After standing a long time at the end of the wharf, gazing seaward, as if to catch a glimpse of their lost Acadia, the strangers began to stray into the town.

They went, we will suppose, in parties and groups, here a hundred, there a score, there ten, there three or four, who possessed some bond of unity among themselves.  Here and there was one, who, utterly desolate, stole away by himself, seeking no companionship.

Whither did they go?  I imagine them wandering about the streets, telling the town’s-people, in outlandish, unintelligible words, that no earthly affliction ever equalled what had befallen them.  Man’s brotherhood with man was sufficient to make the New Englanders understand this language.  The strangers wanted food.  Some of them sought hospitality at the doors of the stately mansions, which then stood in the vicinity of Hanover Street and the North Square.  Others were applicants at the humble wooden tenements, where dwelt the petty shop-keepers and mechanics.  Pray Heaven, that no family in Boston turned one of these poor exiles from their door!  It would be a reproach upon New England—­a crime worthy of heavy retribution—­if the aged women and children, or even the strong men, were allowed to feel the pinch of hunger.

Perhaps some of the Acadians, in their aimless wanderings through the town, found themselves near a large brick edifice, which was fenced in from the street by an iron railing, wrought with fantastic figures.  They saw a flight of red freestone steps, ascending to a portal, above which was a balcony and balustrade.  Misery and desolation give men the right of free passage everywhere.  Let us suppose, then, that they mounted the flight of steps, and passed into the Province House.  Making their way into one of the apartments, they beheld a richly clad gentleman, seated in a stately chair, with gilding upon the carved work of its back, and a gilded lion’s head at the summit.  This was Governor Shirley, meditating upon matters of war and state, in Grandfather’s chair!

If such an incident did happen, Shirley, reflecting what a ruin of peaceful and humble hopes had been wrought by the cold policy of the statesman, and the iron hand of the warrior, might have drawn a deep moral from it.  It should have taught him that the poor man’s hearth is sacred, and that armies and nations have no right to violate it.  It should have made him feel, that England’s triumph, and increased dominion, could not compensate to mankind, nor atone to Heaven, for the ashes of a single Acadian cottage.  But it is not thus that statesmen and warriors moralize.

“Grandfather,” cried Laurence, with emotion trembling in his voice, “did iron-hearted War itself ever do so hard and cruel a thing as this before?”

“You have rend in history, Laurence, of whole regions wantonly laid waste,” said Grandfather.  “In the removal of the Acadians, the troops were guilty of no cruelty or outrage, except what was inseparable from the measure.”