“That fighting fire in your Anderson, when he killed the savage with his hands, died out. He is still the Quaker farmer. He went to Grand Pré, and cleared your name, and told how you had saved him for Mademoiselle de Lamourie. With some inconsequence, Mademoiselle was thereupon austere with him because he had not in turn saved you for her. He went to Halifax and did deeds with the council—for he secured further and greater grants of land for himself and further and greater grants of land for Giles de Lamourie, with compensations for the burnings which English rule should have prevented, and with, last of all, an English guard for Grand Pré, in order that scalps of English inclination might be secure upon their owners’ heads. All this was wise, and indeed plain sense—better than fighting. And he remains at Grand Pré, and waits upon Mademoiselle de Lamourie, patient on crumbs.
“In June things happened, while you slept here. The English came in ships, sailing up Chignecto water and startling the slow fools at Beauséjour. The English landed on their own side of the Missiguash. The black ruins of Beaubassin cried out to them for vengeance on La Garne.” (The name, upon his lips, snarled like a wolf.)
“Vergor, the public thief, called in the men of the villages to help his garrison. Beauséjour was a nest of beavers mending the walls—but not till the torrent was already tearing through. The invaders, wading the deep mud, forced the Missiguash, and drove back the white-coat regiments. They seized the long ridge behind the fort, and set up their batteries. Fort guns and field guns bowled at each other across the meadows.
“Meanwhile the English governor at Halifax sent for the heads of the villages, the householders of Piziquid, Grand Pré, Annapolis. He said the time was come, the final time, and they must swear fealty to King George of England. He bade them choose between that oath, with peace, or a fate he did not name. A few, wise like Giles de Lamourie, took oath. The rest feared La Garne, trusted France, and accounted England an old woman. They refused, and went home.
“The siege went on, and many balls were wasted. The English were all on one side of the fort, so those of the garrison who got tired of being besieged walked out the other side and went home. These were the philosophers. Vergor lived in his bomb-proof casemate, and was at ease. But one morning while he sat at breakfast with other officers a shell came through the roof and killed certain of them.
“That ended it. If the bomb-proof was not bomb-proof, Vergor might get hurt. He capitulated. His officers broke their swords, but in vain. La Garne spat upon him.”
Here he stopped, his eyes veered, and his face twisted. In a strange voice he went on:
“In La Garne yet flickers one spark of good—his courage. Till that is eaten out by his sins he lives, not being fully ripe for the final hell.”
He stopped again, moistening his lips with his tongue.
I put my hand to my head.