Cole
General Moulton and the Devil
The Skeleton in Armor
Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket
Love and Treason
The Headless Skeleton of Swamptown
The Crow and Cat of Hopkins Hill
The Old Stone Mill
Origin of a Name
Micah Rood Apples
A Dinner and its Consequences
The New Haven Storm Ship
The Windham Frogs
The Lamb of Sacrifice
Moodus Noises
Haddam Enchantments
Block Island and the Palatine
The Buccaneer
Robert Lockwood's Fate
Love and Rum

TALES OF PURITAN LAND

EVANGALINE

The seizure by England of the country that soon afterward was
rechristened Nova Scotia was one of the cruellest events in history. The
land was occupied by a good and happy people who had much faith and few
laws, plenty to eat and drink, no tax collectors nor magistrates, in
brief, a people who were entitled to call themselves Acadians, for they
made their land an Arcady. Upon them swooped the British ships, took them
unarmed and unoffending, crowded them aboard their transports,--often
separating husband and wife, parents and children,--scattered them far
and wide, beyond hope of return, and set up the cross of St. George on
the ruins of prosperity and peace. On the shore of the Basin of Minas can
still be traced the foundations of many homes that were perforce deserted
at that time, and among them are the ruins of Grand Pre.

Here lived Evangeline Bellefontaine and Gabriel Lajeunesse, who were
betrothed with the usual rejoicings just before the coming of the
English. They had expected, when their people were arrested, to be sent
away together; but most of the men were kept under guard, and Gabriel was
at sea, bound neither he nor she knew whither, when Evangeline found
herself in her father's house alone, for grief and excitement had been
more than her aged parent could bear, and he was buried at the shore just
before the women of the place were crowded on board of a transport. As
the ship set off her sorrowing passengers looked behind them to see their
homes going up in flame and smoke, and Acadia knew them no more. The
English had planned well to keep these people from coming together for
conspiracy or revenge: they scattered them over all America, from
Newfoundland to the southern savannas.

Evangeline was not taken far away, only to New England; but without
Gabriel all lands were drear, and she set off in the search for him,
working here and there, sometimes looking timidly at the headstones on
new graves, then travellin