and our cornfields, 255
Safer within these peaceful dikes besieged by the ocean,
Than our fathers in forts, besieged by the enemy’s cannon. 
Fear no evil, my friend, and to-night may no shadow of sorrow
Fall on this house and hearth; for this is the night of the contract. 
Built are the house and the barn.  The merry lads of the village 260
Strongly have built them and well; and, breaking the glebe round about them,
Filled the barn with hay, and the house with food for a twelvemonth. 
Rene Leblanc will be here anon, with his papers and inkhorn. 
Shall we not then be glad, and rejoice in the joy of our children?”
As apart by the window she stood, with her hand in her lover’s, 265
Blushing Evangeline heard the words that her father had spoken,
And, as they died on his lips, the worthy notary entered.

SECTION III.

Bent like a laboring oar, that toils in the surf of the ocean,
Bent, but not broken, by age was the form of the notary public;
Shocks of yellow hair, like the silken floss of the maize, hung 270
Over his shoulders; his forehead was high; and glasses with horn bows
Sat astride on his nose, with a look of wisdom supernal. 
Father of twenty children was he, and more than a hundred
Children’s children rode on his knee, and heard his great watch tick. 
Four long years in the times of the war had he languished a captive, 275
Suffering much in an old French fort as the friend of the English. 
Now, though warier grown, without all guile or suspicion,
Ripe in wisdom was he, but patient, and simple, and childlike. 
He was beloved by all, and most of all by the children;
For he told them tales of the Loup-garou in the forest, 280
And of the goblin that came in the night to water the horses,
And of the white Letiche, the ghost of a child who unchristened
Died, and was doomed to haunt unseen the chambers of children;
And how on Christmas eve the oxen talked in the stable,
And how the fever was cured by a spider shut up in a nutshell, 285
And of the marvelous powers of four-leaved clover and horseshoes,
With whatsoever else was writ in the lore of the village. 
Then up rose from his seat by the fireside Basil the blacksmith,
Knocked from his pipe the ashes, and slowly extending his right hand,
“Father Leblanc,” he exclaimed, “thou hast heard the talk in the village, 290
And, perchance, canst tell us some news of these ships and their errand.” 
Then with modest demeanor made answer the notary public,—­
“Gossip enough have I heard, in sooth, yet am never the wiser;
And what their errand may be I know no better than others. 
Yet am I not of those who imagine some evil intention 295
Brings them here, for we are at peace; and why then molest us?”
“God’s name!” shouted the hasty and somewhat irascible blacksmith;