never mind; huckleberries are coming, and we’ll make it up on them,” decided Desiré hopefully. “Wasn’t it dear of Prissy to be willing to go to work?”
“Yes, she spoke of it again when I bade her goodnight; but I said we could support her until she is older. While it can be managed otherwise, I hate to have her cooped up in a strange house doing all kinds of odd jobs.”
“We haven’t done so badly thus far, have we?”
“No; but we haven’t made anywhere near enough to settle down somewhere and go to school.”
“But the summer isn’t over yet; and who knows what will happen before winter comes?”
“You’re a hopeful little pal, Dissy,” he said, kissing her fondly.
“Now we must begin to look for the Godet house,” said Desiré, pulling out her little blue history the next morning, when they were on the way to Wolfville.
“I was sorry we could get no information, when we passed through Wilmot, about the first Wistmore house in this country,” said Jack.
“They lived on a sheep farm when they came here from the States, and probably the place looks like all others of its kind,” replied Desiré, poring over the book.
“I think the Godet house must be the other side of Grand Pré,” observed Jack, looking over her shoulder. “We’ll go there first.”
So they turned off the main road and drove down the hill, through the straggling village, its long street bordered by spreading trees and scattered white houses far back from the road. The great marsh meadow, which was the Grand Pré of Longfellow’s poem Evangeline, has been set apart as a park, and is surrounded by a fence. By going through a gate-house, one enters the enclosure known as Acadian National Park.
As the Wistmores descended the low broad step on the park side of the gate-house, René, his eyes on the distant well of which he had heard his sisters talking, put one foot right into a very small flower-bordered pool at the left of the step. Everyone turned at the sound of the splash.
“Renny!” exclaimed Priscilla severely, “I never saw such a child for water.”
“You rolled right into the river,” retorted the little boy, “and got all red mud too!”
Jack and Desiré exchanged smiles.
For an hour the children wandered over the interesting and beautiful meadowland, dotted with large beds of gorgeous flowers.
“What a sense of spaciousness, and of peace, the place gives one,” observed Desiré, as they stood before the little chapel, gazing about them. “Look, René, at the swallows’ nests.”
On the walls, close to the buttress which supports the sharply slanting roof, several nests were plastered.
“And is this the very same church mentioned in Evangeline?” inquired Priscilla, nearly breaking her neck to look up at the belfry, surmounted by a tall four-sided spire.
“No; but it is built on the site of that one, and the row of willows you see down there to the right grew on the main street of Grand Pré. The first settlers brought the shoots from Normandy. The well we passed on our way up is the same one from which the inhabitants of the olden village obtained their water supply. Just north of here is the Basin of Minas, where the people embarked on the ship which carried them away at the time of the Expulsion. This meadowland all around us was protected from the high tides by dykes like you saw a few weeks ago in Bear River. At one side of the Basin lies Cape Blomidon, where the amethysts are found; and—”
“Where Glooscap lived,” interrupted René, always glad to contribute to the narratives.
“Yes,” assented Jack, “where Glooscap lived. After the hay was cut from the meadows,” he continued, “cattle were turned in to graze until winter came.”
“How queer it makes one feel to be here,” observed Desiré dreamily.
They missed Priscilla at that moment, and looking around, saw her standing in front of the large bronze statue of Evangeline, which is in the centre of the park.
“She doesn’t look at all like I thought she would,” commented the little girl in disappointed tones, as the others joined her. They all gazed in silence for a moment at the sorrowful figure, looking backward at the land she was so reluctant to leave.
“You probably like to think of her, as I do, in a happier mood,” said Desiré; “but she must have been pretty sad when she went away.”
“We had better go on now,” decided Jack. So they followed the little stream which twists its way across the meadow; a mere thread in some places, in others wide enough to be bridged with single planks. Once it spread out into a fair-sized pond, covered with water lilies and guarded by a family of ducks who regarded the visitors scornfully.
“Now for our house,” cried Desiré as they drove onto the main road again. “Please go very slowly, Jack, so that we won’t miss it.”
They all peered eagerly out of the wagon; and when they saw, up a little lane, a dilapidated-looking building, they all exclaimed together—“That must be it!”
Jack drove as close as the underbrush would allow, and they proceeded on foot until they were standing before a small log cabin, windowless, doorless, a huge flat stone for a doorstep, and a chimney built of irregular stones.
1 Six Owls.
FINDING THE LOST TREASURE, by Helen M. Persons [Part 2]
CHAPTER XV
THE OLD GODET HOUSE
“No floors,” observed Priscilla, peeking in.
“It’s a mere shell,” said Jack; “everything rotted away but the walls and the chimney.”
“But how stout they are!” exclaimed Desiré, triumphantly.
“We’ll look at it again when we come back this way, if you like,” promised Jack presently; “but now I want to get on to Windsor.”
“There’s the remains of a garden back of the cabin,” commented Priscilla, as they drove away. “I can see three or four flowers.”
“The first seeds of which were doubtless planted by our—how many times great-grandmother, Jack?” asked Desiré.
“Don’t know. The ‘greats’ always did puzzle me.”
“Oh!” cried René, “I always thought you knowed everything.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, my boy,” laughed Jack; “but I don’t.”
“And now,” said Priscilla, “I want to see the place where you went to school, Jack. Wasn’t it here?”
“Yes. I’ll show it to you when we come back.”
“How strange,” commented Desiré to Jack, “that you never heard of or saw the
