One portion was left unaltered, that planted by Master Simon; for beehives still stood in a row beneath the old, old apple trees, and daffodils in Spring and hollyhocks in summer still bloomed in a riot of colour beside the white gate. The Queen’s garden, too, was untouched by any change and here Stephen came often to sit on the bench under the linden tree and to ponder upon the more and more grave problems that must be solved by those who had the welfare of New England at heart. Troubled times were these, with greater difficulties plainly still to come. It was here that he was sitting, one summer day, knitting his brows over a letter with a great, red seal, when there came an interruption that was to mean much to all his after life.
The creak of the opening gate announced a visitor, its hurried bang as it closed again told plainly that the newcomer was in haste. Looking up from his letter, Stephen saw before him the town constable, his good-natured face clouded with perplexity, his brass-tipped staff, the badge of his office, held stiffly before him, a sure sign that public duty was weighing the good man down. He was followed by a middle-aged woman whose dark, weatherbeaten countenance was lined with grief and whose hair, under her odd, close-fitting starched cap was threaded with grey. She bore in her arms a bundle of what seemed to be nothing but delicately embroidered garments but which, suddenly beginning to stir and turn, revealed itself as a dark-eyed baby of possibly a year old. The woman dropped a deep curtsey and then stood waiting in silence.
“Please, Master Sheffield,” began the distressed constable, “this woman is one of the exiles from Acadia, who, as we all have heard, were landed seven days ago in Boston and who have been wandering all through the Colony. She has somehow come this far, but there is no one in the town who can tell what to do with her. She understands no word we say and, when I speak to her, only curtseys, weeps or breaks into some foreign jargon of her own.”
“From Acadia?” repeated Stephen. His clear eyes clouded at the name, for he knew and bitterly regretted the policy that had led British troops into occupying the French-speaking province of Acadia, and into driving all the peaceable inhabitants into exile. Hurrying them on board ship, they had sent them off anywhere and everywhere, in wild haste to be rid of them, little caring whether families were separated or children and their parents were lost to each other forever. Stephen, very gently and kindly, spoke to the woman in her own tongue.