ALICE of OLD VINCENNES MAURICE THOMPSON UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES GIFT OF G.C.DeGarmo Alice of Old Vincznnes The gowned priest, the fresh-faced and coarsely-clad glrJ p. n. Alice of Old Vincennes BY Maurice Thompson ILLUSTRATIONS BY F. C. YOHN GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK COPYRIGHT, 1900 THE BOWEN-MERRILL COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. COPYRIGHT, 1908 ALICE LEE THOMPSON IGHTS RESERVED. Made in the United States of America T o To M. PLACIDE VALCOUR M. D., Pb. D., LL. D. MY DEAR DR. VALCOUR : You gave me the inspiration which made this story haunt me until I wrote it. Gaspard Roussil- lon's letter, a mildewed relic of the year 1788, which you so kindly permitted me to copy, as far as it remained legible, was I the point from which my imagination, accompanied by my P^^-icuriosity, set out upon a long and delightful quest. You laughed \J ^at me when I became enthusiastic regarding the possible his torical importance of that ancient and, alas ! fragmentary epistle; but the old saying about the beatitude of him whose cachinations are latest comes handy to me just now, and I must remind you that "I told you so." True enough, it was <* \ history pure and simple that I had in mind while enjoying the large hospitality of your gulf-side home. Gaspard Roussillon's etter then appealed to my greed for materials which would help along the making of my little book "The Story of Louisiana." Later, however, as my frequent calls upon you for both docu- * merits and suggestions have informed you, I fell to strumming i x a different guitar. And now to you I dedicate this historical *T romance of old Vincennes, as a very appropriate, however N>>slight, recognition of your scholarly attainments, your distin- r ' \, guished career in a noble profession, and your descent from one f the earliest French families (if not the very earliest) long 387835 resident at that strange little post on the Wabash, now one of the most beautiful cities between the great river and the ocean. Following, with ever tantalized expectancy, the broken and breezy hints in the Roussillon letter, I pursued a will-o'-the- wisp, here, there, yonder, until by slowly arriving increments I gathered up a large amount of valuable facts, which when I came to compare them with the history of Clark's conquest of the Wabash Valley, fitted amazingly well into certain spaces heretofore left open in that important yet sadly imperfect record. You will find that I was not so wrong in suspecting that Emile Jazon, mentioned in the Roussillon letter, was a brother of Jean Jazon and a famous scout in the time of Boone and Clark. He was, therefore, a kinsman of yours on the maternal side, and I congratulate you. Another thing may please you, the success which attended my long and patient research with a view to clearing up the connection between Alice Roussillon's romantic life, as brokenly sketched in M. Roussillon's letter, and the capture of Vincennes by Colonel George Rogers Clark. Accept, then, this book, which to those who care only for history will seem but an idle romance, while to the lovers of romance it may look strangely like the mustiest history. In my mind, and in yours I hope, it will always be connected with a breezy summer-house on a headland of the Louisiana gulf coast, the rustling of palmetto leaves, the fine flash of roses, a tumult of mocking-bird voices, the soft lilt of Creole patois, and the endless dash and roar of a fragrant sea over which the gulls and pelicans never ceased their flight, and beside which you smoked while I dreamed. MAURICE THOMPSON. July, 1900. Contents I Under the Cherry Tree I II A Letter from Afar 17 III The Rape of the Demijohn 34 IV The First Mayor of Vincennes 49 V Father Gibault 68 VI A Fencing Bout 86 VII The Mayor's Party 104 VIII The Dilemma of Captain Helm 122 IX The Honors of War 143 X M. Roussillon Entertains Colonel Hamilton 163 XI A Sword and a Horse Pistol Contents XII Manon Lescaut, and a Rapier-Thrust 203 XIII A Meeting in the Wilderness 223 XIV A Prisoner of Love 24 $ XV Virtue in a Locket 20} XVI Father Beret's Old Battle 280 XVII A March through Cold Water 302 XVIII A Duel by Moonlight 320 XIX The Attack 339 XX Alice's Flag 359 XXI Some Transactions in Scalps 380 XXII Clark Advises Alice 402 XXIII And So It Ended 4.17 Alice of Old ALICE OF OLD VINCENNES CHAPTER I UNDER THE CHERRY TREE Up to the days of Indiana's early statehood, probably as late as 1825, there stood, in what is now the beau tiful little city of Vincennes on the Wabash, the decay ing remnant of an old and curiously gnarled cherry tree, known as the Roussillon tree, le cerisier de Mon sieur Roussillon, as the French inhabitants called it, which as long as it lived bore fruit remarkable for richness of flavor and peculiar dark ruby depth of color. The exact spot where this noble old seedling from la belle France flourished, declined, and died can not be certainly pointed out; for in the rapid and happy growth of Vincennes many land-marks once notable, among them le cerisier de Monsieur Roussillon, have been destroyed and the spots where they stood, once familiar to every eye in old Vincennes, are now lost in the pleasant confusion of the new town. The security of certain land titles may have largely depended upon the disappearance of old, fixed objects here and there. Early records were loosely kept, in deed, scarcely kept at all; many were destroyed by designing land speculators, while those most carefully preserved often failed to give even a shadowy trace of the actual boundaries of the estates held thereby; 1 2 Alice of Old Vincennes so that the position of a house or tree not infrequently settled an important question of property rights left open by a primitive deed. At all events the Roussillon cherry tree disappeared long ago, nobody living knows how, and with it also vanished, quite as mysteriously, all traces of the once important Roussillon estate. Not a record of the name even can be found, it is said, in church or county books. The old, twisted, gum-embossed cherry tree sur vived every other distinguishing feature of what was once the most picturesque and romantic place in Vin cennes. Just north of it stood, in the early French days, a low, rambling cabin surrounded by rude ve randas overgrown with grapevines. This was the Roussillon place, the most pretentious home in all the Wabash country. Its owner was Gaspard Roussillon, a successful trader with the Indians. He was rich, for the time and the place, influential to a degree, a man of some education, who had brought with him to the wilderness a bundle of books and a taste for reading. From faded letters and dimly remembered talk of those who once clung fondly to the legends and tra ditions of old Vincennes, it is drawn that the Rous sillon cherry tree stood not very far away from the present site of the Catholic church, on a slight swell of ground overlooking a wide marshy flat and the sil ver current of the Wabash. If the tree grew there, then there too stood the Rousillon house with its cosy log rooms, its clay-daubed chimneys and its grape vine-mantled verandas, while some distance away and Under the Cherry Tree 3 nearer the river the rude fort with its huddled officers' quarters seemed to fling out over the wild land scape, through its squinting and lopsided port-holes, a gaze of stubborn defiance. Not far off was the little log church, where one good Father Beret, or as named by the Indians, who all loved him, Father Blackrobe, performed the services of his sacred calling; and scattered all around were the cabins of traders, soldiers and woodsmen forming a queer little town, the like of which cannot now be seen anywhere on the earth. It is not known just when Vincennes was first founded; but most historians make the probable date very early in the eighteenth century, somewhere be tween 1710 and 1730. In 1810 the Roussillon cherry tree was thought by a distinguished botanical letter- writer to be at least fifty years old, which would make the date of its planting about 1760. Certainly as shown by the time-stained family records upon which this story of ours is based, it was a flourishing and wide-topped tree in early summer of 1778, its branches loaded to drooping with luscious fruit. So low did the dark red clusters hang at one point that a tall young girl standing on the ground easily reached the best ones and made her lips purple with their juice while she ate them. That was long ago, measured by what has come to pass on the gentle swell of rich country from which Vincennes overlooks the Wabash. The new town flourishes notably and its appearance marks the latest limit of progress. Electric cars in its streets, electric 4 Alice of Old Vincennes lights in its beautiful homes, the roar of railway trains coming and going in all directions, bicycles whirling hither and thither, the most fashionable styles of equipages, from brougham to pony-phaeton, make the days of flint-lock guns and buckskin trousers seem ages down the past; and yet we are looking back over but a little more than a hundred and twenty years to see Alice Roussillon standing under the cherry tree and holding high a tempting cluster of fruit, while a very short, hump-backed youth looks up with longing eyes and vainly reaches for it. The tableau is not merely rustic, it is primitive. "Jump !" the girl is saying in French, "jump, Jean ; jump high!" Yes, that was very long ago, in the days when wo men lightly braved what the strongest men would shrink from now. Alice Roussillon was tall, lithe, strongly knit, with an almost perfect figure, judging by what the master sculptors carved for the form of Venus, and her face was comely and winning, if not absolutely beautiful ; but the time and the place were vigorously indicated by her dress, which was of coarse stuff and simply de signed. Plainly she was a child of the American wilderness, a daughter of old Vincennes on the Wa- bash in the time that tried men's souls. "Jump, Jean!" she cried, her face laughing with a show of cheek-dimples, an arching of finely sketched brows and the twinkling of large blue-gray eyes. "Jump high and get them!" While she waved her sun-browned hand holding Under the Cherry Tree 5 the cherries aloft, the breeze blowing fresh from the southwest tossed her hair so that some loose strands shone like rimpled flames. The sturdy little hunchback did leap with surprising activity; but the treacherous brown hand went higher, so high that the combined altitude of his jump and the reach of his unnaturally long arms was