Round and red as the harvest moon through the mist of the marshes."

Then, with a smile of content, thus answered Basil the blacksmith,

Taking with easy air the accustomed seat by the fire

-:

230

side: "Benedict Bellefontaine, thou hast ever thy jest and thy ballad!

Ever in cheerfullest mood art thou, when others are filled with

Gloomy forebodings of ill, and see only ruin before

them.

Happy art thou, as if every day thou hadst picked up a horseshoe."

Pausing a moment, to take the pipe that Evangeline

brought him,

235

And with a coal from the embers had lighted, he slowly continued:

"Four days now are passed since the English ships at their anchors

Ride in the Gaspereau's mouth, with their cannon pointed against us.

What their design may be is unknown; but all are commanded

On the morrow to meet in the church, where his

Majesty's mandate

240

Will be proclaimed as law in the land. Alas! in the mean time

Many surmises of evil alarm the hearts of the peo

ple."

Then made answer the farmer: 66

friendlier purpose

Perhaps some

239. The text of Colonel Winslow's proclamation will be found

in Haliburton, i. 175,

Brings these ships to our shores. Perhaps the harvests in England

By untimely rains or untimelier heat have been

blighted,

245

And from our bursting barns they would feed their cattle and children."

"Not so thinketh the folk in the village," said warmly the blacksmith,

Shaking his head as in doubt; then, heaving a sigh, he continued:

"Louisburg is not forgotten, nor Beau Séjour, nor Port Royal.

Many already have fled to the forest, and lurk on its

outskirts,

250

Waiting with anxious hearts the dubious fate of to

morrow.

Arms have been taken from us, and warlike weapons of all kinds;

Nothing is left but the blacksmith's sledge and the scythe of the mower."

Then with a pleasant smile made answer the jovial farmer:

249. Louisburg, on Cape Breton, was built by the French as a military and naval station early in the eighteenth century, but was taken by an expedition from Massachusetts under General Pepperell in 1745. It was restored by England to France in the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, and recaptured by the English in 1757. Beau Séjour was a French fort upon the neck of land connecting Acadia with the mainland which had just been captured by Winslow's forces. Port Royal, afterwards called Annapolis Royal, at the outlet of Annapolis River into the Bay of Fundy, had been disputed ground, being occupied alternately by French and English, but in 1710 was attacked by an expedition from New England, and after that held by the English government and made a fortified place.

"Safer are we unarmed, in the midst of our flocks and our cornfields,

255

Safer within these peaceful dikes besieged by the ocean, Than our fathers in forts, besieged by the enemy's

cannon.

Fear no evil, my friend, and to-night may no shadow of sorrow

Fall on this house and hearth; for this is the night of the contract.

Built are the house and the barn. The merry lads of

the village

260

Strongly have built them and well; and, breaking the glebe round about them,

Filled the barn with hay, and the house with food for a twelvemonth.

René Leblanc will be here anon, with his papers and inkhorn.

Shall we not then be glad, and rejoice in the joy of our children?”

As apart by the window she stood, with her hand in

her lover's,

265

Blushing Evangeline heard the words that her father

had spoken,

And, as they died on his lips, the worthy notary entered.

III.

Bent like a laboring oar, that toils in the surf of

the ocean,

267. A notary is an officer authorized to attest contracts or writings of any kind. His authority varies in different countries; in France he is the necessary maker of all contracts where the subject-matter exceeds 150 francs, and his instruments, which are preserved and registered by himself, are the originals, the parties preserving only copies.

Bent, but not broken, by age was the form of the no

tary public;

Shocks of yellow hair, like the silken floss of the

maize, hung

270

Over his shoulders; his forehead was high; and glasses with horn bows

Sat astride on his nose, with a look of wisdom supernal. Father of twenty children was he, and more than a hundred

Children's children rode on his knee, and heard his great watch tick.

Four long years in the times of the war had he lan

guished a captive,

275

Suffering much in an old French fort as the friend of

the English.

Now, though warier grown, without all guile or sus

picion,

Ripe in wisdom was he, but patient, and simple, and childlike.

He was beloved by all, and most of all by the chil

dren;

For he told them tales of the Loup-garou in the for

est,

280

275. King George's War, which broke out in 1744 in Cape Breton, in an attack by the French upon an English garrison, and closed with the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748; or, the reference may possibly be to Queen Anne's war, 1702-1713, when the French aided the Indians in their warfare with the colonists.

280. The Loup-garou, or were-wolf, is, according to an old superstition especially prevalent in France, a man with power to turn himself into a wolf, which he does that he may devour children. In later times the superstition passed into the more innocent one of men having a power to charm wolves.

And of the goblin that came in the night to water the

horses,

And of the white Létiche, the ghost of a child who unchristened

Died, and was doomed to haunt unseen the chambers of children;

And how on Christmas eve the oxen talked in the

stable,

And how the fever was cured by a spider shut up in a nutshell,

285

And of the marvellous powers of four-leaved clover and horseshoes,

With whatsoever else was writ in the lore of the village. Then up rose from his seat by the fireside Basil the blacksmith,

Knocked from his pipe the ashes, and slowly extending his right hand,

"Father Leblanc," he exclaimed, "thou hast heard the talk in the village,

290

And, perchance, canst tell us some news of these ships and their errand.”

Then with modest demeanor made answer the notary public,

"Gossip enough have I heard, in sooth, yet am never the wiser;

282. Pluquet relates this superstition, and conjectures that the white, fleet ermine gave rise to it.

284. A belief still lingers among the peasantry of England, as well as on the Continent, that at midnight, on Christmas eve, the cattle in the stalls fall down on their knees in adoration of the infant Saviour, as the old legend says was done in the stable at Bethlehem.

285. In like manner a popular superstition prevailed in England that ague could be cured by sealing a spider in a goosequill and hanging it about the neck.