Agapit was running excitedly to and fro on the veranda. "Come, make haste," he cried, as he caught sight of him in the distance. "Extremely strange things have happened—Let me assist you with that wheel,—a malediction on it, these bicycles go always where one does not expect. There is news of the Fiery Frenchman. I found something, also Father La Croix."
"This is interesting," said Vesper, good-naturedly, as he folded his arms, and lounged against one of the veranda posts.
"I was delving among my uncle's papers. I had precipitately come on the name of LeNoir,—Etex, the son of Raphael, who was a wealthy bourgeois of Calais, and emigrated to Grand Pré. He was dead when the expulsion came, and of his two sons one, Gabriel LeNoir, escaped up the St. John River, and that Gabriel was my ancestor, and that of Rose; therefore, most astonishingly to me, we are related to this family whom you have sought," and Agapit wound up with a flourish of his hands and his heels.
"I am glad of this," said Vesper, in a deeply gratified voice.
"But more remains. I was shouting over my discovery, when Father La Croix came. I ran, I descended,—the good man presented his compliments to madame and you. Several of his people went to him this morning. They had questioned the old ones. He wrote what they said, and here it is. See—the son of the murdered Etex was Samson. His mother landed in Philadelphia. In griping poverty the boy grew up. He went to Boston. He joined the Acadiens who marched the five hundred miles through the woods to Acadie. He arrived at the Baie Chaleur, where he married a Comeau. He had many children, but his eldest, Jean, is he in whom you will interest yourself, as in the direct line."
"And what of Jean?" asked Vesper, when Agapit stopped to catch his breath.
Agapit pointed to the Bay. "He lies over Digby Neck, in the Bay of Fundy, but his only child is on this Bay."
"A boy or a girl?"
"A devil," cried Agapit, in a burst of grief, "a little devil."