Lucy received my report with her usual quiet; even the tidings that we were not to go to Louisbourg did not disturb her. “He knows better than we, and he will be guided in all his decisions.”
Despite the assurances of our safety, we neither of us closed our eyes that night. Apart from the anxiety as to our destination, the strangeness of our situation, the crackling of the fire, and the uncanny noises of the forest kept us at such a tension that sleep was impossible, and we were awake before any of our captors were astir.
I looked eagerly for the priest, and saw him kneeling at a little distance, absorbed in his morning devotions. Thereupon we withdrew quietly to the river, and soon returned, greatly refreshed, to find the whole camp afoot, and the priest awaiting us at the water's edge. Going directly to him, I asked, “Mon père, what have you decided?”
“That you go with me,” he said, quietly. And I turned to Lucy, but she had already caught the joyous message of our deliverance from my face.
[CHAPTER XIII]
LE PÈRE JEAN, MISSIONARY TO THE INDIANS
Though the priest spake with confidence, I judged he had no small difficulty in persuading the savages to part with us, for there was much discussion and apparently grumbling on the part of the chief; but at length the obstacle, whatever it was, was overcome, and the priest announced we were free to depart.
“My canoe is small for four people, and would be too heavy when we begin the ascent of the Matapediac,” he said, “but I will borrow another from the savages, with two men to paddle. Explain to your woman that she is to go with my servant André in the one, and you will follow in the other with me. She need have no fear; André is to be trusted in all things.”
These matters being settled, we were made spectators to surely the strangest sight my eyes had ever looked upon. André brought forth a small folding-table, and the priest, still in his rusty soutane, recited the holy office of the mass to the kneeling savages under the shade of the great pines, and only the ripple of the water broke the pauses in the service. To my astonishment, the Indians recited the Venite, but this was the extent of their knowledge, apart from the Pater-Noster, the Confiteor, and some of the responses.
