Three women were upon their knees in the church; two were utterly oblivious to the entrance of the outlandish foreign quartette, but the third kept alive the faith of man in womanish curiosity, for she stared at the party as long as it was visible. The four sailors walked around the side aisles past the "Stations of the Cross," more, it must be admitted, from longings artistic rather than devout, and were about to leave the church, when two bright looking youths of seventeen or eighteen entered the organ loft, and sang several hymns, accompanying themselves with the organ which was presumably blown by a third. The Vice interviewed them and asked what portion of the service they had been conducting, and learned that they had been singing merely for amusement. Fancy two healthy young Americans going into church during business hours, and singing hymns for purposes of personal diversion! Their associates would promptly cut their acquaintance, their employers would discharge them for laziness, and their parents, if truly affectionate, would hasten to call a physician skilled in treating the victims of mental aberration. The quartette concluded that their fond imaginings regarding the uses of aerial ships had been at fault. Maritime adventure can have no place in the Acadian mind.
A careful survey of the picturesque little hamlet showed that it was infested, though not infected, by a railroad; from this the whole village shrunk away, so that a modern "Railway Hotel," which stood near the station, stood alone, in unrelieved ugliness. The Vice, with his prejudice against every thing foreign, insisted upon the expedition dining at this hotel, because it reminded him of home, and within half an hour he endured the worst meal that had ever been set before him. The Cook, who had been detailed to watch the boats while his associates dined, sank into a peaceful slumber in the Cherub, and became an object of interest to several natives and many hundreds of flies. The former, though somewhat curious, were too polite to arouse the sleeping watchman, but the latter being evidently summer visitors from the States, had neither conscience nor modesty, so the slumberer awoke and devoted some moments to drowsy sympathy for the defunct Pharaoh and his people who suffered under the seventh plague. Then he paced the river-bank, looking about for the picturesque, and was rewarded by a glimpse of the old, old story, which went down the river road between a bashful young man and a comely maiden.