are over, and I get back to France, I shall pray all the saints to keep
Father Le Loutre in Acadie. With such fierce priests in old France
I should be afraid to go to mass!"

Pierre listened to all this with a sinking heart. Not waiting to hear
more, he turned away, with the one thought of getting home as soon as
possible to warn his father of the destruction hanging over their
happy home. At this moment the soldier who had been doing most of the
talking caught sight of him, and called out:

"Hullo, youngster, come here a minute!"

Pierre turned back with obvious reluctance, and the speaker continued:

"Your father, now, the good Antoine--whom may the saints preserve,
for his butter and his cheeses are right excellent--does he greatly
love this gentle abbe of yours?"

The boy looked about him apprehensively, and blurted out, "No,
monsieur!" A flush mounted to his cheek, and he continued, in a voice
of bitterness, "We hate him!" Then, as if terrified with having spoken
his true thought, the lad darted away down the slope, and was soon
seen speeding at a long trot across the young grass of the marsh
to the ford of the Missaguash.

At the time when our story opens, events in Acadie were fast ripening
to that unhappy issue known as "the expulsion of the Acadians," which
furnished Longfellow with the theme of "Evangeline." The Acadian
peninsula, now Nova Scotia, had been ceded by France to England.
The dividing line between French and English territory was the