The sun that day went down and left Minas Basin in the cool, clear air of a summer night. Blomidon lay dark against the western heavens, pointing on the one side to the open waters of the Bay of Fundy, whose bosom is a mighty tide with forces never at rest; and on the other hand to the marshes of the Grand-Pré shore, full of the fate of a people.
[CHAPTER IV.]
BLUFF CASTLE.
"Where are the hands to guide the waiting plow,
To sway the lumbering oxen with a stroke,
Now waiting at the bars for band and yoke?—
An exile curst as with a branded brow.
The kindly walls that cannot shield him now
Are black in embers that have ceased to smoke,
Wrapt tenderly with marsh-fogs as a cloak.
The willows shade no gables where they bow.
The wandering exile from dead Acadie
Sees through the mist of sorrow never done
That mercy has no hand held out to save.
Yet ne'er again the meadows of the sea
Mayhap shall know this heart-sore, weary son,
Denied the kindness of an alien grave."
Winslow's recovery was rapid, under the care and skill of Suzanne. His left shoulder gave him considerable trouble, and he was compelled to keep his arm in a sling for several days; yet it was not long after his mishap when he had strength enough to wander over the island and ingratiate himself with the folk of Pierre Island.
A deep friendship soon drew Winslow and Pierre together, and the young man spent much of his time in the company of the older. He felt that he owed him a debt of gratitude that could never be paid, while Pierre treated the matter lightly as regards his own connection with the rescue. He dealt with the escape of his young friend as with an event that touched a sympathetic and vital chord in his own heart. Pierre opened his heart to him as a father would who had recovered a lost son. A deep friendship developed and drew them together in a bond of fellowship and mutual confidence.
Winslow was now domiciled at "Bluff Castle," where his simple and modest tastes, his good-nature and his quiet tact, pleased the old Acadian and the women of his household.
Pierre carried with him into his daily life the rural simplicity of the peasant, and a certain dignity and kindness which never left him. His was a calm and quiet old age, far removed from the world, and free from its weaknesses and sordid influences and its common failings. The philosophers of old had the nature of this old Acadian, wise in the experiences peculiar to their environments, and true to those high principles of living which only men learn who contemplate with correct judgment the events of their existence and aim at the highest point for the purpose of their life. Tempered with a long life of labor, reared and trained within the sight and influence of the mighty changes of elemental nature, and in constant communication with its forces, and at last made wise at the shrine of sorrow, Pierre seemed to Winslow the embodiment of the highest qualities of ripe and noble old age.