overcome. Again and again he sprang vainly into the air com ically, like a long-legged, squat-bodied frog. "And you brag of your agility and strength, Jean," she laughingly remarked; "but you can't take cherries when they are offered to you. What a clumsy bungler you are." "I can climb and get some," he said with a hideously happy grin, and immediately embraced the bole of the tree, up which he began scrambling almost as fast as a squirrel. When he had mounted high enough to be extending a hand for a hold on a crotch, Alice grasped his leg near the foot and pulled him down, despite his clinging and struggling, until his hands clawed in the soft earth at the tree's root, while she held his captive leg almost vertically erect. It was a show of great strength; but Alice looked quite unconscious of it, laughing merrily, the dimples deepening in her plump cheeks, her forearm, now bared to the elbow, gleaming white and shapely while its muscles rippled on account of the jerking and kick ing of Jean. All the time she was holding the cherries high in her other hand, shaking them by the twig to which 6 Alice of Old Vincennes their slender stems attached them, and saying in a sweetly tantalizing tone : "What makes you climb downward after cherries, Jean? What a foolish fellow you are, indeed, trying to grabble cherries out of the ground, as you do po tatoes ! I'm sure I didn't suppose that you knew so little as that." Her French was colloquial, but quite good, showing here and there what we often notice in the speech of those who have been educated in isolated places far from that babel of polite energies which we call the world; something that may be described as a bookish cast appearing oddly in the midst of phrasing dis tinctly rustic and local, a peculiarity not easy to transfer from one language to another. Jean the hunchback was a muscular little deformity and a wonder of good nature. His head looked un naturally large, nestling grotesquely between the points of his lifted and distorted shoulders, like a shaggy black animal in the fork of a broken tree. He was bellicose in his amiable way and never knew just when to acknowledge defeat. How long he might have kept up the hopeless struggle with the girl's invincible grip would be hard to guess. His release was caused by the approach of a third person, who wore the robe of a Catholic priest and the countenance of a man who had lived and suffered a long time without much loss of physical strength and endurance. This was Pere Beret, grizzly, short, compact, his face deeply lined, his mouth decidedly aslant on ac count of some lost teeth, and his eyes set deep under Under the Cherry Tree 7 gray, shaggy brows. Looking at him when his features were in repose a first impression might not have been favorable ; but seeing him smile or hearing him speak changed everything. His voice was sweetness itself and his smile won you on the instant. Something like a pervading sorrow always seemed to be close behind his eyes and under his speech; yet he was a genial, sometimes almost jolly, man, very prone to join in the lighter amusements of his people. "Children, children, my children," he called out as he approached along a little pathway leading up from the direction of the church, "what are you doing now? Bah there, Alice, will you pull Jean's leg off?" At first they did not hear him, they were so nearly deafened by their own vocal discords. "Why are you standing on your head with your feet so high in air, Jean?" he added. "It's not a polite attitude in the presence of a young lady. Are you a pig, that you poke your nose in the dirt?" Alice now turned her bright head and gave Pere Beret a look of frank welcome, which at the same time shot a beam of willful self-assertion. "My daughter, are you trying to help Jean up the tree feet foremost?" the priest added, standing where he had halted just outside of the straggling yard fence. He had his hands on his hips and was quietly chuckling at the scene before him, as one who, al though old, sympathized with the natural and harmless sportiveness of young people and would as lief as not join in a prank or two. "You see what I'm doing, Father Beret," said Alice. 8 Alice of Old Vincennes "I am preventing a great damage to you. You will maybe lose a good many cherry pies and dumplings if I let Jean go. He was climbing the tree to pilfer the fruit; so I pulled him down, you understand." "Ta, ta !" exclaimed the good man, shaking his gray head; "we must reason with the child. Let go his leg, daughter, I will vouch for him; eh, Jean?" Alice released the hunchback, then laughed gayly and tossed the cluster of cherries into his hand, where upon he began munching them voraciously and talking at the same time. "I knew I could get them," he boasted; "and see, I have them now." He hopped around, looking like a species of ill-formed monkey. Pere Beret came and leaned on the low fence close to Alice. She was almost as tall as he. "The sun scorches to-day," he said, beginning to mop his furrowed face with a red-flowered cotton handkerchief ; "and from the look of the sky yonder," pointing southward, "it is going to bring on a storm. How is Madame Roussillon to-day?" "She is complaining as she usually does when she feels extremely well," said Alice; "that's why I had to take her place at the oven and bake pies. I got hot and came out to catch a bit of this breeze. Oh, but you needn't smile and look greedy, Pere Beret, the pies are not for your teeth !" "My daughter, I am not a glutton, I hope; I had meat not two hours since some broiled young squir rels with cress, sent me by Rene de Ronville. He never forgets his old father." Under the Cherry Tree 9 "Oh, I never forget you either, mon pere; I thought of you to-day every time I spread a crust and filled it with cherries; and when I took out a pie all brown and hot, the red juice bubbling out of it so good smelling and tempting, do you know what I said to myself?" "How could I know, my child?" "Well, I thought this: 'Not a single bite of that pie does Father Beret get.' " "Why so, daughter?" "Because you said it was bad of me to read novels and told Mother Roussillon to hide them from me. I've had any amount of trouble about it." "Ta, ta! read the good books that I gave you. They will soon kill the taste for these silly romances." "I tried," said Alice; "I tried very hard, and it's no use ; your books are dull and stupidly heavy. What do I care about something that a queer lot of saints did hundreds of years ago in times of plague and famine? Saints must have been poky people, and it is poky peo ple who care to read about them, I think. I like read ing about brave, heroic men and beautiful women, and war and love." Pere Beret looked away with a curious expression in his face, his eyes half closed. "And I'll tell you now, Father Beret," Alice went on after a pause, "no more claret and pies do you get until I can have my own sort of books back again to read as I please." She stamped her moccasin-shod foot with decided energy. The good priest broke into a hearty laugh, and tak- 1O Alice of Old Vincennes ing off his cap of grass-straw mechanically scratched his bald head. He looked at the tall, strong girl before him for a moment or two, and it would have been hard for the best physiognomist to decide just how much of approval and how much of disapproval that look really signified. Although, as Father Beret had said, the sun's heat was violent, causing that gentle soul to pass his bundled handkerchief with a wiping circular motion over his bald and bedewed pate, the wind was mo mently freshening, while up from behind the trees on the horizon beyond the river, a cloud was rising blue- black, tumbled, and grim against the sky. "Well," said the priest, evidently trying hard to ex change his laugh for a look of regretful resignation, "you will have your own way, my child, and " "Then you will have pies galore and no end of claret !" she interrupted, at the same time stepping to the withe-tied and peg-latched gate of the yard and opening it. "Come in, you dear, good Father, before the rain shall begin, and sit with me on the gallery" (the creole word for veranda) "till the storm is over." Father Beret seemed not loath to enter, albeit he offered a weak protest against delaying some task he had in hand. Alice reached forth and pulled him in, then reclosed the queer little gate and pegged it. She caressingly passed her arm through his and looked into his weather-stained old face with childlike affection. There was not a photographer's camera to be had in those days ; but what if a tourist with one in hand could have been there to take a snapshot at the priest and Under the Cherry Tree 11 the maiden as they walked arm in arm to that squat little veranda ! The picture to-day would be worth its weight in a first-water diamond. It would include the cabin, the cherry-tree, a glimpse of the raw, wild back ground and a sharp portrait-group of Pere Beret, Alice, and Jean the hunchback. To compare it with a photo graph of the same spot now would give a perfect im pression of the historic atmosphere, color and condi tions which cannot be set in words. But we must not belittle the power of verbal description. What if a thoroughly trained newspaper reporter had been given the freedom of old Vincennes on the Wabash during the first week of June, 1/78, and we now had his printed story! What a supplement to the photographer's pic tures ! Well, we have neither photographs nor graphic report; yet there they are before us, the gowned and straw-capped priest, the fresh- faced, coarsely-clad and vigorous girl, the grotesque little hunchback, all just as real as life itself. Each of us can see them, even with closed eyes. Led by that wonderful guide, Imagina tion, we step back a century and more to look over a scene at once strangely attractive and unspeakably forlorn. What was it that drew people away from the old countries, from the cities, the villages and the vine yards of beautiful France, for example, to dwell in the wilderness, amid wild beasts and wilder savage Indi ans, with a rude cabin for a home and the exposures and hardships of pioneer life for their daily experience? Men like Gaspard Roussillon are of a distinct stamp. Take him as he was. Born in France, on the banks of 12 Alice of Old Vincennes the Rhone near Avignon, he came as a youth to Canada, whence he drifted on the tide of adventure this way and that, until at last he found himself, with a wife, at Post Vincennes, that lonely picket of religion and trade, which was to become the center of civilizing energy