The priests from the college and glebe-house, robed in handsome vestments, filed out from the vestry, and, quietly approaching the silken banners standing against the low gallery, handed them to representatives of different societies connected with the church.
The children of the Guardian Angel received the picture of their patron saint, and, gathering around it, fluttered soberly out to the open air through the narrow lane left among the kneeling worshippers.
The children of the Society of Mary followed them, their white-clad and veiled figures clustering about the pale, pitying Virgin carried by two of their number. A banner waving beside her bore the prayer, "Marie, Priez Pour Nous" (Mary, pray for us), and, as if responding to the petition, her two hands were extended in blessing over them.
After the troop of snowy girls walked the black sisters in big bonnets and drooping shawls, and the brown sisters, assistants to the Eudists, who wore black veils with white flaps against their pale faces. Then came the priests, altar boys, and all the congregation. Until they left the church the organ played an accompaniment to their chanting. On the steps a young deacon put a cornet to his lips, and, taking up the last note of the organ, prolonged it into a vigorous leadership of the singing:
Ave maris Stella,
Dei mater alma,
Atque semper virgo
Felix coeli porta.
As the congregation sang, they crossed the road to the gates of the college grounds, and divided into two parts, the men, with heads uncovered, going one side, and the women on the other.
Above the gate-posts waved two flags, the union jack and the Acadien national flag,—a French tricolor, crossed by a blue stripe, and pierced with a yellow star.
Slowly and solemnly the long array of men and women passed by the glebe-house and the white marble tomb of the good Abbé, whose life was given to the Acadiens of the Bay Saint-Mary. The hymns sung by the priests at the head of the procession floated back to the congregation in the rear, and at the moment when the singing was beginning to die away in the distance and the procession was winding out of sight behind the big college, two strangers suddenly appeared on the scene.
They were a slender, elegant man and a beautiful lad of a clear, healthy pallor of skin. The man, with a look of grave, quiet happiness on his handsome face, stepped from the carriage in which they were driving, fastened his horse to a near fence, and threw a longing glance after the disappearing procession.