Amy in Acadia Part 3

"You might have brought the keys to the hotel," complained Amy. "Then I needn't have had this dusty walk."

"After the summary way in which you banished me this morning I certainly could not put myself in your way again. But I knew that when you came to dress for the afternoon you would miss your keys, and happen _my_ way.

Surely you can't object to my being here?"

"Of course not. I am very much obliged to you."

"Besides, I found the keys only this afternoon. They had slipped under a board, and when I saw the end of the chain I recognized it at once. May I walk with you part way up-town? I'm sorry that I can't go all the way.

But Taps and I have an errand to do, and it's now within an hour of train time. Remember, you have banished us."

As they walked, Fritz, abandoning frivolity, outlined his plans for the next week. Priscilla listened with great interest. Nova Scotia was indeed a new land to her, and as she had rather suddenly decided to accompany Amy and her mother she had read nothing on the subject of the province in which they were to spend a few weeks.

Fritz had known little more than Priscilla until he had stumbled on some one crossing on the boat the preceding night who had had much to say about the old Fort La Tour and its neighborhood.

"Fort La Tour!" Amy exclaimed. "I shouldn't care to discredit your history, but I am sure that that was on the River St. John across the Bay, in quite the opposite direction from where you are going."

"There, there, my dear Miss Amy Redmond, you are just like other people.

Because you know _some_ Acadian history you think that you know it all.

There certainly was a Fort La Tour at St. John, but its remains, I hear, are altogether invisible now; whereas the first Fort La Tour can still be seen in outline, at least. There isn't any masonry, I believe, yet you can trace the outline in the gra.s.s. You remember, Amy, it was once called Fort Lomeron."

"I'm sorry, Fritz, but I don't remember. You must have taken a special course in history lately."

"Yes, this very morning. You see I had time to spare after you sent me into exile, and Taps and I were to have our dinner at a private boarding-house, where I thought we ought to stay, since you didn't care to have us at the hotel. Well, to make a long story short, I found a set of Parkman there, and it seemed wise to refresh my memory before going down to Port La Tour."

"Do tell us what you learned." Amy spoke eagerly. "I'll admit that I've quite forgotten the first Fort La Tour."

"I haven't much time now," said Fritz, "but I'll do what I can to make my knowledge yours,--only you mustn't expect me to be perfectly accurate. This, however, is the way I figure it out. After that old rascal, Argall, attacked Port Royal, in 1613, Biencourt, or Poutrincourt, as he was known after his father's death, wandered for years in the woods with a few followers, sleeping in the open air, and living on roots and nuts like an Indian. In some way or other he managed to get men enough, and material enough, to build a small fort in the Cape Sable region, that he called Fort Lomeron,--a rocky and foggy neighborhood. But there was fine fis.h.i.+ng and hunting, and he felt that the Fort was a warning to any enemies who might try to take away the rest of what his father had left him. Well, among his followers was young Charles de Saint etienne de La Tour, who also had come out to Acadia as a boy. When Biencourt died La Tour claimed that Acadia had been left to him by his friend. He tried to get Louis XIII. to help him against the English, and against Sir William Alexander in particular, to whom James I. had granted Acadia. Now young Charles La Tour began to have a hard time because his father Claude had married a Maid of Honor to Queen Henrietta Maria, and had promised Charles I. that he would drive out the French and establish the English in Nova Scotia. But when Claude appeared with his two s.h.i.+ps before his son's Fort, he could not persuade him to turn color and become a Baronet of Nova Scotia. The father made great promises in the name of King Charles if the son would surrender, but the son withstood the father, and the latter lost English support because he had not been able to keep his promise; and so he was nothing but a refugee the rest of his life."

"Served him right for deserting his country," murmured Priscilla.

"Well, it's hard to understand just who did what in those days, and why.

Some say that Charles La Tour was no better than his father, and that he, too, accepted from the English the t.i.tle 'Baronet of Nova Scotia.'

On account of the conquest of Sir David Kirke, Nova Scotia was English for a while, and then again it was under the control of the French after Claude de Razilly brought out an expedition in 1632. Charles de Menou d'Aunay, by the way, La Tour's great enemy, came with Razilly. But La Tour made haste to put himself right with the King of France, and, after a visit to Paris, came back to Nova Scotia 'Lieutenant-General for the King at Fort Lomeron and its dependencies, and Commander at Cape Sable for the Colony of New France.' Doesn't that strike you as quite tremendous, when you think of the rocks and the fogs and the seals, together with the forests, that chiefly made up his domain?"

"It's very interesting," said Priscilla. "What became of La Tour?"

"It's a long story," responded Fritz. "I'm afraid I haven't time to tell it now."

"Oh, I know all about his quarrel with D'Aunay," interposed Amy. "It will come in better when we are at Port Royal--or rather Annapolis. But I had forgotten this Fort near Cape Sable."

"You shouldn't have forgotten it." Fritz's tone deepened in reproach.

"For many of La Tour's descendants live near the Fort, and the place itself is called Port La Tour. I am astonished that you should have left it out of your plan of travel. You can't go there now, because that is where Taps and I are bound, and it wouldn't do for us to get in your way--I mean for you to get in our way. Beyond the tip end of Nova Scotia there's Sable Island, that used to be haunted by pirates and privateers.

