Farther back in the midst of the household goods

and the wagons,

Like to a gypsy camp, or a leaguer after a

battle,

All escape cut off by the sea, and the sentinels near them,

Lay encamped for the night the houseless Acadian farmers.

Back to its nethermost caves retreated the bel

lowing ocean,

Dragging adown the beach the rattling pebbles, and leaving

Inland and far up the shore the stranded boats of the sailors.

Then, as the night descended, the herds returned from their pastures;

Sweet was the moist still air with the odor of

milk from their udders;

Lowing they waited, and long, at the well-known

Waited and looked in vain for the voice and the hand of the milkmaid.

Silence reigned in the streets; from the church no Angelus sounded,

Rose no smoke from the roofs, and gleamed no lights from the windows.

But on the shores meanwhile the evening fires

had been kindled,

Built of the drift-wood thrown on the sands from

wrecks in the tempest.

Round them shapes of gloom and sorrowful faces were gathered,

Voices of women were heard, and of men, and the crying of children.

Onward from fire to fire, as from hearth to hearth in his parish,

Wandered the faithful priest, consoling and blessing and cheering,

Like unto shipwrecked Paul on Melita's deso

late sea-shore.

Thus he approached the place where Evangeline sat with her father,

And in the flickering light beheld the face of the

old man,

Haggard and hollow and wan, and without either thought or emotion,

E'en as the face of a clock from which the hands have been taken.

Vainly Evangeline strove with words and caresses to cheer him,

Vainly offered him food; yet he moved not, he looked not, he spake not,

But, with a vacant stare, ever gazed at the flickering fire-light.

"Benedicite!" murmured the priest, in tones of

compassion.

More he fain would have said, but his heart was

full, and his accents

Faltered and paused on his lips, as the feet of a child on a threshold,

Hushed by the scene he beholds, and the awful presence of sorrow.

Silently, therefore, he laid his hand on the head of the maiden,

Raising his eyes, full of tears, to the silent stars that above them

Moved on their way, unperturbed by the wrongs and sorrows of mortals.

Then sat he down at her side, and they wept together in silence.

Suddenly rose from the south a light, as in

autumn the blood-red

Moon climbs the crystal walls of heaven, and

o'er the horizon

Titan-like stretches its hundred hands upon

mountain and meadow,

Seizing the rocks and the rivers, and piling huge shadows together.

Broader and ever broader it gleamed on the roofs of the village,

Gleamed on the sky and the sea, and the ships that lay in the roadstead.

Columns of shining smoke uprose, and flashes of flame were

Thrust through their folds and withdrawn, like the quivering hands of a martyr.

Then as the wind seized the gleeds and the burning thatch, and, uplifting,

Whirled them aloft through the air, at once from a hundred house-tops

Started the sheeted smoke with flashes of flame intermingled.

These things beheld in dismay the crowd on

the shore and on shipboard.