for the great Northwestern Territory. M. Roussillon had no children of his own; so his kind heart opened freely to two fatherless and motherless waifs. These were Alice, now called Alice Roussillon, and the hunch back, Jean. The former was twelve years old, when he adopted her, a child of Protestant parents, while Jean had been taken, when a mere babe, after his parents had been killed and scalped by Indians. Madame Rous sillon, a professed invalid, whose appetite never failed and whose motherly kindness expressed itself most often through strains of monotonous falsetto scolding, was a woman of little education and no refinement; while her husband clung tenaciously to his love of books, especially to the romances most in vogue when he took leave of France. M. Roussillon had been, in a way, Alice's teacher, though not greatly inclined to abet Father Beret in his kindly efforts to make a Catholic of the girl, and most treacherously disposed toward the good priest in the matter of his well-meant attempts to prevent her from reading and re-reading the aforesaid romances. But for many weeks past Gaspard Roussillon had been ab sent from home, looking after his trading schemes with the Indians ; and Pere Beret acting on the suggestion of the proverb about the absent cat and the playing mouse, had formed an alliance offensive and defensive Under the Cherry Tree 13 with Madame Roussillon, in which it was strictly stip ulated that all novels and romances were to be forcibly taken and securely hidden away from Mademoiselle Alice; which, to the best of Madame Roussillon's ability, had accordingly been done. Now, while the wind strengthened and the softly booming summer shower came on apace, the heavy cloud lifting as it advanced and showing under it the dark gray sheet of the rain, Pere Beret and Alice sat under the clapboard roof behind the vines of the ve randa and discussed, what was generally uppermost in the priest's mind upon such occasions, the good of Alice's immortal soul, a subject not absorbingly inter esting to her at any time. It was a standing grief to the good old priest, this strange perversity of the girl in the matter of religious duty, as he saw it. True she had a faithful guardian in Gaspard Roussillon; but, much as he had done to aid the church's work in general, for he was always vigorous and liberal, he could not be looked upon as a very good Catholic ; and of course his influence was not effective in the right direction. But then Pere Beret saw no reason why, in due time and with patient work, aided by Madame Roussillon and notwithstanding Gaspard's treachery, he might not safely lead Alice, whom he loved as a dear child, into the arms of the Holy Church, to serve which faithfully, at all hazards and in all places, was his highest aim. "Ah, my child," he was saying, "you are a sweet, good girl, after all, much better than you make your- 14 Alice of Old Vincennes self out to be. Your duty will control you ; you wil I do it nobly at last, my child." "True enough, Father Beret, true enough !" she re sponded, laughing, "your perception is most excellent, which I will prove to you immediately." She rose while speaking and went into the house. "I'll return in a minute or two," she called back from a region which Pere Beret well knew was that of the pantry ; "don't get impatient and go away !" Pere Beret laughed softly at the preposterous sug gestion that he would even dream of going out in the rain, which was now roaring heavily on the loose board roof, and miss a cut of cherry pie a cherry pie of Alice's making! And the Roussillon claret, too, was always excellent. "Ah, child," he thought, "your old Father is not going away." She presently returned, bearing on a wooden tray a ruby-stained pie and a short, stout bottle flanked by two glasses. "Of course I'm better than I sometimes appear to be," she said, almost humbly, but with mischief still in her voice and eyes, "and I shall get to be very good when I have grown old. The sweetness of my present nature is in this pie." She set the tray on a three-legged stool which she pushed close to him. "There now," she said, "let the rain come, you'll be happy, rain or shine, while the pie and wine last, I'll be bound." Pere Beret fell to eating right heartily, meantime handing Jean a liberal piece of the luscious pie. Under the Cherry Tree 15 "It is good, my daughter, very good, indeed," the priest remarked with his mouth full. "Madame Rous- sillon has not neglected your culinary education." Alice filled a glass for him. It was Bordeaux and very fra grant. The bouquet reminded him of his sunny boy hood in France, of his journey up to Paris and of his careless, joy-brimmed youth in the gay city. How far away, how misty, yet how thrillingly sweet it all was ! He sat with half closed eyes awhile, sipping and dream ing. The rain lasted nearly two hours ; but the sun was out again when Pere Beret took leave of his young friend. They had been having another good-natured quarrel over the novels, and Madame Roussillon had come out on the veranda to join in. "I've hidden every book of them," said Madame, a stout and swarthy woman whose pearl-white teeth were her only mark of beauty. Her voice indicated great stubbornness. "Good, good, you have done your very duty, Ma~ dame," said Pere Beret, with immense approval in his charming voice. "But, Father, you said awhile ago that I should have my own way about this," Alice spoke up with spirit ,- "and on the strength of that remark of yours I gave you the pie and wine. You've eaten my pie and swigged the wine, and now " Pere Beret put on his straw cap, adjusting it care fully over the shining dome out of which had come so many thoughts of wisdom, kindness and human synv 16 Alice of Old Vincennes pathy. This done, he gently laid a hand on Alice's bright crown of hair and said : "Bless you, my child. I will pray to the Prince of Peace for you as long as I live, and I will never cease to beg the Holy Virgin to intercede for you and lead you to the Holy Church." He turned and went away ; but when he was no far ther than the gate, Alice called out : "O Father Beret, I forgot to show you something !" She ran forth to him and added in a low tone : "You know that Madame Roussillon has hidden all the novels from me." She was fumbling to get something out of the loose front of her dress. "Well, just take a glance at this, will you ?" and she showed him a little leather bound volume, much cracked along the hinges of the back. It was Manon Lescaut, that dreadful romance by the famous Abbe Prevost. Pere Beret frowned and went his way shaking his head; but before he reached his little hut near the church he was laughing in spite of himself. "She's not so bad, not so bad," he thought aloud, : 'it's only her young, independent spirit taking the bit for a wild run. In her .sweet soul she is as good as she is pure," CHAPTER II A LETTER FROM AFAR Although Father Beret was for many years a mis sionary on the Wabash, most of the time at Vincennes, the fact that no mention of him can be found in the rec ords is not stranger than many other things connected with the old town's history. He was, like nearly all the men of his calling in that day, a self-effacing and mod est hero, apparently quite unaware that he deserved at tention. He and Father Gibault, whose name is so beautifully and nobly connected with the stirring achievements of Colonel George Rogers Clark, were close friends and often companions. Probably Father Gibault himself, whose fame will never fade, would have been to-day as obscure as Father Beret, but for the opportunity given him by Clark to fix his name in the list of heroic patriots who assisted in winning the great Northwest from the English. Vincennes, even in the earliest days of its history, somehow kept up communication and, considering the circumstances, close relations with New Orleans. It was much nearer Detroit; but the Louisiana colony stood next to France in the imagination and longing of priests, voyageurs, coureurs de bois and reckless adventurers who had Latin blood in their veins. Father Beret first came to Vincennes from New Orleans, the voyage up the Mississippi, Ohio, and Wabash, in a pirogue, lasting through a whole summer and far into i8 Alice of Old Vincennes the autumn. Since his arrival the post had experienced many vicissitudes, and at the time in which our story opens the British government claimed right of domin ion over the great territory drained by the Wabash, and, indeed, over a large, indefinitely outlined part of the North American continent lying above Mexico; a claim just then being vigorously questioned, flint lock in hand, by the Anglo-American colonies. Of course the handful of French people at Vin cennes, so far away from every center of information, and wholly occupied with their trading, trapping and missionary work, were late finding out that war existed between England and her colonies. Nor did it really matter much with them, one way or another. They felt secure in their lonely situation, and so went on selling their trinkets, weapons, domestic implements, blankets and intoxicating liquors to the Indians, whom they held bound to them with a power never possessed by any other white dwellers in the wilderness. Father Beret was probably subordinate to Father Gibault. At all events the latter appears to have had nominal charge of Vincennes, and it can scarcely be doubted that he left Father Beret on the Wabash, while he went to live and labor for a time at Kaskaskia beyond the plains of Illinois. It is a curious fact that religion and the power oi rum and brandy worked together successfully for a long time in giving the French posts almost absolute influence over the wild and savage men by whom they were always surrounded. The good priests dep recated the traffic in liquors and tried hard to control A Letter from Afar IQ it, but soldiers of fortune and reckless traders were in the majority, their interests taking precedence of all spiritual demands and carrying everything along. What could the brave missionaries do but make the very best of a perilous situation ? In those days wine was drunk by almost everybody, its use at table and as an article of incidental refresh ment and social pleasure being practically universal; wherefore the steps of reform in the matter of intem perance were but rudimentary and in all places beset by well-nigh insurmountable difficulties. In fact the exi gencies of frontier life demanded, perhaps, the very stimulus which, when over indulged in, caused so much evil. Malaria loaded the air, and the most