XVII. An Acadian Passover 227

XVIII. The Song of Edelwald 252

Postlude. A Tide-Creek 273

LADY OF FORT ST. JOHN.

PRELUDE.

AT THE HEAD OF THE BAY OF FUNDY.

The Atlantic rushed across a mile or two of misty beach, boring into all
its channels in the neck of Acadia. Twilight and fog blurred the
landscape, but the eye could trace a long swell of earth rising
gradually from the bay, through marshes, to a summit with a small
stockade on its southern slope. Sentinels pacing within the stockade
felt the weird influence of that bald land. The guarded spot seemed an
island in a sea of vapor and spring night was bringing darkness upon it.

The stockade inclosed a single building of rough logs clumsily put
together, and chinked with the hard red soil. An unhewn wall divided
the house into two rooms, and in one room were gathered less than a
dozen men-at-arms. Their officer lay in one of the cupboard-like bunks,
with his hands clasped under his head. Some of the men were already
asleep; others sat by the hearth, rubbing their weapons or spreading
some garment to dry. A door in the partition opened, and the wife of one
of the men came from the inner room.

"Good-night, madame," she said.

"Good-night, Zelie," answered a voice within.

"If you have further need of me, you will call me, madame?"

"Assuredly. Get to your rest. To-morrow we may have stormy weather for
our voyage home."

The woman closed the door, and the face of the one who had hearkened to
her turned again to the fireplace. It was a room repeating the men's
barrack in hewed floor, loophole windows, and rough joists.

This frontier outpost on the ridge since called Beausejour was merely a
convenient halting-place for one of the lords of Acadia. It stood on a
detached spot of his large seigniory, which he had received with other
portions of western Acadia in exchange for his grant of Cape Sable.

Though in his early thirties, Charles de la Tour had seen long service
in the New World. Seldom has a man from central France met the northern
cold and sea air with so white a favor. His clean-shaven skin and the
sunny undecided color of his hair were like a child's. Part of his armor
had been unbuckled, and lay on the floor near him. He sat in a chair of
twisted boughs, made of refuse from trees his men had dragged out of the
neighboring forest for the building