We had never heard her
name mentioned before, and our curiosity was excited to the highest
pitch.

Chapter Eight

_The_ True Story
_of
Evangeline_

"Emmeline Labiche, petiots, was an orphan whose parents had died when
she was quite a child. I had taken her to my home, and had raised her
as my own daughter. How sweet-tempered, how loving she was! She had
grown to womanhood with all the attractions of her sex, and, although
not a beauty in the sense usually given to that word, she was looked
upon as the handsomest girl of St. Gabriel. Her soft, transparent
hazel eyes mirrored her pure thoughts; her dark brown hair waved in
graceful undulations on her intelligent forehead, and fell in ringlets
on her shoulders, her bewitching smile, her slender, symmetrical
shape, all contributed to make her a most attractive picture of maiden
loveliness.

[Illustration: _Evangeline_
By Edwin Douglas]

"Emmeline, who had just completed her sixteenth year, was on the eve
of marrying a most deserving, laborious and well-to-do young man of
St. Gabriel, Louis Arceneaux. Their mutual love dated from their
earliest years, and all agreed that Providence willed their union as
man and wife, she the fairest young maiden, he the most deserving
youth of St. Gabriel.

"Their bans had been published in the village church, the nuptial day
was fixed, and their long love-dream was about to be realized, when
the barbarous scattering of our colony took place.

"Our oppressors had driven us to the seashore, where their ships
rode at anchor, when Louis, resisting, was brutally wounded by them.
Emmeline had witnessed the whole scene. Her lover was carried on board
of one of the ships, the anchor was weighed, and a stiff breeze soon
drove the vessel out of sight. Emmeline, tearless and speechless,
stood fixed to the spot, motionless as a statue, and when the white
sail vanished in the distance, she uttered a wild, piercing shriek,
and fell fainting to the ground.

"When she came to, she clasped me in her arms, and in an agony of
grief, she sobbed piteously. 'Mother, mother,' she said, in broken
words, 'he is gone; they have killed him; what will become of me?'

"I soothed her grief with endearing words until she wept freely.
Gradually its violence subsided, but the sadness of her countenance
betokened the sorrow that preyed on her heart, never to be
contaminated by her love for another one.

"Thus she lived in our mids