The carts were now full of the wet dulse, trembling like jelly as the oxen moved over the beach. Marie had seated herself on the front of the cart, her feet resting on the pole to which the animals were yoked. Her father was leading his pair, and now carefully avoided the rocks and soft places, while Suzanne walked behind, not caring to trust herself to so precarious a seat as was left for her.
They filed slowly upward upon the long stretch of sand. Marie was now silent. Her large brown Acadian eyes became thoughtful. Suzanne had enough to do to walk after the slow team, while Pierre, though far beyond middle life, walked easily at the head of his team.
The old man, hardy and active, bronzed by a life of labor on the open shore or upon his island, made a venerable figure in the dignity and manliness of his bearing. His dress was rough, and wet from the labor he had been engaged in on the beach, but his commanding figure and kindly features, softened by time, and ripened by the great grief that had left him uncompanioned through the later years of his life, gave Pierre a bearing and dignity of face above the ordinary type of the workingman.
Pierre Gotro was the last of his name who had inhabited once the marsh country on the south of the Basin of Minas. His ancestors had been removed at the time of the great deportation, in 1755, by the harsh orders of Governor Lawrence. He was the highest type of the Acadian in form and feature, patriarchal in ripe old age, and calmly peaceful amid the conditions of a life removed from the bustling world, and faithful to the duties of his isolated existence. The sadness of his race he inherited as the only legacy bequeathed by an unfortunate people. This melancholy vein may be detected in the nature of the Acadians of to-day after a hundred and fifty years of transmission. This great inheritance of grief the generations must yet bear to mark their lives and to influence their living for another century.
Marie had suddenly become silent. Her large brown eyes suggested the sway of active thought, dominated by some strong emotion tinged with melancholy. In the limpid depth of her look could be read the play of imagination. Her eyes made her a part of everything in the warm love of her heart; and everything became a part of her. The blue of the sky gave of its glorious color to her being. The long stretch of bluff and cliff and wooded crest, and the magnificent sweep of the tide, though now fallen to its lowest ebb, and the dim blue line of Blomidon, and the rich, salty air, entered into her nature as an essence, and filled her with an exaltation of melancholy gladness, of happy intensity of feeling that almost led to tears. So is that intimate commingling of spirit and nature in the exquisite moments of pure physical existence.
The carts had now reached the foot of the bluff, upon the clean pebbles, free of sand, heated by the sun, and on these the wet dulse was thrown and spread to dry. In the course of a few hours the two large loads would be reduced by the process of drying to less than half the original bulk.
The teams now returned to the beds for another load before the tide covered the shore again. They had gone but a short distance down the red sand when there came a sudden interruption to the quiet of the afternoon and the calm of the proceedings. A slight, warm breeze was coming out of the west, and borne up against it from some part of the island came the dull roar of falling stone. This was heard by Pierre and Suzanne, and the old man stopped the oxen in wonder at the unusual sound, but the cry of a human voice that followed upon the noise was heard only by the young ears of Marie.
"Père, père!" she cried to her father, "did you hear the voice?"
"No, child. What did you hear?"
"I heard a man's voice at the bluffs back of the island, where the sound of the falling stone came from."