efficacious drugs now at command were then undiscovered or could not be had. Intoxicants were the only popular specific. Men drank to prevent contracting ague, drank again, between rigors, to cure it, and yet again to brace themselves during convalescence. But if the effect of rum as a beverage had strong allurement for the white man, it made an absolute slave of the Indian, who never hesitated for a moment to undertake any task, no matter how hard, bear any pri vation, even the most terrible, or brave any danger, although it might demand reckless desperation, if in the end a well filled bottle or jug appeared as his re ward. Of course the traders did not overlook such a source of power. Alcoholic liquor became their implement of almost magical work in controlling the lives, labors, and resources of the Indians. The priests with their 2O Alice of Old Vincennes captivating story of the Cross had a large influence in softening savage natures and averting many an awful danger; but when everything else failed, rum always came to the rescue of a threatened French post. We need not wonder, then, when we are told that Father Beret made no sign of distress or disapproval upon being informed of the arrival of a boat loaded with rum, brandy or gin. It was Rene de Ronville who brought the news, the same Rene already men tioned as having given the priest a plate of squirrels. He was sitting on the doorsill of Father Beret's hut, when the old man reached it after his visit at the Roussillon home, and held in his hand a letter which he appeared proud to deliver. "A batteau and seven men, with a cargo of liquor, came during the rain," he said, rising and taking off his curious cap, which, made of an animal's skin, had a tail jauntily dangling from its crown-tip ; "and here is a letter for you, Father. The batteau is from New Or leans. Eight men started with it ; but one went ashore to hunt and was killed by an Indian." Father Beret took the letter without apparent inter est and said : "Thank you, my son, sit down again ; the door-log is not wetter than the stools inside ; I will sit by you." The wind had driven a flood of rain into the cabin through the open door, and water twinkled in puddles here and there on the floor's puncheons. They sat down side by side, Father Beret fingering the letter in an ab sent-minded way. A Letter from Afar 21 "There'll be a jolly time of it to-night/' Rene de Ronrille remarked, "a roaring time." "Why do you say that, my son?" the priest de manded. "The wine and the liquor," was the reply; "much drinking will be done. The men have all been dry here for some time, you know, and are as thirsty as sand. They are making ready to enjoy themselves down at the river house." "Ah, the poor souls !" sighed Father Beret, speaking as one whose thoughts were wandering far away. "Why don't you read your letter, Father?" Rene added. The priest started, turned the soiled square of paper over in his hand, then thrust it inside his robe. "It can wait," he said. Then, changing his voice ; "the squirrels you gave me were excellent, my son. It was good of you to think of me," he added, laying his hand on Rene's arm. "Oh, I'm glad if I have pleased you, Father Beret, for you are so kind to me always, and to everybody. When I killed the squirrels I said to myself : 'These are young, juicy and tender, Father Beret must have these,' so I brought them along." The young man rose to go; for he was somehow impressed that Father Beret must wish opportunity to read his letter, and would prefer to be left alone vrith it. But the priest pulled him down again. "Stay a while," he said, "I have not had a talk with you for some time." Rene looked a trifle uneasy. 22 Alice of Old Vmcennes "You will not drink any to-night, my son," Father Beret added. "You must not ; do you hear?" The young man's eyes and mouth at once began to have a sullen expression ; evidently he was not pleased and felt rebellious; but it was hard for him to resist Father Beret, whom he loved, as did every soul in the post. The priest's voice was sweet and gentle, yet positive to a degree. Rene did not say a word. "Promise me that you will not taste liquor this night," Father Beret went on, grasping the young man's arm more firmly ; "promise me, my son, promise me." Still Rene was silent. The men did not look at each other, but gazed away across the country beyond the Wabash to where a glory from the western sun flamed on the upper rim of a great cloud fragment creeping along the horizon. Warm as the day had been, a delicious coolness now began to temper the air ; for the wind had shifted into the northwest. A meadow- lark sang dreamingly in the wild grass of the low lands hard by, over which two or three prairie hawks hov ered with wings that beat rapidly. "Eh bien, I must go," said Rene presently, getting to his feet nimbly and evading Father Beret's hand which would have held him. "Not to the river house, my son?" said the priest appealingly. "No, not there ; I have another letter ; one for M'sieu' Roussillon ; it came by the boat too. I go to give it to Madame Roussillon." Rene de Ronville was a dark, weather-stained young A Letter from Afar 23 icllow, neither tall nor short, wearing buckskin mocca sins, trousers and tunic. His eyes were dark brown, keen, quick-moving, set well under heavy brows. A razor had probably never touched his face, and his thin, curly beard crinkled over his strongly turned cheeks and chin, while his moustaches sprang out quite fiercely above his full-lipped, almost sensual mouth. He looked wiry and active, a man not to be lightly reckoned with in a trial of bodily strength and will power. Father Beret's face and voice changed on the in stant. He laughed dryly and said, with a sly gleam in his eyes : "You could spend the evening pleasantly with Madame Rousillon and Jean. Jean, you know, is a very amusing fellow." Rene brought forth the letter of which he had spoken and held it up before Father Beret's face. "Maybe you think I haven't any letter for M'sieu' Roussillon," he blurted ; "and maybe you are quite cer tain that I am not going to the house to take the letter." "Monsieur Roussillon is absent, you know," Father Beret suggested. "But cherry pies are just as good while he's gone as when he's at home, and I happen to know that there are some particularly delicious ones in the pantry of Madame Roussillon. Mademoiselle Alice gave me a juicy sample ; but then I dare say you do not care to have your pie served by her hand. It would interfere with your appetite ; eh, my son ?" Rene turned short about wagging his head and laughing, and so with his back to the priest he strode 24 Alice of Old Vincennes away along the wet pith leading to the Roussillou place. Father Beret gazed after him, his face relaxing to a serious expression in which a trace of sadness and gloom spread like an elusive twilight. He took out his letter, but did not glance at it, simply holding it tightly gripped in his sinewy right hand. Then his old eyes stared vacantly, as eyes do when their sight is cast back many, many years into the past. The missive was from beyond the sea he knew the handwriting a waft of the flowers of Avignon seemed to rise out of it, as if by the pressure of his grasp. A stoop-shouldered, burly man went by, leading a pair of goats, a kid following. He was making haste excitedly, keeping the goats at a lively trot. "Bon jour, Pere Beret," he flung out breezily, and walked rapidly on. "Ah, ah; his mind is busy with the newly arrived cargo," thought the old priest, returning the salutation ; "his throat aches for the liquor, the poor man." Then he read again the letter's superscription and made a faltering move, as if to break the seal. His hands trembled violently, his face looked gray and drawn. "Come on, you brutes," cried the receding man } jerking the thongs of skin by which he led the goats. Father Beret rose and turned into his damp little hut, where the light was dim on the crucifix hanging opposite the door against the clay-daubed wall. It was a bare, unsightly, clammy room; a rude bed on one side, a shelf for table and two or three wooden stools A Letter from Afar 25 constituting the furniture, while the uneven puncheons of the floor wabbled and clattered under the priest's feet. An unopened letter is always a mysterious thing. We who receive three or four mails every day, scan each little paper square with a speculative eye. Most of us know what sweet uncertainty hangs on the opening of envelopes whose contents may be almost anything except something important, and what a vague yet delicious thrill comes with the snip of the paper knife ; but if we be in a foreign land and long years absent from home, then is a letter subtly powerful to move us, even more before it is opened than after it is read. It had been many years since a letter from home had come to Father Beret. The last, before the one now in hand, had made him ill of nostalgia, fairly shaking his iron determination never to quit for a moment his life work as a missionary. Ever since that day he had found it harder to meet the many and stern demands of a most difficult and exacting duty. Now the mere touch of the paper in his hand gave him a sense of re turning weakness, dissatisfaction, and longing. The home of his boyhood, the rushing of the Rhone, a seat in a shady nook of the garden, Madeline, his sister, prattling beside him, and his mother singing some where about the house it all came back and went over him and through him, making his heart sink strangely, while another voice, the sweetest ever heard but she was ineffable and her memory a forbidden fragrance. Father Beret tottered across the forlorn little room and knelt before the crucifix holding his clasped hands 26 Alice of Old Vmcennes high, the letter pressed between them. His lips moved in prayer, but made no sound ; his whole frame shook violently. It would be unpardonable desecration to enter the .chamber of Father Beret's soul and look upon his sacred and secret trouble ; nor must we even speculate as to its particulars. The good old man writhed and wrestled before the cross for a long time, until at last he seemed to receive the calmness and strength he prayed for so fervently ; then he rose, tore the letter into pieces so small that not a word remained whole, and squeezed them so firmly together that they were com pressed into a tiny, solid ball, which he let fall through a crack between the floor puncheons. After waiting twenty years for that letter, hungry as his heart was, he did not even open it when at last it arrived. He would never know