"'They sleep,' he cried, 'but they will rise again in their children,' and, quite untouched by their fire, he ran to his boat, and, reaching the ship, set sail to New Brunswick; and in later years his children and the children of the murdered ones came back to the Bay, and began to call the river Sleeping Water, and, in time, the lake, which was Queen Anne's Lake, was also changed to Sleeping Water Lake."
"And the soldiers?"
"Ah! you look for vengeance, but does vengeance always come? Remember the Persian distich:
"'They came, conquered, and burned,
Pillaged, murdered, and went.'"
"I do not understand this question thoroughly," said Vesper, with irritation, "yet from your conversation it seems not so barbarous a thing that the Acadiens should have been transported as that those who remained should have been so persecuted."
"Now is your time to read 'Richard.' I have long been waiting for your health to be restored, for it is exciting."
"That is the Acadien historian you have spoken of?"
"Yes; and when you read him you will understand my joy at the venerable letter you showed me. You will see why we blame the guilty Lawrence and his colleagues, and not England herself, for the wickedness wrought her French children."
Vesper smoked out his cigar in silence. They had left the village street some distance behind them, and were now walking along a flat, narrow road, having a thick, hedge-like border of tangled bushes and wild flowers that were agitated by a gentle breeze, and waved out a sweet, faint perfume on the night air. On either side of them were low, grassy marshes, screened by clumps of green.
"We are arrived at last," said Agapit, pausing on a rustic bridge that spanned the road; "and down there," he went on, in a choking voice, "is where the bones of my countrymen lie."