"Well, æsthetic, then. But all this does not alter the fact that they deserved the greatest pity. Many of them, indeed, honestly believed that they were still the subjects of Louis XV, and that to take the oath required by the English would be a great crime."
"What they needed was a really good and disinterested man to advise them; some one like Paul Mascarene, who was partly French, and yet could get the English point of view," said Priscilla. "Some way I can't feel that the English were altogether disinterested—although," she concluded hastily, "I am more on the English side than the French,—and I am very sorry that it was a man of Plymouth descent who carried away the Acadians from Grand Pré."
This, in view of Priscilla's previous prejudice against the Acadians, was really a very liberal statement, as the others realized.
"It should console you, then, to remember that Colonel Winslow was simply a soldier acting under orders, and we have no reason to think that he used needless cruelty. 'It hurts me to hear their weeping and wailing,' he said in his journal, and this shows that he had a tender heart."
"But I can't see why families were separated, and why all these Acadians couldn't have been sent up to Upper Canada to the other French;" and Martine sighed deeply.
"You forget that France and England were still at war, and to have put so many able-bodied men at the service of France would indeed have been madness. Governor Lawrence explained all this in letters to the governors of the different colonies to whom he sent the Acadians. They were sent to as many different colonies as possible, and broken up into small groups, so that they could not unite in any plan for return."
"I suppose that Governor Lawrence thought it better for them to become public charges,—people who had always been perfectly independent."
"Oh, well, there is a bright side. Many of them never lost hope for a minute, and even those who went to the French West Indies soon began to plan to get back to Acadia. In the end, after the Peace, they began to take the oath, and receive their new grants of land, and since then England has had no more devoted subjects—as we saw for ourselves in Clare."
"All the same," said Martine, "this must be a haunted region around here, and I can tell you I should hate to walk through Grand Pré alone after dark, or even drive through."
"Speaking of haunted regions," said Priscilla, "though I don't know why I think of him just now, what do you suppose has happened to Mr. Knight? No one has seen him since our adventure."