Vesper, fully occupied with keeping his wheel out of the ruts in the road, and in maintaining a safe distance from the cart, which pressed him sore if he went ahead and waited for him if he dallied behind, answered "yes" and "no" at random, until at length he had involved himself in such a maze of contradictions that Monsieur de la Rive felt himself forced to pull up his brown pony and remonstrate.
"But it is impossible, monsieur, that you should have seen Mrs. de la Rive, who has been dying for weeks, dancing at the wedding of the daughter of her step-uncle, the baker, and yet you say 'yes' when I remark that she was not there."
The stop and the remonstrance were so birdlike and so quick, that Vesper, taken aback, fell off his wheel and broke his cyclometer.
He picked himself out of the dust, swearing under his breath, and Monsieur de la Rive, being a gentleman, and seeing that this quiet young stranger was disinclined for conversation, suddenly whipped up his pony and sped madly on ahead, the tails of his red coat streaming out behind him, the tip of his pointed cap fluttering and nodding over his thick white locks of hair.
After the lapse of a few minutes, Vesper had recovered his composure, and was looking calmly about him. The road was better now, and they were nearing the Bay, that lay shimmering and shining like a great sea-serpent coiled between purple hills. He did not know what Grand Pré was like, and was therefore unaware of the extent of the Acadiens' loss in being driven from it; but this was by no means a barren country. On either side of him were fairly prosperous farms, each one with a light painted wooden house, around which clustered usually a group of children, presided over by a mother, who, as the mail-driver dashed by, would appear in the doorway, thrusting forth her matronly face, often partly shrouded by a black handkerchief.
These black handkerchiefs, la cape Normande of old France, were almost universal on the heads of women and girls. He could see them in the fields and up and down the roads. They and the vivacious sound of the French tongue gave the foreign touch to his surroundings, which he found, but for these reminders, might once again have been those of an out-of-the-way district in some New England State.
He noticed, with regret, that the forest had all been swept away. The Acadiens, in their zeal for farming, had wielded their axes so successfully that scarcely a tree had been left between the station and the Bay. Here and there stood a lonely guardian angel, in the shape of a solitary pine, hovering over some Acadien roof-tree, and turning a melancholy face towards its brothers of the forest,—rugged giants primeval, now prostrate and forlorn, and being trailed slowly along towards the waiting schooners in the Bay.
The most of these fallen giants were loaded on rough carts drawn by pairs of sleek and well-kept oxen who were yoked by the horns. The carts were covered with mud from the bad roads of the forest, and muddy also were the boots of the stalwart Acadien drivers, who walked beside the oxen, whip in hand, and turned frankly curious faces towards the stranger who flashed by their slow-moving teams on his shining wheel.
The road was now better, and Vesper quickly attained to the top of the last hill between the station and the Bay.