class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[Pg 27]"/> to the bottom. A pity it would be to waste all that finery on the fishes—don't rub quite so hard. Let me see," and he took up the folder again. "What days does she leave? Go to-morrow to the office, Henry, and engage the most comfortable stateroom on this bit of magnificence for next Thursday."

CHAPTER III.
FROM BOSTON TO ACADIE.

J. F. H.

It is always amusing to be among a crowd of people on the Lewis Wharf, in Boston, when a steamer is about to leave for the neighboring province of Nova Scotia. The provincials are so slow, so deliberate, so determined not to be hurried. The Americans are so brisk, so expeditious, so bewildering in the multitude of things they will accomplish in the briefest possible space of time. They surround the provincials, they attempt to hurry them, to infuse a little more life into their exercises of volition, to convince them that a busy wharf is not the place to weigh arguments for or against a proposed course of action, yet the provincials will not be hurried; they stop to plan, consider, deliberate, and decide, and in the end they arrive at satisfactory conclusions without one hundredth part of the worry and vexation of soul which shortens the lives of their more nervous cousins, the Americans.

At noon, on the Thursday following his decision to go to Nova Scotia, Vesper Nimmo stood on the deck of the Royal Edward, a smile on his handsome face,—a shrewd smile, that deepened and broadened whenever he looked towards the place where stood his mother, with a fluffy white shawl wrapped around her throat, and the faithful Henry for a bodyguard.

Express wagons, piled high with towers of Babel in the shape of trunks that shook and quivered and threatened to fall on unsuspecting heads, rattled down and discharged their contents on the already congested wharf, where intending passengers, escorting friends, custom officials, and wharf men were talking, gesticulating, admonishing, and escaping death in varied forms, such as by crushing, falling, squeezing, deaths by exhaustion, by kicks from nervous horse legs, or by fright from being swept into the convenient black pool of the harbor.

However, scorning the danger, the crowd talked and jabbered on, until, finally, the last bit of freight, the last bit of luggage, was on board. A signal was given, the ambulance drew back,—the dark and mournful wagon from which, alas, at nearly every steamer's trip, a long, light box is taken, in which one Canadian is going home quite still and mute.

A swarm of stewards from the steamer descended upon their quarry, the passengers, and a separation was made between the sheep and the foolish goats, in the company's eyes, who would not be persuaded to seek the fair Canadian pastures. Carefully the stewards herded and guarded their giddy sheep to the steamer, often turning back to recover one skipping behind for a last parley with the goats. At last they were all up the gangway, the gorgeous ship swung her princely nose to the stream, and Vesper Nimmo felt himself really off for Nova Scotia.

He waved an adieu to his mother, then drew back to avoid an onset of stolid, red-cheeked Canadian sheep and lambs, who pressed towards the railing, some with damp handkerchiefs at their eyes, others cheerfully exhorting the goats to write soon.

His eye fell on a delicate slip of a girl, with consumption written all over her shaking form; and, swinging on his heel, he went to stroll about the decks, and watch, with proud and passionate concealed emotion, the yellow receding dome of the State House. He had been brought up in the shadow of that ægis. It was almost as sacred to him as the blue sky above, and not until he could no longer see it did he allow his eyes to wander over other points of interest of the historic harbor. How many times his sturdy New England forefathers had dropped their hoes to man the ships that sailed over these blue waters, to hew down the Agag of Acadie! What a bloodthirsty set they were in those days! Indians, English, French,—how they harried, and worried, and bit, and tore at each other!

He thoughtfully smoothed the little silky mustache that adorned his upper lip, and murmured, "Thank heaven, I go on a more peaceful errand."

Once out of the harbor, and feeling the white deck beneath his feet gracefully dipping to meet the swell of the ocean, he found a seat and drew a guide-book from his pocket. Of ancient Acadie he knew something, but of this modern Acadie he had, strange to say, felt no curiosity, although it lay at his very doors, until he had discovered the letter of his great-grandfather.

The day was warm and sunshiny. It was the third of June, and for some time he sat quietly reading and bathed in golden light. Then across his calm, peaceful state of content, stole a feeling scarcely to be described, and so faint that it was barely perceptible. He was not quite happy. The balm had gone from the air; the spirit of the writer, who so eloquently described the lure of the Acadien land, no longer communed with his. He read on, knowing what was coming, yet resolved not to yield until he was absolutely forced to do so.

In half an hour he had flung down his book, and was in his stateroom, face downward, his window wide open, his body gently swaying to and fro with the motion of the steamer, the salt air deliciously lapping his ears, the back of his neck, and his hands, but unable to get at his face, obstinately buried in the pillow.

"Sick, sir?" inquired a brisk voice, with a delicate note of suggestion.

Vesper uncovered one eye, and growled, "No,—shut that door."

The steward disappeared, and did not return for some hours, while Vesper's whole sensitive system passed into a painless agony, the only movement he made being to turn himself over on his back, where he lay, apparently calm and happy, and serenely staring at the white ceiling of his dainty cell.

"Can I do anything for you, sir?" asked the steward's voice once more.

Vesper, who would not have spoken if he had been offered the Royal Edward full of gold pieces, did not even roll an eyeball at him, but kept on gravely staring upward.

"Your collar's choking you, sir," said the man, coming forward; and he deftly slipped a stud from its place and laid it on the wash-stand. "Shall I take off your boots?"

Vesper submitted to having his boots withdrawn, and his feet covered, with as much indifference as if they belonged to some other man, and continued to spend the rest of the day and the night in the same state of passivity. Towards morning he had a vague wish to know the time, but it did not occur to him, any more than it would have occurred to a stone image, to put up his hand to the watch in his breast pocket.

Daylight came, then sunlight streaming into his room, and cheery sounds of voices without, but he did not stir. Not until the thrill of contact with the land went through the steamer did he spring to his feet, like a man restored to consciousness by galvanic action. He was the first passenger to reach the wharf, and the steward, who watched him going, remarked sarcastically that he was glad to see "that 'ere dead man come to life."

Vesper was himself again when his feet touched the shore. He looked about him, saw the bright little town of Yarmouth, black rocks, a blue harbor, and a