The day was the sixteenth of June. For several days they had heard nothing, and growing hourly more anxious, the three would once and again drop their household tasks, and stepping one by one to the door, call to the boys perched upon the tall trees to know if aught might be seen or heard. When at last a shout went up, it chanced that all the women were in the house. As they ran out into the open, young François cried: “They come, they come! a host of them!” “Who come?” inquired his mother impatiently. “Speak, boy!” “I cannot yet tell, _ma mère_; but yes, yes!” And little Jules took up the cry: “Yes, yes! It is our own dear Acadians. And they laugh, they are glad, they carry bundles and shout!” “And see the _bon père_, Jules; he waves his cap, he espies us!” And sliding down the tree, François was off and away, deaf to his mother’s calls and commands, followed as promptly as the shortness of his legs would permit by his little brother. What did it all mean? The three women left behind looked into one another’s eyes, with the unspoken query on their lips. Then, with an air of determination, the wife of Marin threw her homespun apron over her head and went after her sons. Marie Herbes dropped upon the rude bench before the door, and began rapidly telling her beads, tapping her foot upon the ground meanwhile in an agony of impatience and anxiety. And Margot? For the lonely girl how much was now at stake! Leaning against the wall of the house, her hands idle for the reason that she no longer owned beads to tell, her dark lashes resting on her pale cheeks, and a prayer in her heart for resignation if the worst was to be, she waited. Then it was that for the first time she fully understood that she was ever hoping and praying for the success of the alien race; that she had ceased merely to tolerate them for the sake of the peace they gave, but that she had in very truth gone over,—as a few others of her race had done, and were doing,—heart and soul to the enemy. Undoubtedly the siege of Beauséjour was at an end; the question trembling on the lips of the waiting women was, In whose hands was the victory? For peaceful Acadians, released from the perils and toils of war, would for the moment rejoice in either victory or defeat; both would sound alike to them. Without, the sun burned more and more hotly. Within, the soup in the iron pot, hung above the crackling sticks, boiled—presently boiled over. None heeded. Half an hour dragged by, the minutes ticking slowly along in the old clock in the corner. Then Marie sprang to her feet. “They come!” she cried. Verily they came—a strange spectacle. Out of the woods and across the bridge poured a little horde of Acadians—all Acadians, Margot saw in one swift glance, many of them excited by the red French wine, but every man of them singing and shouting, as they tramped along laden with what was evidently plunder from the fort. “Beauséjour has fallen—has fallen!”