Winslow's recovery was rapid, under the care and skill of Suzanne. His left shoulder gave him considerable trouble, and he was compelled to keep his arm in a sling for several days; yet it was not long after his mishap when he had strength enough to wander over the island and ingratiate himself with the folk of Pierre Island.
A deep friendship soon drew Winslow and Pierre together, and the young man spent much of his time in the company of the older. He felt that he owed him a debt of gratitude that could never be paid, while Pierre treated the matter lightly as regards his own connection with the rescue. He dealt with the escape of his young friend as with an event that touched a sympathetic and vital chord in his own heart. Pierre opened his heart to him as a father would who had recovered a lost son. A deep friendship developed and drew them together in a bond of fellowship and mutual confidence.
Winslow was now domiciled at "Bluff Castle," where his simple and modest tastes, his good-nature and his quiet tact, pleased the old Acadian and the women of his household.
Pierre carried with him into his daily life the rural simplicity of the peasant, and a certain dignity and kindness which never left him. His was a calm and quiet old age, far removed from the world, and free from its weaknesses and sordid influences and its common failings. The philosophers of old had the nature of this old Acadian, wise in the experiences peculiar to their environments, and true to those high principles of living which only men learn who contemplate with correct judgment the events of their existence and aim at the highest point for the purpose of their life. Tempered with a long life of labor, reared and trained within the sight and influence of the mighty changes of elemental nature, and in constant communication with its forces, and at last made wise at the shrine of sorrow, Pierre seemed to Winslow the embodiment of the highest qualities of ripe and noble old age.
Pierre found himself drawn to Winslow as he would have been to his own son had not an accident cut him off in his young manhood. Because of this greatest loss and its resulting sorrow, the whole tendency and purpose of his life had been changed, and in his only daughter, Marie, he had placed the whole of his affection and hope and purpose of life. Yet the maiden had become a great fear to him in the element of uncertainty which necessarily affected his view of her future years. The father realized his age and the youth of the daughter, and the difficulties that might at any time surround her if he were removed by death. He yet mourned his wife, and felt that his life was broken by the loss of his son, but he faced the future calmly and without fear, save for the thought of his daughter. In her young womanhood she made the only concern of his life, and there was as yet no promise for the future.