“I cannot even yet quite understand it,” said De Lamourie, “but the essential part is the highly satisfactory result. I am going to Halifax next Monday, Paul, with a half score followers who feel as I do; and though I cannot expect you to sympathize with my course, I dare to hope you may be able to prolong your visit so as to keep my wife and daughter under your effective protection.” I think I must have let the eagerness with which I accepted this trust betray itself in voice or face, for Monsieur de Lamourie looked at me curiously. But I really cared little what his suspicions might be. If I could win Yvonne I thought I might be sure of Yvonne’s father. Having well admired the orchard, and tried to distinguish the “pippin” trees from the “belle-fleurs,” the “Jeannetons” from the “Pride of Normandie;” having praised the rich and even growth of the flax field; having talked with an excellent assumption of wisdom on the well-bred and well-fed cattle which were a hobby with this courtier farmer, this Versailles Acadian, I stepped forth into the main street of Grand Pré and turned toward the house of Father Fafard. I was curiously troubled by an uneasiness as to the Black Abbé, and I knew no better antidote to a bad priest than a good one. Chapter X A Grand Pré Morning 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 Grûl’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 the 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