"But I am no New Englander," objected Martine.
"Oh, it's all the same. Some of your ancestors were from New England undoubtedly, unless you are different from most Chicagoans. But if you repudiate New England, you cannot object to my arousing your sympathies for some of those exiled Loyalists who suffered quite as much as the over-pitied Acadians."
"It's a shame Priscilla is not here," murmured Martine.
Now Balfour was not likely to speak idly, and in a moment he had begun his recital.
"The old lady who told this story to my mother was visiting Annapolis from Fredericton, and her mother, the daughter of an officer in a New Jersey regiment, experienced all the hardships that she described. The vessels with these New Jersey officers and soldiers and their families went up the St. John River in early October, and landed at a place called St. Ann's, that later became Fredericton, the capital of the Province. It was a wet, cold season, and the people had no shelter but tents, that they tried to cover with spruce boughs. Their floor was the ground, and when snow fell in early November the old lady's mother said that her family tried to shut it out by putting their one rug against the opening. Often a part of the family had to sit up all night to keep the others from freezing. When everything else failed they would heat boards at the fire, and hold them over the children to give them needed warmth."
"A likely story!" and Martine smiled.
"Indeed, it is perfectly true," rejoined Balfour, gravely. "Many men and women died of exposure and lack of food that terrible winter. Their graves were dug with pickaxe and shovel, in the hard ground not far from the tents. Like the Acadians at French Cross, they had no clergyman to pay the last rites. They had been used to comfortable and pleasant homes, and many of them had had wealth; so it was doubly hard to have to live in Indian fashion on fish, and moose, and berries. In the spring they made maple sugar, and killed pigeons. There was great rejoicing when the first vessels came with corn and rye. They were in constant fear of the Indians, and it was long before they could live even half decently."
"I have always sympathized with the Loyalists," said Amy, quietly.
"Oh, well, it's all over now," returned Balfour, bitterly. "But it must have been hard for many of them to remember that their houses and lands, and even their personal property, had been passed over to people who to them seemed to have no shadow of right to it."
"Do you care now?" asked Martine, gently.