Therefore it came to pass that French ships passing to Isle St. Jean, now called Prince Edward Island, and Isle Royale, now Cape Breton, had for two years many hundred Acadians for passengers, some willing, more reluctant, destined to semi-starvation and unutterable misery in the new and desolate country in which their small stock of courage was to be so grievously tried, and in which few of them plucked up spirit sufficient to clear new land for their subsistence, but existed, or ceased to exist, on such meagre supplies as the French government furnished them. “_Gran’-père_,” said Margot one evening, as bereft of most of their near neighbors they clung almost alone to their humble home, “_mon gran’-père_, what think you, has become of our Gabriel?” Her eyes were heavy with weeping, her round cheeks pale. Grétin, in yet worse case, had scarce strength to take his turn with her behind their yoke of oxen at the plow. He sat on a bench at the door of the hut, both hands leaning heavily on his staff. For a while he answered nothing, but his sunken gaze wandered along the banks of the river, from one desolated home to another. In scarcely more than two or three still burned the sweet fires of home, and those that were forsaken had been plundered by the Indians, fresh traces of whose presence were daily visible. The good village _curé_, beloved of all, and the influence of whose noble life and teachings represented all that was best in the Catholic church, was gone too. Torn by contending duties he had decided that the forlorn exiles needed his ministrations more than those still remaining in their homes, and had followed them to French soil. “_Le bon Dieu_ knows, my child!” Grétin answered at last, in the dull tones of hopeless old age. “Surely _M. l’Abbé_ would not permit that—that——” her voice broke. “That his fair young life should be destroyed by those savages? No, my child, no—that can I not believe. Moreover, Jean Jacques, Paul Pierre—they were his friends among the Micmacs. And _M. l’Abbé_—no, he would bend but not break the boy.” There was a long silence. The evening dews, tears of the soil for the banishment of her children, sparkled on the wide meadows beneath the now rising moon. “Margot, we can no longer resist the priest’s will,” he said again, “and alone we are not able to till the land, so that it may bring forth crops for our sustenance.” But a burst of tears from the girl interrupted him. Flinging herself at his feet, she threw her arms around him and hid her face in his breast.