his liking. I guess it's best not to fight too much."

[Pg 49]

"I get off here," said Vesper, gathering up his papers.

"Happy you,—you won't have to wait for all of Evangeline's heifers to step off the track between here and Halifax."

Vesper nodded to him, and, swinging himself from the car, went to find the conductor.

There was ample time to get that gentlemanly official's consent to have his wheel and trunk put off at this station, instead of at Grand Pré, and ample time for Vesper to give a long look at the names in the line of cars, which were, successively, Basil the Blacksmith, Benedict the Father, René the Notary, and Gabriel the Lover, before the locomotive snuffed its nostrils and, panting and heaving, started off to trail its romantic appendages through the country of Evangeline.

When the train had disappeared, Vesper looked about him. He was no longer in the heart of the forest. An open country and scattering houses appeared in the distance, and here he could distinctly feel a mischievous breeze from the Bay that playfully ruffled his hair, and tossed back the violets at his feet every time that they bent over to look at their own sweet faces in the black, mirror-like pool of water set in a mossy bed beside them.

[Pg 50]

[Pg 50]

He stooped and picked one of the wistful purple blossoms, then stepped up on the platform of the gabled station-house. Inside the kitchen, a woman, sitting with her back to the passing trains, was spinning, and at the same time rocking a cradle, while near the door stood an individual who, to Vesper's secret amusement, might have posed either as a member of the human species, or as one of the class aves.

He had many times seen the fellows of this white-haired, smooth-faced old man, in the Southern States in the shape of cardinal-birds. Those resplendent creatures in the male sex are usually clothed in gay red jackets. This male's plumage was also red, but, unlike the cardinal-birds, it had a trimming of pearl buttons and white lace. The bird's high and conical crest was expressed in the man by a pointed red cap. The bird is nondescript as to the legs,—so also was the man; and the loud and musical note of 

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