what message it bore. The link between him and the old sweet days was broken for ever. Now with God's help he could do his work to the end. He went and stood in his doorway, leaning against the side. Was it a mere coincidence that the meadow- lark flew up just then from its grass-tuft, and came to the roof's comb overhead, where it lit with a light yet audible stroke of its feet and began fluting its tender, lonesome-sounding strain ? If Father Beret heard it he gave no sign of recognition ; very likely he was think ing about the cargo of liquor and how he could best counteract its baleful influence. He looked toward the "river house," as the inhabitants had named a large shanty, which stood on a bluff of the Wabash not far A Letter Irom Afar 27 from where the road-bridge at present crosses, and saw men gathering there. Meantime Rene de Ronville had delivered Madame Roussillon's letter with due promptness. Of course such a service demanded pie and claret. What still bet ter pleased him, Alice chose to be more amiable than was usually her custom when he called. They sat to gether in the main room of the house where M. Rotts- sillon kept his books, his curiosities of Indian manu facture collected here and there, and his surplus firearms, swords, pistols, and knives, ranged not ttn- pleasingly around the walls. Of course, along with the letter, Rene bore the news, so interesting to himself, of the boat's tempting cargo just discharged at the river house. Alice understood her friend's danger felt it in the intense enthusiasm of hi? voice and manner. She had once seen the men carousing on a similar occasion when she was but a child, and the impression then made still remained in her memory. Instinctively she resolved to hold Rene by one means or another away from the river house if possible. So she managed to keep him occupied eating pie, sipping watered claret and chatting until night came on and Madame Roussillon brought in a lamp. Then he hurridly snatched his cap from the floor beside him and got up to go. "Come and look at my handiwork," Alice quickly said ; "my shelf of pies, I mean." She led him to the pantry, where a dozen or more of the cherry pates were ranged in order. "I made every one of them this morning and baked them ; had them all out of the oven 28 Alice of Old Vincennes before the rain came up. Don't you think me a wonder of cleverness and industry? Father Beret was polite enough to flatter me; but you you just eat what you want and say nothing! You are not polite, Monsieur Rene de Ronville." "I've been showing you what I thought of your .goodies," said Rene; "eating's better than talking, you know ; so I'll just take one more," and he helped him self. "Isn't that compliment enough ?" "A few such would make me another hot day's work," she replied, laughing. "Pretty talk would be cheaper and more satisfactory in the long run. Even the flour in these pates I ground with my own hand in an Indian mortar. That was hard work too." By this time Rene had forgotten the river house and the liquor. With softening eyes he gazed at Alice's rounded cheeks and sheeny hair over which the light from the curious earthen lamp she bore in her hand flickered most effectively. He loved her madly; but his fear of her was more powerful than his love. She gave him no opportunity to speak what he felt, having ever ready a quick, bright change of mood and manner when she saw him plucking up courage to address her in a sentimental way. Their relations had long been somewhat familiar, which was but natural, considering their youth and the circumstances of their daily life; but Alice somehow had kept a certain distance open between them, so that very warm friendship could not suddenly resolve itself into a troublesome passion on Rene's part. We need not attempt to analyze a young girl's feel- A Letter from Afar 29 ing and motives in such a case ; what she does and what she thinks are mysteries even to her own understand ing. The influence most potent in shaping the rudi mentary character of Alice Tarleton (called Roussil- lon) had been only such as a lonely frontier post could generate. Her associations with men and women had, with few exceptions, been unprofitable in an educa tional way, while her reading in M. Roussillon's little library could not have given her any practical knowl edge of manners and life. She was fond of Rene de Ronville, and it would have been quite in accordance with the law of ordinary human forces, indeed almost the inevitable thing, for her to love and marry him in the fullness of time ; but her imagination was outgrowing her surroundings. Books had given her a world of romance wherein she moved at will, meeting a class of people far different from those who actually shared her experiences. Her day-dreams and her night-dreams partook much more of what she had read and imagined than of what she had seen and heard in the raw little world around her. Her affection for Rene was interfered with by her large admiration for the heroic, masterful aad mag netic knights who charged through the romances of the Roussillon collection. For although Rene was unques tionably brave and more than passably handsome, he had no armor, no war-horse, no shining lance and em bossed shield the difference, indeed, was great. Those who love to contend against the fatal drift of our age toward over-education could find in Alice Tar- kton, foster daughter of Gaspard Roussillon, a primi- 30 Alice of Old Vincennes tive example, an elementary case in point What couhi her book education do but set up stumbling blocks in the path of happiness ? She was learning to prefer the ideal to the real. Her soul was developing itself as best it could for the enjoyment of conditions and things absolutely foreign to the possibilities of her lot in life. Perhaps it was the light and heat of imagination, shining out through Alice's face, which gave her beauty such a fascinating power. Rene saw it and felt its electrical stroke send a sweet shiver through his heart, while he stood before her. "You are very beautiful to-night, Alice," he presently said, with a suddenness which took even her alertness by surprise. A flush rose to his dark face and imme diately gave way to a grayish pallor. His heart came near stopping on the instant, he was so shocked by his own daring ; but he laid a hand on her hair, stroking it softly. Just a moment she was at a loss, looking a trifle em barrassed, then with a merry laugh she stepped aside and said: "That sounds better, Monsieur Rene de Ronville much better ; you will be as polite as Father Beret aftei a little more training." She slipped past him while speaking and made her way back again to the main room, whence she called to him: "Come here, I've something to show you.** He obeyed, a sheepish trace on his countenance betraying his self-consciousness. When he came near Alice she was taking from its A Letter from Afar 31 buckhorn hook on the wall a rapier, one of a beautiful pair hanging side by side. "Papa Roussillon gave me these," she said with great animation. "He bought them of an Indian who had kept them a long time ; where he came across them he would not tell ; but look how beautiful ! Did you ever see anything so fine?" Guard and hilt were of silver ; the blade, although somewhat corroded, still showed the fine wavy lines of Damascus steel and traces of delicate engraving, while in the end of the hilt was set a large oval turquoise. "A very queer present to give a girl," said Rene; "what can you do with them?" A captivating flash of playfulness came into her face and she sprang backward, giving the sword a semi circular turn with her wrist. The blade sent forth a keen hiss as it cut the air close, very close to Rene's nose. He jerked his head and flung up his hand. She laughed merrily, standing beautifully poised be fore him, the rapier's point slightly elevated. Her short skirt left her feet and ankles free to show their graceful proportions and the perfect pose in which they held her supple body. "You see what I can do with the colechenutrde, eh, Monsieur Rene de Ronville!" she exclaimed, giving him a smile which fairly blinded him. "Notice how very near to your neck I can thrust and yet not touch it. Now !" She darted the keen point under his chin and drew it away so quickly that the stroke was like a glint of sunlight. 32 Alice of Old Vincennes "What do you think of that as a nice and accurate piece of skill?" She again resumed her pose, the right foot advanced, the left arm well back, her lissome, finely developed body leaning slightly forward. Rene's hands were up before his face in a defensive position, palms outward. Just then a chorus of men's voices sounded in the distance. The river house was beginning its carousal with a song. Alice let fall her sword's point and lis tened. Rene looked about for his cap. "I must be going," he said. Another and louder swish of the rapier made him pirouette and dodge again with great energy. "Don't," he cried, "that's dangerous; you'll put out my eyes ; I never saw such a girl !" She laughed at him and kept on whipping the air dangerously near his eyes, until she had driven him backward as far as he could squeeze himself into a corner of the room. Madame Roussillon came to the door from the kitch en and stood looking in and laughing, with her hands on her hips. By this time the rapier was making a criss-cross pattern of flashing lines close to the young man's head while Alice, in the enjoyment of her exer cise, seemed to concentrate all the glowing rays of her beauty in her face, her eyes dancing merrily. "Quit, now, Alice," he begged, half in fun and half in abject fear; "please quit I surrender!" She thrust to the wall on either side of him, then A Letter from Afar 33 springing lightly backward a pace, stood at guard. Her thick yellow hair had fallen over her neck and should ers in a loose wavy mass, out of which her face beamed with a bewitching effect upon her captive. Rene, glad enough to have a cessation of his peril, stood laughing dryly ; but the singing down at the river house was swelling louder and he made another move ment to go. "You surrendered, you remember," cried Alice, re newing the sword-play; "sit down on the chair there and make yourself comfortable. You are not going down yonder to-night ; you are going to stay here and talk with me and Mother Roussillon; we are lonesome and you are good company." A shot rang out keen and clear ; there was a sudden tumult that broke up the distant singing; and pres ently more firing at varying intervals cut the night air from the direction of the