When I stepped off the wide grounds of Monsieur de Lamourie I was at the extreme eastern end of the village. How little did I dream that this fairest of Acadian towns was lying even now beneath the shadow of doom! I am never superstitious in the morning. Little did I dream how near was the fulfilment of Gr?l’s grim prophecy, or how, in that fulfilment, Grand Pré was presently to fade like an exhalation from the face of this wide green Acadian land! It pleases me, since no mortal eye shall ever again see Grand Pré as she was, to find that now I recall with clear-edged memory the picture which she made that June morning. Not only do I see her, but I hear her pleasant sounds—the shallow rushing of the Gaspereau at ebb; the mooing of the cattle on the uplands; the mellow tangle of small bell-music from the bobolinks a-hover over the dyke meadows; now and then a neighbour call from roadside to barn or porch or window; and ever 67the cheery cling-clank, cling-clank from the forge far up the street. Not only do I hear the pleasant sounds, but the clean smells of that fragrant country come back continually with wholesome reminiscence. Oh, how the apple-blossoms breathed their souls out upon that tender morning air! How the spring wind, soft with a vital moisture, persuaded forth the obscure essences of grass and sod and thicket! How good was the salty sea-tang from the uncovered flats, and the emptied channels, and the still-dripping lines of tide-mark sedge! There was a faint savour of tar, too, at intervals, evasively pungent; for some three furlongs distant, at the end of a lane which ran at right angles to the main street, a little creek fell into the Gaspereau, and by the wharf at the creek-mouth were fishermen mending their boats for the shad-fishing.

Oh, that unjustly ignored member, the nose! How subtle and indestructible are its memories! They know the swiftest way to the sources of joy and tears. The eye, the ear, the nice nerves of the finger tip,—these have no such sway over the mysteries of remembrance. They have never been quite so intimate, for a sweet smell duly apprehended becomes a part of the very brain and blood. I have a little cream-yellow kerchief of silk laid away in many folds of scentless paper. Sometimes I untie it and look at it. How well I remember it as once it clung about the fair hair of 68my young mother! I see myself, a thin, dark, grave-faced little boy, leaning against her knee and looking up with love into her face. The memory moves me—but as a picture. “Was it I?” I am able to wonder. “And did I, that dark boy, have a mother like that?” But when I bury my face in the kerchief, and inhale the faint savour it still wonderfully holds, I know, I feel it all. Once more I am in her arms, strained to her breast, my small face pressed close to her smooth neck where the tiny ripples of silken gold began; and I smell the delicate, intimate sweetness that seemed to be her very self; and my eyes run over with hot tears of longing for her kiss. I have a skirt of hers, too, laid away, and an apron; but these do not so much move me, for as a child I spoiled them with weeping into them, I think. The kerchief was not then large enough to attract the childish vehemence of my sorrow, so it was spared, till by and by I came to know and guard the priceless talisman of memory which it held.

For some minutes I stood at the street-foot, looking down the river-bank to the wharf and the boats, steeping my brain in those pleasant smells of Grand Pré. Then I turned up the street. It was all as I had left it two years before, save that then the apple-trees were green like the willows by the marsh edge; while now they were white and pink, a foam of bee-thronged sweetness surging 69close about the village roofs. The cottages on either side the street were low, and dazzling white with lime-wash from the Piziquid quarries. Their wide-flaring gables were presented with great regularity to the street. The roofs of the larger cottages were broken by narrow dormer windows; and all, large and small alike, were stained to a dark purplish-slate color with a wash which is made, I understand, by mixing the lime with a quantity of slaked hard-wood ash. The houses stood each with a little space before it, now neatly tilled and deeply tufted with young green, but presently to become a mass of colour when the scarlet lychnis, blue larkspur, lavender, marigolds, and other summer-blooming plants should break into flower. Far up the street, at the point where a crossroad led out over the marshes to the low, dark-wooded ridge of the island, stood the forge; and as I drew nearer the warm, friendly breath of the fire purred under the anvil’s clinking. Back of the forge, along the brink of the open green levels, stood a grove of rounded willow-trees. Further on, a lane bordered with smaller cabins ran in a careless, winding fashion up the hillside; and a little way from the corner, dwarfing the roofs, loftily overpeering the most venerable apple-trees, and wearing a conscious air of benignant supervision, rose the church of Grand Pré, somewhat squatly capacious in the body, but with a spire 70that soared very graciously. Just beyond, but hidden by the church, I could see in my mind’s eye the curé’s cottage. My footsteps hastened at the thought of Father Fafard and his greeting.

The men of the village were at that hour mostly away in the fields; but there were enough at home about belated barnyard business to halt me many times with their welcomes before I got to the forge. These greetings, in the main, had the old-time heartiness, making me feel my citizenship in Grand Pré. But there was much eager interrogation as to the cause of my presence, and a something of suspicion, at times, in the acceptance of my simple answer, which puzzled and vexed me. It was borne in upon me that I was thought to be commissioned with great matters, and my frankness but a mask for grave and dubious affairs.

Outside the forge, when at last I came to it, stood waiting two horses, while another was inside being shod. The acrid smell of the searing iron upon the hoof awoke in my breast a throng of boyish memories, which, however, I had not time to note and discriminate between; for the owners of the two horses hailed and stopped me. They were men of the out-settlements, whom I knew but well enough to pass the weather with. Yet I saw it in their eyes that they had heard something of my arrival. Question hung upon their lips. I gave them no time for it, but with as little patience as 71consisted with civility I hastened into the forge and seized the hand of the smith, my old friend and my true friend, Nicole Brun.

“Master Paul!” he cried, in a voice which meant a thousand welcomes; and stood gripping my fingers, and searching me with his eyes, while the iron in his other hand slowly faded from pink to purple.

“Well,” I laughed presently, “there is one man in Grand Pré, I perceive, who is merely glad to greet me home, and not too deeply troubled over the reasons for my coming.”

“Hein! You’ve seen it and heard it already,” said Nicole, releasing my fingers from his knotty grasp, and throwing bac............