“God grant it!” said Martha tearfully, her eyes turning wistfully towards the dark forest, which seemed to have swallowed up her son.
“You’d best come and have supper with me, Martha,” said Father Nat. “It’s near upon eight o’clock,” and he looked at the sky, crimson with the glow of the setting sun. On one side lay the dark forest, and far away the long line of hills encompassing the valley; a broad shining river flashed like a line of silver through the plain, where nestled the two villages of East and West Marsh. On the slope of a hill-side overlooking the whole country stood two houses, built exactly alike, separated from each other originally by a light garden fence, which in the course of years had changed into a thick shrubbery. The “Marshwoods” they were called, and had been so named by the first Langlade and Boscowen who had penetrated with a few followers across the borderland of New England, far away from human habitations, and had struck root on this virgin soil. No one had disputed the land with them, save the Red Indian. Log huts had given place in time to these two homesteads, in front of one of which the scene we have just described had taken place.
Built of the great trees hewn down in the primeval forest, neither storm nor tempest had done them injury. Time had rather beautified than marred their outward seeming. The shingled roofs were thickly overgrown with greeny yellow lichen; the woodwork of the dormer windows, carved balconies, and deep projecting porches had grown dark with age, thus showing off to greater advantage the wealth of creepers which clambered in luxurious profusion from basement to roof. Great clusters of purple and white clematis mingled with the crimson flowers of the dark-leaved pomegranate. Over the porches, stretching up to the casement windows, as if courting soft maiden hands to gather them, clusters of white and pink roses vied with each other in perfume and beauty.
Both houses were so exactly alike! The same spirit seemed to have devised, the same hand to have carried out the work, and yet the founders were of a different people and a different race.
The Langlades were descended from a certain Chevalier de Langlade who had fought in the great wars under Turenne, and when the armies were disbanded the then French Minister, Colbert, had bestowed upon his regiment, as a reward for its services, all the lands lying on the shores of the great Lake of St. Lawrence—“Canada,” as the Indians called it; “New France,” the colonists baptised it, when as far back as 1535 a French explorer, Jacques Cartier, ascended the St. Lawrence.
In 1608 the brave and tender-hearted Samuel Champlain laid the foundations of the City of Quebec, standing proudly on her rock overlooking land and sea. France was then virtually mistress of North America, from Hudson’s Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, by right of precedence. Therefore these warriors, when they landed on the shores of the St. Lawrence, felt that they were not wholly aliens from their beloved country, for which they had fought and bled. Ceasing to be soldiers, they became great hunters. Most of them belonged to the Reformed Church, and though Henry IV. had renounced his faith to become King of France, he so far favoured his former co-religionists as to decree that New France was to welcome the Calvinists, and that they were to be allowed to worship after their own fashion; but Cardinal Richelieu, who by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes drove the Huguenots out of France, thus depriving her of the most industrious of her population, extended his spirit of intolerance even to New France, and decreed that the Calvinistic worship was no longer to be tolerated there. The result was that many influential families left Canada, seeking a new home. Amongst these was a Charles Langlade, with the young wife he had but lately wedded. It was a perfect exodus, for he was much beloved and had many followers. They went south, past the great Lake Champlain, into the dense forests of the west. The Indians swarmed along their path, and daily, hourly, the exiles were exposed to the danger of the tomahawks of the savages.
One memorable day the French Canadians suddenly came upon a group of Englishmen defending themselves as best they could against an overwhelming number of redskins. Charles Langlade fired, at what proved to be the Indian chief, as with raised arm he was in the act of bringing his tomahawk down on the head of a tall, largely built man, whose rugged features and great strength marked him out from his companions. This man was Roger Boscowen. Their chief slain, the Indians fled. Then Charles Langlade and Roger Boscowen, who had thus seemingly met by chance, joined hands, and a great and strong affection grew up between them, so that they cast in their lots together. Roger Boscowen had but lately landed upon the shores of New England; he too had left his Lincolnshire fens, with other well-to-do, God-fearing yeomen, for conscience’ sake, to find a country where they might glorify God. They were not “broken men,”—adventurers or criminals driven from their fatherland by earthly want,—but men who were constrained by their fear of God and their zeal for godly worship.
They had no dreams of gold-fields, but were resolute and industrious, quiet and stern, recognising from the first that nothing was to be expected from the land but by labour. So the representatives of the two races united, and marched onward together along the wavy line of the New England border, until they reached a spot which seemed to possess all the most essential qualifications for a new colony. Forest land, deep hills and dales, pastures sloping down to a broad shining river which watered all the land, lay stretched out before them; and here they pitched their tents, and in time multiplied and prospered, upholding from generation to generation the characteristics of their Puritan and Huguenot forefathers—namely, piety and simplicity of life. The “Marshes” had become one of the largest and most prosperous of the border settlements.
Thus it was that the Langlades and Boscowens were alike proud of their descent, and strove ever to prove themselves worthy in all things of those who had gone before and were called “Fathers of the land.”
That an eldest son should have gone astray and have forsaken his ancestral home was therefore a bitter sorrow. Alpha and Omega had been added to the name of Marshwood to distinguish the homesteads. The Langlades owned Alpha, the Boscowens Omega. As son succeeded father the tie which bound the heads of the two houses together was never once broken; no word of dissension ever arose between them. Younger sons and daughters went forth into the busy world; some were lost sight of, others returned from time to time with a curious longing to see once more the home of their race, and were made welcome and treated hospitably; but, up to the present time, the eldest son of either branch had never deserted his post.