When it was seen that the English were actually reembarking, a fierce
indignation broke out against Le Loutre for the useless cruelty and
precipitancy of his action. The French troops had some little feeling
for the houseless villagers, and they were angered at being deprived
of their chief and most convenient source of supplies. The fierce abbe
insisted that the movement of the English was a ruse of some sort;
but when the ships got actually under way, with a brisk breeze in their
sails, he withdrew in deep chagrin, and returned with his Micmacs
to his village on the muddy Shubenacadie. Relieved of his dreaded
presence the Acadians set bravely to work building cabins on the new
lands which were allotted them back of Beausejour, and along the
Missaguash, Au Lac, and Tantramar streams. A few were rash enough
to return to their former holdings in Beaubassin, rebuilding among
the ashes; but not so Antoine Lecorbeau. On the northwest slope of
Beausejour, where a fertile stretch of uplands skirts the commencement
of the Great Tantramar marsh, he obtained an allotment, and laid his
hearthstone anew. The burning of Beaubassin had not made him love
France the more, but it had cooled his liking for the English. The words
of Captain Howe, nevertheless, which Pierre had repeated to him
faithfully, lay rankling in his heart, and he harbored a bitter
suspicion as to the good faith of the French authorities. He saw that
they professed disapproval of the methods of Le Loutre, but he began
to doubt the sincerity of this disapproval. Pierre, however, was
troubled by no such misgivings.

The summer, though a laborious one, slipped by not at all unpleasantly.
Mother Lecorbeau soon had a roof to shelter her little brood of swarthy
roisterers; a rough shed, built over a hillside spring in a group of
willows, served as the dairy wherein she made the butter and cheese
so appreciated by the warriors on Beausejour. Lecorbeau got in crops