“From Acadia?” repeated Stephen. His clear eyes clouded at the name, for he knew and bitterly regretted the policy that had led British troops into occupying the French-speaking province of Acadia, and into driving all the peaceable inhabitants into exile. Hurrying them on board ship, they had sent them off anywhere and everywhere, in wild haste to be rid of them, little caring whether families were separated or children and their parents were lost to each other forever. Stephen, very gently and kindly, spoke to the woman in her own tongue. Such a flash of joy as lighted up her poor worn face when she heard speech that she could at last understand, and such a flood of voluble French as she poured out when Stephen had finished! The constable looked on in amazement and finally heaved a long sigh of relief. “I might have known enough to come to Master Sheffield in the first place,” he exclaimed. “He always knows what is best to do!” Stephen, after talking a few minutes with the woman, turned to him. “I will take the poor creature into my service,” he said, “there is need of another helper in the kitchen and there seems naught else to do with her. She can live, with the baby, in the cottage across the field yonder, it has been empty this year past. Take her up to the house, if you please, good Master Constable, and tell the servants to give her a meal and something for the baby. And bid Jason, who was with me in France and can speak a few words of her tongue, to go with her and show her where she is to abide. It is a good child you have,” he added in French to the woman, “is it a granddaughter or a grandson?” “The baby is a girl, Monsieur,” she answered, “but not mine. Indeed I have no way of knowing to whom she belongs, for, just as I was being taken on board ship to be torn forever from my dear native land, I found this little one wailing on the beach, left behind, in the confusion, by the boat that must have carried away her parents. And I, who had lost all those belonging to me in the same way, gathered her into my arms and kept her with me through all the long, dreadful voyage. A good child she is indeed, and I have named her Clotilde, after my own little daughter that died twenty years ago. May Heaven bless you for taking pity on us and letting us bide where we can hear our own speech again.” She was led by the constable up toward the house while Stephen returned to his letter. It had to do with a mission to England that all the worthies of Massachusetts were begging him to undertake. Once before this, he had gone to France on a weighty errand for the people of the province. He had come back with the mission well performed, with the good will of the French people and with the diamond star that the French King’s own hands had pinned upon his coat. And now his comrades were asking him to take up a still more difficult task, to do what he could toward healing the growing breach between the Colonies and the Mother Country.