river. Jean, the hunchback, came in to say that there was a row of some sort ; he had seen men running across the common as if in pursuit of a fugitive; but the moon light was so' dim that he could not be sure what it all meant. Rene picked up his cap and bolted out of the house. CHAPTER III .THE RAPE OF THE DEMIJOHN The row down at the river house was more noise than fight, so far as results seemed to indicate. It was all about a small dame Jeanne of fine brandy, which an Indian by the name of Long-Hair had seized and run off with at the height of the carousal. He must have been soberer than his pursuers, or naturally fleeter ; for not one of them could catch him, or even keep long in sight of him. Some pistols were emptied while the race was on, and two or three of the men swore roundly to hav ing seen Long-Hair jump side wise and stagger, as if one of the shots had taken effect. But, although the moon was shining, he someway disappeared, they could not understand just how, far down beside the river below the fort and the church. It was not a very uncommon thing for an Indian to steal what he wanted, and in most cases light punish ment followed conviction ; but it was felt to be a capi tal offense for an Indian or anybody else to rape a demijohn of fine brandy, especially one sent as a pres ent, by a friend in New Orleans, to Lieutenant Gov ernor Abbott, who had until recently been the com mandant of the post. Every man at the river house rec ognized and resented the enormity of Long-Hair's crime and each was, for the moment, ready to be his judge and his executioner. He had broken at once every rule of frontier etiquette and every bond of syra- Ob The Rape of the Demijohn 35 pathy. Nor was Long-Hair ignorant of the danger involved in his daring enterprise. He had beforehand carefully and stolidly weighed all the conditions, and true to his Indian nature, had concluded that a little wicker covered bottle of brandy was well worth the risk of his life. So he had put himself in condition for a great race by slipping out and getting rid of his weapons and all surplus weight of clothes. This incident brought the drinking bout at the river house to a sudden end ; but nothing further came of it that night, and no record of it would be found in these pages, but for the fact that Long-Hair afterwards be came an important character in the stirring historical drama which had old Vincennes for its center of energy. Rene de Ronville probably felt himself in bad luck when he arrived at the river house just too late to share in the liquor or to join in chasing the bold thief. He lis tened with interest, however, to the story of Long- Hair's capture of the commandant's demijohn and could not refrain from saying that if he had been pres ent there would have been a quite different result. "I would have shot him before he got to that door," he said, drawing his heavy flint-lock pistol and going through the motions of one aiming quickly and firing. Indeed, so vigorously in earnest was he with the pan tomime, that he actually did fire, unintentionally of course, the ball burying itself in the door-jamb. He was laughed at by those present for being more excited than they who witnessed the whole thing. One of them, a leatherv-faced and grizzled old sinner, 36 Alice of Old Vincennes leered at him contemptuously and said in queer French, with a curious accent caught from long use of back woods English : "Listen how the boy brags! Ye might think, to hear Rene talk, that he actually amounted to a big pile." This personage was known to every soul in Vin cennes as Oncle Jazon, and when Oncle Jazon spoke the whole town felt bound to listen. "An' how well he shoots, too," he added with an intolerable wink ; "aimed at the door and hit the post. Certainly Long-Hair would have been in great danger ! O yes, he'd 'ave killed Long-Hair at the first shot, wouldn't he though !" Oncle Jazon had the air of a large man, but the stature of a small one ; in fact he was shriveled bodily to a degree which suggested comparison with a sun- dried wisp of hickory bark ; and when he chuckled, as he was now doing, his mouth puckered itself until it looked like a scar on his face. From cap to moccasins he had every mark significant of a desperate character ; and yet there was about him something that instantly commanded the confidence of rough men, the look of self -sufficiency and superior capability always to be found in connection with immense will power. His sixty years of exposure, hardship, and danger seemed to have but toughened his physique and strengthened his vitality. Out of his small hazel eyes gleamed a light as keen as ice. "All right, Oncle Jazon," said Rene laughing and blowing the smoke out of his pistol ; " 'twas you all tt The Rape of the Demijohn 37 same who let Long-Hair trot off with the Governor's brandy, not I. If you could have hit even a door-post it might have been better." Oncle Jazon took off his cap and looked down into it in a way he had when about to say something final. "Ventrebleu! I did not shoot at Long-Hair at all," he said, speaking slowly, "because the scoundrel was unarmed. He didn't have on even a knife, and he was havin' enough to do dodgin' the bullets that the rest of 'em were plumpin' at 'im without any compliments from me to bother 'im more." "Well," Rene replied, turning away with a laugh, "if I'd been scalped by the Indians, as you have, I don't think there would be any particular reason why I should wait for an Indian thief to go and arm himself before I accepted him as a target." Oncle Jazon lifted a hand involuntarily and rubbed his scalpless crown ; then he chuckled with a grotesque grimace as if the recollection of having his head skinned were the funniest thing imaginable. "When you've killed as many of 'em as Oncle Jazon has," remarked a bystander to Rene, "you'll not be so hungry for blood, maybe." "Especially after ye've took fifty-nine scalps to pay for yer one," added Oncle Jazon, replacing his cap over the hairless area of his crown. The men who had been chasing Long-Hair presently came straggling back with their stories each had a distinct one of how the fugitive escaped. They were wild looking fellows, most of them somewhat intoxi cated, all profusely liberal with their stock of pictur- 387825 38 Alice of Old Vincennes esque profanity. They represented the roughest ele ment of the well-nigh lawless post. "I'm positive that he's wounded," said one. "Jacques and I shot at him together, so that our pistols sounded just as if only one had been fired bang! that way and he leaped sideways for all the world like a bird with a broken leg. I thought he'd fall; but ve! he ran faster'n ever, and all at once he was gone ; just disappeared." "Well, to-morrow we'll get him," said another. "You and I and Jacques, we'll take up his trail, the thief, and follow him till we find him. He can't get off so easy." "I don't know so well about that;" said another; "it's Long-Hair, you must remember, and Long-Hair is no common buck that just anybody can find asleep. You know what Long-Hair is. Nobody's ever got even with 'im yet. That's so, ain't it ? Just ask Oncle Jazon, if you don't believe it !" The next morning Long-Hair was tracked to the river's edge. He had been wounded, but whether seriously or not could only be conjectured. A sprinkle of blood, here and there quite a dash of it, reddened the grass and clumps of weeds he had run through, and ended close to the water into which it looked as if he had plunged with a view to baffling pursuit. Indeed pursuit was baffled. No further trace could be found, by which to follow the cunning fugitive. Some of the men consoled themselves by saying, without believing, that Long-Hair was probably lying drowned at the bottom of the river. The Rape of the Demijohn 39 "Pus du tout," observed Oncle Jazon, his short pipe askew far over in the corner of his mouth, "not a bit of it is that Indian drowned. He's jes' as live as a fat cat this minute, and as drunk as the devil. He'll get some o' yer scalps yet after he's guzzled all that brandy and slep' a week," It finally transpired that Oncle Jazon was partly right and partly wrong. Long-Hair was alive, even as a fat cat, perhaps ; but not drunk, for in trying to swim ivith the rotund little dame Jeanne under his arm he lost hold of it and it went to the bottom of the Wabash, where it may be lying at this moment patiently waiting for some one to fish it out of its bed deep in the sand and mud, and break the ancient wax from its neck ! Rene de Ronville, after the chase of Long-Hair had been given over, went to tell Father Beret what had happened, and finding the priest's hut empty turned in to the path leading to the Roussillon place, which was at the head of a narrow street laid out in a direction at right angles to the river's course. He passed two or three diminutive cabins, all as much alike as bee-hives. Each had its squat veranda and thatched or clap- boarded roof held in place by weight-poles ranged in roughly parallel rows, and each had the face of the wall under its veranda neatly daubed with a grayish stucco made of mud and lime. You may see such houses to day in some remote parts of the Creole country of Louisiana. As Rene passed along he spoke with a gay French freedom to the dames and lasses who chanced to be vis ible. His air would be regarded as violently brigand- 40 Alice of Old Vincennes ish in our day ; we might even go so far as to think his whole appearance comical. His jaunty cap with a tail that wagged as he walked, his short trousers and leg- gins of buckskin, and his loose shirt-like tunic, drawn in at the waist with a broad belt, gave his strong figure just the dash of wildness suited to the armament with which it was weighted. A heavy gun lay in the hollow of his shoulder under which hung an otter-skin bullet- pouch with its clear powder-horn and white bone charger. In his belt were two huge flint-lock pistols and a long case-knife. "Bon four, Ma'm'selle Adrienne," he cheerily called, waving his free hand in greeting to a small, dark lass standing on the step of a veranda and indolently swing ing a broom. "Comment allez-vous auj ourd'hui?" "J'm'porte tres bien, merci, Mo'sieu Rene," was the quick response ; "et vous?" "Oh, I'm as lively as a cricket." "Going a hunting?" "No, just up here a little way just on business up to Mo'sieu Roussillon's for a moment." "Yes," the girl responded in a tone indicative of something very like spleen, "yes, undoubtedly, Mo'sieu de Ronville ; your business there seems quite pressing of late. I have noticed your industrious