In the French part of the county of Digby there was an unusual amount of interest taken in the election, and considerable amusement prevailed with regard to it.
Mr. Greening had been spirited away. His unwise and untrue remark about the inhabitants of the township Clare had so persistently followed him, and his anger with the three women at the Sleeping Water Inn had at last been so stubbornly and so deeply resented by the Acadiens, who are slow to arouse but difficult to quiet when once aroused, that he had been called upon to make a public apology.
This he had refused to do, and the discomfited Liberals had at once relegated him to private life. His prospective political career was ruined. Thenceforward he would lead the life of an unostentatious citizen. He had been chased and whipped out of public affairs, as many another man has been, by an unwise sentence that had risen up against him in his day of judgment.
The surprised Liberals had not far to go to seek his successor. The whole French population had been stirred by the cry of an Acadien for the Acadiens; and Agapit LeNoir, nolens volens, but in truth quite volens, had been called to become the Liberal nominee. There was absolutely nothing to be said against him. He was a young man,—not too young,—he was of good habits; he was well educated, well bred, and he possessed the respect not only of the population along the Bay, but of many of the English residents of the other parts of the county, who had heard of the diligent young Acadien lawyer of Weymouth.
The wise heads of the Liberal party, in welcoming this new representative to their ranks, had not the slightest doubt of his success.
Without money, without powerful friends, without influence, except that of a blameless career, and without asking for a single vote, he would be swept into public life on a wave of public opinion. However, they did not tell him this, but in secret anxiety they put forth all their efforts towards making sure the calling and election of their other Liberal candidate, who would, from the very fact of Agapit's assured success, be more in danger from the machinations of the one Conservative candidate that the county had returned for years.
One Liberal and one Conservative candidate had been elected almost from time immemorial. This year, if the campaign were skilfully directed in the perilously short time remaining to them, there might be returned, on account of Agapit's sudden and extraordinary popularity, two Liberals and no Conservative at all.
Agapit, in truth, knew very little about elections, although he had always taken a quiet interest in them. He had been too much occupied with his struggle for daily bread for mind and body, to be able to afford much time for outside affairs, and he showed his inexperience immediately after his informal nomination by the convention, and his legal one by the sheriff, by laying strict commands upon Bidiane and her confederates that they should do no more canvassing for him.
Apparently they subsided, but they had gone too far to be wholly repressed, and Mirabelle Marie and Claudine calmly carried on their work of baking enormous batches of pies and cakes, for a whole week before the election took place, and of laying in a stock of confectionery, fruit, and raisins, and of engaging sundry chickens and sides of beef, and also the ovens of neighbors to roast them in.
"For men-folks," said Mirabelle Marie, "is like pigs; if you feed 'em high, they don' squeal."