The meal ended and the kitchen restored to its wonted order, Margot, in whom, as in all Acadians, the frugal spirit of the French peasant prevailed, extinguished the tallow dips; then, taking her seat on a cricket at her grandfather’s knee, she eagerly awaited Gabriel’s story.
This story of Gabriel’s was no easy one to tell; this he felt himself. In the brief time that he had been absent from his home, brief in actual duration, but to himself and to his loved ones so long, life had acquired for him a wholly different meaning. Hitherto his nature had been as plastic material prepared for some mold, the selection of which had not as yet been made known. He knew now for what he was destined, and was conscious that the boy was rapidly hardening into the man he was intended to be. The fanaticism permitted in one of its most potent instruments had upset his faith in the form of religion in which he had been reared, and he was too young for the tolerance that is often the fruit of a larger experience. Moreover, strange as it may seem, there was in this generous, tender-hearted youth elements not unlike those in the relentless and vindictive priest. The fanatic and the enthusiast not seldom spring from the same root. But how to explain to these two, who, dear to him as they were, could not be expected to share his convictions? At last he roused himself.
“First, dear gran’-père,” he said, “I must learn how it fares with you and with ma cousine. God grant that you be left here in peace!”
There was a pause. They too had their difficulties. How could they tell him that Le Loutre might even yet have spared them their home had it not been for what he called “the contumacy of that young heretic”? Margot’s woman’s wit, however, came to the rescue and she told simply and truthfully the tale of the gradual banishment of their people. “We still are spared,” she concluded, “but it cannot be for long.”
“Then my sins were not visited on your head,” said Gabriel eagerly.
“As others fare, so must we in the end,” was the somewhat evasive reply. “But come, my cousin, to thy tale.”
So Gabriel began, but when he came to the scene of the torture, hesitated. Margot’s indignant sympathy, however, divined what he would not tell.
“Was it very bad, dear cousin?” she cried, the tears in her dark eyes, as she pressed his hand.
“No, not so very bad,” he replied with forced lightness. “The friendly Micmacs rebelled, and I do not believe M. l’Abbé ever pushes things to extremes at first. He strove only to scare me into submission to his will, and I have got a bit of tough English oak somewhere in me that doesn’t bend as do tender Acadian saplings.” He smiled down into his cousin’s wet eyes. “Don’t weep, little cousin. See, I am well; none has hurt me.”
“Oh, but thou art thin, thou art pale, thou art changed,” she cried, breaking down completely. “Oh, mon gran’-père, is it that we must love and obey so cruel a priest?”