application to that business." "Ta-ta, little one," he wheedled, lowering his voice ; "you mustn't go to making bug-bears out of nothing." "Bug-bears!" she retorted, "you go on about your business and I'll attend to mine," and she flirted into the house. The Rape of the Demijohn 41 Rene laughed under his breath, standing a moment as if expecting her to come out again ; but she did not, and he resumed his walk singing softly "Elle a les joues vermeilles, vermeilles, Ma belle, ma belle petite." But ten to one he was not thinking of Madamoiselle Adrienne Bourcier. His mind, however, must have been absorbingly occupied; for in the straight, open way he met Father Beret and did not see him until he came near bumping against the old man, who stepped aside with astonishing agility and said "'Dieu vous benisse, mon fits; but what is your great hurry where can you be going in such happy haste?" Rene did not stop to parley with the priest. He flung some phrase of pleasant greeting back over his shoulder as he trudged on, his heart beginning a tattoo against his ribs when the Roussillon place came in sight, and he took hold of his mustache to pull it, as some men must do in moments of nervousness and bash fulness. If sounds ever have color, the humming in his ears was of a rosy hue ; if thoughts ever exhale fragrance, his brain overflowed with the sweets of violet and heliotrope. He had in mind what he was going to say when Alice and he should be alone together. It was a pretty speech, he thought ; indeed a very thrilling little speech, by the way it stirred his own nerve-centers as he conned it over. 42 Alice of Old Vincennes Madame Roussillon met him at the door in not a very good humor. "Is Mademoiselle Alice here?" he ventured to de mand. "Alice? no, she's not here; she's never here just when I want her most. Via le picbois et la grive see the woodpecker and the robin eating the cherries, eating every one of them, and that girl running off somewhere instead of staying here and picking them," she railed in answer to the young man's polite inquiry. "I haven't seen her these four hours, neither her nor that rascally hunchback, Jean. They're up to some mischief, I'll be bound!" Madame Roussillon puffed audibly between phrases ; but she suddenly became very mild when relieved of her tirade. "Mais entres," she added in a pleasant tone, "come in and tell me the news." Rene's disappointment rushed into his face, but he managed to laugh it aside. "Father Beret has just been telling me," said Ma dame Roussillon, "that our friend Long-Hair made some trouble last night. How about it?" Rene told her what he knew and added that Long- Hair would probably never be seen again. "He was shot, no doubt of it," he went on, "and is now being nibbled by fish and turtles. We tracked him by his blood to where he jumped into the Wabash. He never came out." Strangely enough it happened that, at the very time of this chat between Madame Roussillon and Rene, The Rape of the Demijohn 43 Alice was bandaging Long-Hair's wounded leg with strips of her apron. It was under some willows which overhung the bank of a narrow and shallow lagoon or slough, which in those days extended a mile or two back into the country on the farther side of the river. Alice and Jean went over in a pirogue to see if the water lilies, haunting a pond there, were yet beginning to bloom. They landed at a convenient spot some distance up the little lagoon, made the boat fast by dragging its prow high ashore, and were on the point of setting out across a neck of wet, grassy land to the pond, when a deep grunt, not unlike that of a self- satisfied pig, attracted them to the willows, where they discovered Long-Hair, badly wounded, weltering in some black mud. His hiding-place was cunningly chosen, save that the mire troubled him, letting him down by slow degrees, and threatening to engulf him bodily ; and he was now too weak to extricate himself. He lifted his head and glared. His face was grimy, his hair matted with mud. Alice, although brave enough and quite accustomed to startling experiences, uttered a cry when she saw those snaky eyes glistening so savagely amid the shad ows. But Jean was quick to recognize Long-Hair; he had often seen him about town, a figure not to be forgotten. "They've been hunting him everywhere," he said in a half whisper to Alice, clutching the skirt of her dress. "It's Long-Hair, the Indian who stole the brandy; I know him." Alice recoiled a pace or two. 44 Alice of Old Vincennes "Let's go back and tell 'em," Jean added, still whis pering, "they want to kill him ; Oncie Jazon said so. Come on!" He gave her dress a jerk; but she did not move any farther back ; she was looking at the blood oozing from a wound in the Indian's leg. "He is shot, he is hurt, Jean, we must help him," she presently said, recovering her self-control, yet still pale. "We must get him out of that bad place." Jean caught Alice's merciful spirit with sympathetic readiness, and showed immediate willingness to aid her. It was a difficult thing to do; but there was a will and of course a way. They had knives with which they cut willows to make a standing place on the mud. While they were doing this they spoke friendly words to Long-Hair, who understood French a little, and at last they got hold of his arms, tugged, rested, tugged again, and finally managed to help him to a dry place, still under the willows, where he could lie more at ease. Jean carried water in his cap with which they washed the wound and the stolid savage face. Then Alice tore up her cotton apron, in which she had hoped to bear home a load of lilies, and with the strips bound the wound very neatly. It took a long time, during which the Indian remained silent and apparently quite indifferent. Long-Hair was a man of superior physique, tall, straight, with the muscles of a Vulcan ; and while he lay stretched on the ground half clad and motionless, he would have been a grand model for an heroic figure The Rape of the Demijohn 45 ia bronze. Yet from every lineament there came a strange repelling influence, like that from a snake. Alice felt almost unbearable disgust while doing her merciful task ; but she bravely persevered until it was finished. It was now late in the afternoon, and the sun would be setting before they could reach home. "We must hurry back, Jean," Alice said, turning to depart. "It will be all we can do to reach the other side in daylight. I'm thinking that they'll be out hunting for us too, if we don't move right lively. Come." She gave the Indian another glance when she had taken but a step. He grunted and held up something in his hand something that shone with a dull yellow light. It was a small, oval, gold locket which she had always worn in her bosom. She sprang and snatched it from his palm. "Thank you," she exclaimed, smiling gratefully. "I am so glad you found it." The chain by which the locket had hung was broken, doubtless by some movement while dragging Long- Hair out of the mud, and the lid had sprung open, exposing a miniature portrait of Alice, painted when she was a little child, probably not two years old. It was a sweet baby face, archly bright, almost sur rounded with a fluff of golden hair. The neck and the upper line of the plump shoulders, with a trace of richly delicate lace and a string of pearls, gave some how a suggestion of patrician daintiness. Long-Hair looked keenly into Alice's eyes, whe 46 Alice of Old Vincennes she stooped to take the locket from his hand, but said nothing. She and Jean now hurried away, and, so vigorously did they paddle the pirogue, that the sky was yet red in the west when they reached home and duly received their expected scolding from Madame Roussillon. Alice sealed Jean's lips as to their adventure; for she had made up her mind to save Long-Hair if pos sible, and she felt sure that the only way to do it would be to trust no one but Father Beret. It turned out that Long-Hair's wound was neither a broken bone nor a cut artery. The flesh of his leg, midway between the hip and the knee, was pierced;, the bullet had bored a neat hole clean through. Father Beret took the case in hand, and with no little surgical skill proceeded to set the big Indian upon his feet again. The affair had to be cleverly managed. Food, medicines and clothing were surreptitiously borne across the river ; a bed of grass was kept fresh under Long-Hair's back ; his wound was regularly dressed ; and finally his weapons a tomahawk, a knife, a strong bow and a quiver of arrows which he had hidden on the night of his bold theft, were brought to him. "Now go and sin no more," said good Father Beret ; but he well knew that his words were mere puffs of articulate wind in the ear of the grim and silent sav age, who limped away with an air of stately dignity into the wilderness. A load fell from Alice's mind when Father Beret informed her of Long-Hair's recovery and departure. Day and night the dread lest some of the men should The Rape of the Demijohn 47 find out his hiding-place and kill him had depressed and worried her. And now, when it was all over, there still hovered like an elusive shadow in her conscious ness a vague haunting impression of the incident's im mense significance as an influence in her life. To feel that she had saved a man from death was a new sen sation of itself ; but the man and the circumstances were picturesque ; they invited imagination ; they furnished an atmosphere of romance dear to all young and healthy natures, and somehow stirred her soul with a strange appeal. Long-Hair's imperturbable calmness, his stolid, im mobile countenance, the mysterious reptilian gleam of his shifty black eyes, and the soulless expression al ways lurking in them, kept a fascinating hold on the girl's memory. They blended curiously with the im pressions left by the romances she had read in M. Roussillon's mildewed books. Long-Hair was not a young man ; but it would have been impossib'e to guess near his age. His form and face simply showed long experience and immeasurable vigor. Alir^ remembered with a shuddering sensa tion the look he gave her when she took the locket from his hand. It was \>f but a second's duration, yet it seemed to search every nook of her being with its subtle power. Romancers have made much of their Indian heroes, picturing them as models of manly beauty and nobility ; but all fiction must be taken with liberal pinches of salt. The plain truth is that dark savages of the pure blood often do possess the magnetism of perfect physi- 48 Alice of Old Vincennes cal development and unfathomable mental