The Heir to Grand-Pré

by John Frederic Herbin

"If you are still interested in mineral specimens I can recommend the part of the Basin where I have been stopping for a few weeks."

"Is the variety good?" asked Miss Gaston.

"Excellent," replied Winslow, "and well worth your consideration. The veins are very numerous, and the combinations are many and interesting, and more or less valuable. As to the beauty of the places there, I think they are worthy the brush of any artist."

"By all means, girls, let us go," said Mrs. Forest. "We have spent enough time here, and we may see Grand-Pré later."

"It was our purpose to go to Evangeline's home from here," added her daughter to Winslow; "but your account of Pierre Island, and its venerable owner and his beautiful daughter, has made us decide to go there at once."

"I am sure it will not disappoint you. You may discover the vein of very rich and rare mineral said to be there somewhere. Its discovery means an immense fortune to somebody," he said, smiling.

"We must go at once, Grace. We will form a joint stock company for the tearing down of Pierre Island. We will give these gentlemen important positions on the managing staff."

Everybody was in good spirits when Winslow took his leave of the Forests.

Miss Gaston and her friend, Mr. Sternly, accompanied Winslow on his return, for the purpose of recovering the specimens that had been left the day before. Len was to follow with the boat when it floated, as the tide was now but half out and a half-mile of beach lay between the bluff and the sea.

In the morning light Winslow had looked with interest on the scene which lay before him. He tried to recall the time when his famous ancestor had sailed into the Basin, and, landing at Grand-Pré, took possession of the church and the priest's house for himself and his soldiers. He pictured to himself the prosperous and contented people inhabiting the region from the upper waters of the Avon, which he could see, all along the south shore and up all the other large streams as far as Pereau, but a few miles distant. Here were farms and orchards, populous villages and many scattered homes. Then he saw it as it was when Colonel Winslow departed, destroyed and laid waste; churches, houses, mills and barns all burned, people removed, and six years of silence and desolation haunted by the spectre of things as they had been, a spectre called up by the ruins of what had been happy homes, by the uncared-for fields, the broken dykes and marshes covered again by the sea, the orchards of fruit ungathered, the bones of cattle that had starved to death. Then he noted the coming of the New England people to take up the vacated lands, and how dependent they were upon the very people they replaced to restore the dykes. Also the returning Acadians, with gaunt-eyed and suffering faces disclosing the fear they yet felt because of the terrible fate that had befallen them and seemed to follow them wherever they went. This he saw, and, above all, he recognized the merciless hand that had struck them with such deadly hate, following them in their utter helplessness and misery, when all hope seemed dead and no door open for them. Thus he had mused as he realized that not one of the people could be found in all the country that lay before him and that had been all theirs.