Herbes and Marin had of course been pressed into the service, but unlike their neighbors had decided to leave their families in the farmhouse instead of hiding them in the woods. The crafty Marin declared that the home was far enough from the scene of the conflict to insure safety, but in truth he depended far more upon the almost certain hope that Margot’s English lover would take care that she, therefore they, would not be molested. By this it may be seen how vague were his notions concerning army regulations, discipline, and so forth. Depending on this hope, however, the women and the two half-grown sons of Marin were left behind, to listen to the distant roar and rattle of the bombardment of Beauséjour,—for the attack was not long in beginning. The wives told their beads, weeping and praying for the safety of their husbands, while Margot, pale and still, and alternating betwixt hope and fear, turned now consciously in her petitions to the faith of him whom she loved. For Margot’s nature like that of Gabriel, was clear and straightforward; and now that the forms of the Catholic religion were getting to mean little to her, she faced the knowledge bravely, dropping these forms one by one, striving to wait patiently until light and help should come; and this lonely waiting amounted to heroism in a timid Acadian maid. But the length of the loneliness, the yearning for counsel and support, was forming the girl’s character, and ripening it as the seed ripens within the pod. It was Margot, the woman, who now awaited the return of Gabriel, and such a woman as she might never have become had she led the effortless, unaspiring existence of the average Acadian peasant, without mental struggle or any higher object than that of living from day to day. News of the siege came but fitfully to the three women, bereft as they were of neighbors and the usual neighborly gossip; for the inhabitants of the scattered houses, or rather huts, within reach had all fled to the shelter of the woods. Now and then some head of a family, wearied of what seemed to him profitless combat, having succeeded in eluding the unwelcome task, paused at the farmhouse to drink a cup of milk on his way to rejoin wife and babes, and shake his head over the news he brought; or a fugitive Indian, prowling along the river’s bank, bade the paleface squaws make ready for flight, declaring that the great medicine-man could not much longer induce the braves to hold the fort against the foe. But secure in their simple faith that Marin would contrive to see Gabriel, and that Gabriel would protect them, the women refused to face the perils of the forest.