And Captain Demmick slain by heathen’s hand

As was his father under like command.”

Rejoicing was shortly tempered by wholesome dread of reprisals. As a fact France, enraged at the loss of her stronghold, was sending out a great armament under command of the Duc d’Anville, not only to retake Louisburg, but to ravage the New England coast. There were eleven ships of the line and thirty smaller vessels, as well as transports for three thousand men. But Providence was to intervene for the humbling of French pride and the salvation of the faithful. Storms reduced the armada one half before it could even make port, disease swept away most of the troops, the two commanders died suddenly, by suicide men were ready to say, and the remnant of the fleet, without striking a blow, sailed back to France. The Cape, especially, had been alarmed at the prospect of such a punitive expedition: she urged the danger to her long coast-line; Truro petitioned the General Court for protection, and received a four-pound cannon, some small arms and ammunition.

The Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, ended the general conflict, and in the negotiations overseas hard-bought Louisburg, to the great displeasure of the colonists, was traded for more valuable considerations elsewhere. In America guerrilla warfare, a raid here, a raid there, continued; and in three years’ time, the greatest conflict of the series, when Washington and other young officers got their training for a greater war to follow, was raging all along the border. It terminated, in 1763, with the Peace of Paris, when France gave over to England her last American holdings. The colonies had learned painfully lessons to their great advantage in the struggle with the mother country that was even then beginning; and when the clash came, France was glad to range herself with the colonists for another blow at her old enemy England.

It was during this war that England broke up some of the French communities that had remained unmolested since Nova Scotia was ceded to her by the Peace of Utrecht; and the “neutral French,” as they were called, were scattered throughout the colonies from New Hampshire to Georgia. Longfellow’s poem of “Evangeline” tells the story of those pathetic exiles; and we know that in July, 1756, a little band of Acadians, ninety souls in all, men, women, and children, landed from seven two-mast boats at Bourne. They were tenderly received, we may believe, by the people who had never refused shelter to the unfortunate. Silas Bourne wrote to James Otis asking what should be done with them, and eventually their boats were sold and they were distributed among the neighboring towns. It is not improbable that Peter Cotelle, of Barnstable, was of this company—a Frenchman who lived in a gambrel-roofed cottage set in a pretty garden. He was a tinker by trade, and made shrewd use of his imperfect English, it is said, in driving a bargain.

THE CREEK

The Cape seems to have furnished no leaders in this war where so many famous men fought, but, steadily, she gave her quota of men and her money; and Amos Otis has preserved for our delectation the stories of many of the humbler folk of the time. There was a Barnstable man who had shipped as carpenter aboard a privateer which soon brought into Boston as prize a Spanish ship laden with dollars and bullion. By some means the ship was made out to be French property, and the Yankee captain offered each of his men for prize money as much silver as he could carry from Long Wharf to the head of State Street, with the chance of forfeiting the whole if he stopped to rest by the way. Barnstable, apparently, cut his cloth to fit his stature and came off with some two thousand dollars and a little hoard of silver to boot which he discovered in a ship’s boat he had purchased. At any rate, he had enough to lay the foundation of a snug fortune which he augmented by becoming something of a usurer in his native town. As a young man his marriage had been delayed from year to year through a difference with his sweetheart as to where they should live. He preferred the village where he had learned his trade, she, being well-to-do, her own good farm at Great Marshes. In the end she prevailed; and no doubt, as one who knew her will and practised effective methods to obtain it, contributed her due share to the family fortune. The grandchildren, Otis implies, “having no reverence for antiquity or love of hoarding,” made the dollars fly.

A Gorham of this generation seems to have had an over-supply of such “reverence for antiquity”: he was so wedded to the customs of his fathers that he would not use a tipcart because they had none, and drove his team with a pole as they had done; he farmed by their methods, and made salt, though it were bad salt, by their mode of boiling. He had other oddities, such as fastening his shirt in the back with a loop and nail, and eschewing rum in a time when the best kept tavern and drank thereat; he lived on salt-meat broth, bread and milk, hasty-pudding and samp; he was honest, industrious, a good neighbor and citizen, as valuable to the community, perhaps, as his more brilliant kinsmen.

A somewhat younger man than he, born in 1739, a doctor by profession, who seldom practised, had no such antipathy to rum, though it is said he never got drunk save at another’s charge. At such times he obliged the company with “Old King Cole,” his only song, and also with well-worn stories of some earlier adventures in Maine. There is record of a certain Christmas party at Hyannis when at midnight, song sung and story told, he was helped on his old gray mare for the journey home. Left to herself the mare would have taken him safe there, but he must needs turn into a narrow lane, where, in the brilliant moonlight he spied the mild phosphorescence of a rotten log. A fire, thought he, very likely his own fire, and drew off his boots to warm his chilled feet. Resuming his journey, at dawn he came upon the highway and lashed his mare to the gallop, but, as it chanced, in the wrong direction. “Gentlemen,” cried he, drawing up to accost some early travellers, “can you tell me whether I am in this town or the next?” They answered cavalierly enough: “You’re in this town now, but ’t won’t be long before you’re in the next at that rate.” And perceiving his state, they saw to it that he straightway had breakfast and boots. Nor was this the end of the affair, which the village boys improved for their amusement. A ring at his bell: “Doctor, just wanted to ask if you’d found your boots.”—“Doctor, am I in this town or the next?” And they never failed to dodge the lash of his whip which he kept handy to the door for such visitors. He was the first village postmaster, and during the wars, when men were eager for the news which came bi-weekly from Boston, it was on mail nights that the boys and men of the village gathered about his fire and listened to his old stories of Maine. He was a genial soul, a little simple-minded, one who liked to make a show of business by laying out spurs and saddle-bags of a night as if ready for a call. The village library was kept at his house, and administered by his daughter.