Some of them may be there still, and if Taps and I go there, and if anything happens to us, you may be sorry that you drove us away.

Good-bye, Amy; even a Nova Scotia train won't wait for me;" and before the astonished girls could say a word, Fritz, with a touch of his cap, was walking rapidly away from them.

"We haven't offended him?" asked Priscilla, timidly.

"No, indeed. His plans were already made to go among the French villages. In fact, I thought that he had gone this morning. He started off soon after breakfast."

Although Amy spoke thus decidedly, secretly she wished that she had been less summary with Fritz. It was not strange, indeed, that her conscience should p.r.i.c.k her a little. When she and Fritz were not yet in their teens they had become acquainted at Rockley, a summer resort on the North Sh.o.r.e where Fritz spent the summers with his uncle. Rockley was Amy's home all the year, and as not many boys or girls of her own age lived near her, she greatly appreciated the companions.h.i.+p of Fritz. The latter, for his part, knew that he was very fortunate in having the friends.h.i.+p of Amy and her mother; for, like Amy, he had neither brothers nor sisters, and although his father was living, his mother had died when he was a baby. His father spent little time with him, as he was fond of exploring new countries, and his travels often kept him away from home two or three years at a time.

Before entering college Fritz had lived with his father's elder brother,--a serious, scholarly man. The uncle made little provision for amus.e.m.e.nt in his nephew's life, until Mrs. Redmond had shown him that all work and no play would do Fritz more harm than good. Amy and Fritz, on the whole, had been very congenial friends, although the latter could rarely resist an opportunity to tease Amy. Mrs. Redmond often had to act as peacemaker, and Fritz always took her reproofs good-naturedly. No one knew him so well as Mrs. Redmond did. There was no one to whose words he paid quicker attention. He called her his "adopted mother," and naturally it seemed strange to him that she should agree with Amy that he and his friend would be in the way on the Nova Scotia tour. Beneath the jesting tone that he had used with Amy lay something sharper, and Amy, as he finally turned away, realized this.

After the departure of Fritz the girls walked on in silence. Suddenly an exclamation of Priscilla's brought them to a standstill. In the window of a little shop were two cups and saucers of thickish china, decorated in a high-colored rose pattern. The cups were of a quaint, flaring shape, and Priscilla announced that she must have them. There were other curiosities in the window,--a small cannon-ball, two reddish short-stemmed pipes, and many things of Indian make. The shop-keeper proved to be an elderly woman, with a pleasant, soft accent. The cups, she explained, had belonged to an old couple who had lately died, leaving no children. At the auction she had bought a few bits of china.

"I know they are old,--more than a hundred years,--these two cups. I'm sorry I haven't any more, but people from the States are always looking for old things, and there's been a good many here this summer."

Priscilla bought the cups, and Amy inquired about the cannon-ball.

"It was dug up near Fort St. Louis, as some call it, or Fort La Tour, and the pipes too. They say there's many a strange thing buried there under the ground, if people only had the patience to dig."

Amy decided that it was hardly wise to burden herself with the cannon-ball, and she didn't care especially for the pipes.

"There's something else here," said the woman, "if you won't be offended at my showing it. Some Americans--"

"How did you know that we were Americans?" interrupted Amy.

"Oh, as soon as ever a Yankee--there, I beg your pardon--any one from the States opens her mouth--"

"She puts her foot in it," returned Amy, with a smile.

"No, no, I wouldn't say a word against the accent, but I can always tell it. I have a sister married in the States, and her children speak like their father. When they come to visit me I tell them that they are regular Yankees. Not that I have anything against that; I hope I'll live to see Boston some time."

"Have you never been there?" asked Priscilla, in surprise.

"No, Miss; I know that it isn't so far away, but I was born in the Old Country, and when I take a trip, that's where I'd rather go;" and the little woman sighed. "But I'll show you the curiosity I spoke of."

From a drawer behind the counter she drew a small fan, one or two of whose sticks were broken, while the silk was faded and torn.

"I bought that from an old lady who said that her grandmother fanned an officer who was wounded at the Battle of Bunker Hill, while he lay sick in her house after the battle. Perhaps I oughtn't to speak of it," she concluded apologetically.

"Why not? The war's entirely over, and no one has any feeling about it now."

"I suppose not." But the woman's voice carried a question.

"Why, to prove that I have no resentment I'll buy the fan,--even if it did once soothe the brow of a hated Britisher." Amy smiled at Priscilla as she spoke.

The price named came so well within Amy's means that she half doubted the authenticity of the relic. Of her doubts, however, she gave no hint to the talkative little Englishwoman. Instead, by what she afterwards called a genuine inspiration, she asked some question about the French people at Pubnico.

"Oh, they are good enough," said the woman, "and spend plenty of money in Yarmouth; and there's many of the young people working here in our shops and mills, although many French come from Meteghan and up that way."

"Meteghan?" queried Amy.

"Yes, that's a pretty country up North on St Mary's Bay, and all French.

If you're going to Digby you'd better stop off."

"But we were going straight through to Digby."

"Yes, most people go straight through, and don't know what they miss.

You see, the natives up there are Acadians, and it's kind of foreign like, for they mostly speak only French. My husband and I, we went up there once and stayed at the hotel, for he had an order for some goods that he had to see about himself."