charlitte saw them coming,—this crowd of old friends, headed by the mail-driver in the red jacket, and he looked helplessly up at Rose.

"Come back," she called; "come and receive your friends with me."

Charlitte, however, glanced at Agapit, and preferred to stay where he was, and in a trice Emmanuel and the other men and boys were beside him, grasping his hands, vociferating congratulations on his escape from death, and plying him with inquiries as to the precise quarter of the globe in which the last few years of his existence had been passed.

Charlitte, unable to stave off the questions showered upon him, was tortured by a desire to yield to his rough and sailorlike sense of humor, and entertain himself for a few minutes at the expense of his friends by regaling them with his monstrous yarns of shipwreck and escape from the cannibal islands.

Something restrained him. He glanced up at Rose, and saw that she had lost hope of his returning to her. She was gliding down the hill towards him,—a loving, anxious, guardian angel.

He could not tell lies in her presence. "Come, boys," he said, with coarse good nature. "Come on to my ship, I'll take you all aboard."

Emmanuel, in a perfect intoxication of delight and eager curiosity, crowded close to Charlitte, as the throng of men and boys turned and began to surge over the bridge, and the hero of the moment, his attention caught by the bright jacket, singled Emmanuel out for special attention, and even linked his arm in his as they went.

Bidiane, weary of her long stay in the garden, at that minute came around the corner of the house on a reconnoitring expedition. Her brown eyes took in the whole scene,—Rose hurrying down the hill, Agapit standing silently on it, and the swarm of men surrounding the newcomer like happy buzzing bees, while they joyfully escorted him away from the cottage.

This was the picture for an instant before her, then simultaneously with a warning cry from Agapit,—"The bridge, mon Dieu! Do not linger on it; you are a strong pressure!"—there was a sudden crash, a brief and profound silence, then a great splashing, accompanied by shouts and cries of astonishment.

The slight rustic structure had given way under the unusually heavy weight imposed upon it, and a score or two of the men of Sleeping Water were being subjected to a thorough ducking.

However, they were all used to the water, their lives were partly passed on the sea, and they were all accomplished swimmers. As one head after another came bobbing up from the treacherous river, it was greeted with cries and jeers from dripping figures seated on the grass, or crawling over the muddy banks.

CÉlina ran from the house, and Jovite from the stable, both shrieking with laughter. Only Agapit looked grave, and, snatching a hammock from a tree, he ran down the hill to the place where Rose stood with clasped hands.

"Where is Charlitte?" she cried, "and Emmanuel?—they were close together; I do not see them."

A sudden hush followed her words. Every man sprang to his feet. Emmanuel's red jacket was nowhere to be seen,—in the first excitement they had not missed him,—neither was Charlitte visible.

They must be still at the bottom of the river, locked in a friendly embrace. Rose's wild cry pierced the hearts of her fellow countrymen, and in an instant some of the dripping figures were again in the river.

Agapit was one of the most expert divers present, and he at once took off his coat and his boots. Bidiane threw herself upon him, but he pushed her aside and, putting his hands before him, plunged down towards the exact spot where he had last seen Charlitte.

The girl, in wild terror, turned to Rose, who stood motionless, her lips moving, her eyes fixed on the black river. "Ah, God! there is no bottom to it,—Rose, Rose, call him back!"

Rose did not respond, and Bidiane ran frantically to and fro on the bank. The muddy water was splashed up in her face, there was a constant appearance of heads, and disappearance of feet. Her lover would be suffocated there below, he stayed so long,—and in her despair she was in danger of slipping in herself, until Rose came to her rescue and held her firmly by her dress.

After a space of time, that seemed interminably long, but that in reality lasted only a few minutes, there was a confused disturbance of the surface of the water about the remains of the wrecked bridge. Then two or three arms appeared,—a muddy form encased in a besmeared bright jacket was drawn out, and willing hands on the bank received it, and in desperate haste made attempts at resuscitation.

"Go, CÉlina, to the house,—heat water and blankets," said Rose, turning her deathly pale face towards her maid; "and do you, Lionel and Sylvain, kindly help her. Run, Jovite, and telephone for a doctor—oh, be quick! Ah, Charlitte, Charlitte!" and with a distracted cry she fell on her knees beside the inanimate drenched form laid at her feet. Tears rained down her cheeks, yet she rapidly and skilfully superintended the efforts made for restoration. Her hands assisted in raising the inert back. She feverishly lifted the silent tongue, and endeavored to force air to the choked lungs, and her friends, with covert pitying glances, zealously assisted her.

"There is no hope, Rose," said Agapit, at last. "You are wasting your strength, and keeping these brave fellows in their wet clothes."

Her face grew stony, yet she managed to articulate, "But I have heard even if after the lapse of hours,—if one works hard—"

"There is no hope," he said, again. "We found him by the bank. There was timber above him, he was suffocated in mud."

She looked up at him piteously, then she again burst into tears, and threw herself across the body. "Go, dear friends,—leave me alone with him. Oh, Charlitte, Charlitte!—that I should have lived to see this day."

"Emmanuel is also dead," said Agapit, in a low voice.

"Emmanuel,—good, kind Emmanuel,—the beloved of all the village; not so—" and she painfully lifted her head and stared at the second prostrate figure.

The men were all standing around him weeping. They were not ashamed of their tears,—these kind-hearted, gentle Acadiens. Such a calamity had seldom befallen their village. It was equal to the sad wrecks of winter.

Rose's overwrought brain gave way as she gazed, and she fell senseless by Charlitte's dead body.

Agapit carried her to the house, and laid her in her bed in the room that she was not to leave for many days.

"This is an awful time," said CÉlina, sobbing bitterly, and addressing the mute and terrified Bidiane. "Let us pray for the souls of those poor men who died without the last sacraments."

"Let us pray rather for the soul of one who repented on his death-bed," muttered Agapit, staring with white lips at the men who were carrying the body of Charlitte into one of the lower rooms of the house.

"Vive JÉsus!
Vive JÉsus!
Avec la croix, son cher partage.
Vive JÉsus!
Dans les coeurs de tous les Élus!
Portons la croix.

Sans choix, sans ennui, sans murmure,
Portons la croix!
Quoique trÈs amÈre et trÈs dure,
MalgrÉ les sens et la nature,
Portons la croix!"