[Illustration: "THE GRAND MASTER OF THE DAY ENTERED THE DINING
HALL."--_Page_ 266]
The evening meal was less formal. When all were gathered about the fire,
the Grand Master presented the collar and staff of office to his
successor, and drank his health in a cup of wine.
The winter was unusually mild; until January they needed nothing warmer
than their doublets. On the fourteenth, a Sunday, they went boating on
the river, and came home singing the gay songs of France. A little later
they went to visit the wheat fields two leagues from the fort, and dined
merrily out of doors. When the snow melted they saw the little bright
blades of the autumn sowing already coming up from the rich black soil.
Winter was over, and work began in good heart. Poutrincourt was not
above gathering turpentine from the pines and making tar, after a
process invented by himself. Then late in spring a ship came into harbor
with news which ended everything. The fur-traders of Normandy, Brittany
and the Vizcayan ports had succeeded in having the privilege of De Monts
withdrawn. Hardly more than a year after his arrival Lescarbot left his
beloved gardens, and in October all the colonists were once more in
France. Membertou and his Indians bewailed their departure, and held
them in long remembrance.
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