“Yes.”
“Grand Ciel!” exclaimed the other. “And you have been there! And you have lived there! How easy it must be to go there! And I was never there—never! Alas! why did I not go to see, that place when I was a young man?”
His emotion was so strong that his wife asked him the cause.
He explained. And Bart noticed that the old lady and the granddaughter both looked at them with deeper interest as they repeated the name—Grand Pré!
“None of my countrymen live there now, I suppose.” said the old man, looking at Bart interrogatively.
Bart shook his head.
“Ah, I thought so,” said the old man. “All gone. They had to go. They were banished. They dared not return to that place. They came back, but could not get their homes again. Their houses were burnt up, and their farms were given away to strangers. Ah, Grand Ciel! what injustice! And they so good, so pious, so innocent!”
“They were shamefully wronged,” exclaimed Bart, in a burst of indignation,—“most shamefully, most foully wronged!”
“True,” said the old man. “You are right. They were wronged. They were robbed. Ah, how I have heard my grandfather tell about that mournful day! How he loved that dear home in Grand Pré, which he never dared to revisit! He was a young man when he was driven away, and he lived to be an old man; but he never lost his love for his old home. He was always homesick; never content.”
“Your grandfather!” said Bart, with the deepest interest. “Did he live in Grand Pré?”