and to far-off, foreign countries. It was not easy to tell who were
acting as spies, so the English government ordered them all to be
removed. They were told they might stay if they would swear to be true
subjects of the king of England, but this the most of them would not do,
for they were French at heart, and looked on King Louis of France as
their true and rightful ruler.

Was not this very cruel? There were hundreds of boys and girls like
yourselves among these poor Acadians, who had happy homes, and loved to
work and play in their pretty gardens and green fields, and whose
fathers and mothers did no harm to any one. But because a few busy men
gave news to the French, all of these were to be torn from their
comfortable homes and sent far away to wander in strange lands, where
many of them would have to beg for bread. It was a heartless act, and
the world has ever since said so, and among all the cruel things the
British have done, the removal of the Acadians from their homes is
looked upon as one of the worst.

When soldiers are sent to do a cruel thing they are very apt to do it in
the most brutal fashion. The Acadians did not know what was to be done.
It was kept secret for fear they might run away and hide. A large number
of soldiers were sent out, and they spread like a net over a wide
stretch of country. Then they marched together and drove the people
before them. The poor farmers might be at their dinners or working in
their fields, but they were told that they must stop everything and
leave their homes at once, for they were to be sent out of the country.
Just think of it! What a grief and terror they must have been in!

They were hardly given time to gather the few things they could carry
with them, and on all sides they were driven like so many sheep to the
seaside town of Annapolis, to which ships had been brought to carry them
away. More than six thousand of these unhappy people, old and young,
men, women and little ones, were gathered there; many of them weeping
bitterly, many more with looks of despair on their faces, all of them
sad at heart and very likely wishing they were dead.

Around them were soldiers to keep them from running away. They were made
to get on the ships in such haste that families were often separated,
husband and wife, or children and their mothers, being put on different
ships and sent to different places. And for fear that some of them might
come back again their houses were b