"The English will not
learn French, will not speak French. They make us learn English, and--"
"If you don't like the flag and the country, why don't you leave it?" she
interrupted, hardening, though she had meant to try and win him over to
Ingolby's side.
His eyes blazed. There was something almost real in the man after all.
"The English can kill us, they can grind us to the dust," he rejoined in
French, "but we will not leave the land which has always been ours. We
settled it; our fathers gave their lives for it in a thousand places. The
Indians killed them, the rivers and the storms, the plague and the fire,
the sickness and the cold wiped them out. They were burned alive at the
stake, they were flayed; their bones were broken to pieces by stones--but
they blazed trails with their blood in the wilderness from New Orleans to
Hudson's Bay. They paid for the land with their lives. Then the English
came and took it, and since that time--one hundred and fifty years--we
have been slaves."
"You do not look like a slave," she answered, "and you have not acted
like a slave. If you were to do the things in France that you've done
here, you wouldn't be free as you are to-day."
"What have I done?" he asked darkly.
"You were the cause of what happened at Barbazon's last night,"--he
smiled evilly--"you are egging on the roughs to break up the Orange
funeral to-day; and there is all the rest you know so well.
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