strangeness ; but real beauty they never have. Their innate re- pulsiveness is so great that, like the snake's charm, it may fascinate; yet an indescribable, haunting disgust goes with it. And, after all, if Alice had been asked to tell just how she felt toward the Indian she had labored so hard to save, she would promptly have said : "I loathe him as I do a toad!" Nor would Father Beret, put to the same test, have made a substantially different confession. His work, to do which his life went as fuel to fire, was training the souls of Indians for the reception of divine grace ; but experience had not changed his first impression of savage character. When he traveled in the wilder ness he carried the Word and the Cross ; but he was also armed with a gun and two good pistols, not to mention a dangerous knife. The rumor prevailed that Father Beret could drive a nail at sixty yards with his rifle, and at twenty snuff a candle with either one of his pistol?. CHAPTER IV THE FIRST MAYOR OF VINCENNES Governor Abbott probably never so much as heard of the dame Jeanne of French brandy sent to him by his Creole friend in New Orleans. He had been gone from Vincennes several months when the batteau ar rived, having been recalled to Detroit by the British authorities ; and he never returned. Meantime the lit tle post with its quaint cabins and its dilapidated block house, called Fort Sackville, lay sunning drowsily by the river in a blissful state of helplessness from the military point of view. There was no garrison; the two or three pieces of artillery, abandoned and exposed, gathered rust and cobwebs, while the pickets of the stockade, decaying and loosened in the ground by win ter freezes and summer rains, leaned in all directions, a picture of decay and inefficiency. The inhabitants of the town, numbering about six hundred, lived very much as pleased them, without any regular municipal government, each family its own tribe, each man a law unto himself; yet for mutual protection, they all kept in touch and had certain com mon rights which were religiously respected and de fended faithfully. A large pasturing ground was fenced in where the goats and little black cows of the villagers browsed as one herd, while the patches of wheat, corn and vegetables were not inclosed at all. A few of the thriftier and more important citizens, 49 5o Alice of Old Vincennes however, had separate estates of some magnitude, sur rounding their residences, kept up with care and, if the time and place be taken into account, with considerable show of taste. Monsieur Gaspard Roussillon was looked upon as the aristocrat par excellence of Vincennes, notwith standing the fact that his name bore no suggestion of noble or titled ancestry. He was rich and in a measure educated ; moreover the successful man's patent of leadership, a commanding figure and a suave manner, came always to his assistance when a crisis presented itself. He traded shrewdly, much to his own profit, but invariably with the excellent result that the man, white or Indian, with whom he did business felt himself especially favored in the transaction. By the exercise of firmness, prudence, vast assumption, florid eloquence and a kindly liberality he had greatly endeared himself to the people ; so that in the absence of a military commander he came naturally to be regarded as the chief of the town, Mo'sieu' le maire. He returned from his extended trading expedition about the middle of July, bringing, as was his invari able rule, a gift for Alice. This time it was a small, thin disc of white flint, with a hole in the center through which a beaded cord of sinew was looped. The edge of the disc was beautifully notched and the whole surface polished so that it shone like glass, while the beads, made of very small segments of porcupine quills, were variously dyed, making a curiously gaudy show of bright colors. "There now, ma cherie, is something worth fifty The First Mayor of Vincennes 51 times its weight in gold," said M. Roussillon when he presented the necklace to his foster daughter with pardonable self-satisfaction. "It is a sacred charm- string given me by an old heathen who would sell his soul for a pint of cheap rum. He solemnly informed me that whoever wore it could not by any possibility be killed by an enemy." Alice kissed M. Roussillon. "It's so curious and beautiful," she said, holding it up and drawing the variegated string through her fingers. Then, with her mischievous laugh, she added ; "and I'm glad it is so powerful against one's enemy; I'll wear it whenever I go where Adrienne Bourcier is, see if I don't!" "Is she your enemy? What's up between you and la petite Adrienne, eh?" M. Roussillon lightly de manded. "You were always the best of good friends, I thought. What's happened?" "Oh, we are good friends," said Alice, quickly, "very good friends, indeed ; I was but chaffing." "Good friends, but enemies; that's how it is with women. Who's the young man that's caused the cool ness ? I could guess, maybe !" He laughed and winked knowingly. "May I be so bold as to name him at a venture?" "Yes, if you'll be sure to mention Monsieur Rene de Ronville," she gayly answered. "Who but he could work Adrienne up into a perfect green mist of jeal ousy ?" "He would need an accomplice, I should imagine ; a 52 Alice of Old Vincennes young lady of some beauty and a good deal of heart- lessness." "Like whom, for example?" and she tossed her bright head. "Not me, I am sure." "Poh ! like every pretty maiden in the whole world, ma petite coquette; they're all alike as peas, cruel as blue jays and as sweet as apple-blossoms." He stroked her hair clumsily with his large hand, as a heavy and roughly fond man is apt to do, adding in an almost serious tone : "But my little girl is better than most of them, not a foolish mischief-maker, I hope." Alice was putting her head through the string of beads and letting the translucent white disc fall into her bosom. "It's time to change the subject," she said ; "tell me what you have seen while away. I wish I could go far off and see things. Have you been to Detroit, Quebec, Montreal?" "Yes, I've been to all, a long, hard journey, but reasonably profitable. You shall have a goodly dot when you get married, my child." "And did you attend any parties and balls?" she inquired quickly, ignoring his concluding remark. "Tell me about them. How do the fine ladies dress, and do they wear their hair high with great big combs ? Do they have long skirts and " "Hold up, you double-tongued chatterbox !" he inter - rupted ; "I can't answer forty questions at once. Yes, I danced till my legs ached with women old and girls potmg ; but how could I remember how they were The First Mayor of Vincennes 53 dressed and what their style of coiffure was? I know ihat silk rustled and there was a perfume of eau de Cologne and mignonette and my heart expanded and blazed while I whirled like a top with a sweet lady in my arms." "Yes, you must have cut a ravishing figure!" in terpolated Madame Roussillon with emphatic dis approval, her eyes snapping. "A bull in a lace shop. How delighted the ladies must have been !" "Never saw such blushing faces and burning glances such fluttering breasts, such " "Big braggart," Madame Roussillon broke in con temptuously, "it's a piastre to a sou that you stood gawping in through a window while gentlemen and ladies did the dancing. I can imagine how you looked I can !" and with this she took her prodigious bulk at a waddling gait out of the room. "I remember how you danced even when you were not clumsy as a pig on ice!" she shrieked back over her shoulder. "Parbleu! true enough, my dear," he called after her, "I should think you could you mind how we used to trip it together. You were the prettiest dancer of them all, and the young fellows all went to the swords about you!" "But tell me more/' Alice insisted ; "I want to knov all about what you saw in the great towns in the fine houses how the ladies looked, how they acted what they said the dresses they wore how " "del! you will split my ears, child; can't you fill my pipe and bring it to me with a coal on it? Then I'll try to tell you what I can," he cried, assuming a 54 Alice of Old Vincennes humorously resigned air. "Perhaps if I smoke I can remember everything." Alice gladly ran to do what he asked. Meantime Jean was out on the gallery blowing a flute that M. Roussillon had brought him from Quebec. The pipe well filled and lighted apparently did have the effect to steady and encourage M. Roussillon's mem ory ; or if not his memory, then his imagination, which was of that fervid and liberal sort common to natives of the Midi, and which has been exquisitely depicted by the late Alphonse Daudet in Tartar in and Bom- pard. He leaned far back in a strong chair, with his massive legs stretched at full length, and gazed at the roof -poles while he talked. He sympathized fully, in his crude way, with Alice's lively curiosity, and his affection for her made him anxious to appease her longing after news from the great outside world. If the sheer truth must come out, however, he knew precious little about that world, especially the polite part of it in which thrived those femininities so dear to the heart of an isolated and imaginative girl. Still, as he, too, lived in Arcadia, there was no great effort involved when he undertook to blow a dreamer's flute. In the first place he had not been in Quebec or Mon treal during his absence from home. Most of the time he had spent disposing of pelts and furs at Detroit and in extending his trading relations with other posts ; but what mattered a trifling want of facts when his merid ional fancy once began to warm up? A smattering of social knowledge, gained at first hand in his youth- they discovered Long-Hair badly-wounded p. 43- The First Mayor of Vincennes 55 ful days in France while he was a student whose par ents fondly expected him to conquer the world, came to his aid, and besides he had saturated himself all his life with poetry and romance. Scudery, Scarron, Pre- vost, Madame La Fayette and Calprenede were the chief sources of his information touching the life and manners, morals and gayeties of people who, as he supposed, stirred the surface of that resplendent and far-off ocean called society. Nothing suited him bet ter than to smoke a pipe and talk about what he had seen and done; and the less he had really seen and done the more he had to tell. His broad, almost over-virile, kindly and contented face beamed with the warmth of wholly imaginary recollections while he recounted with minute circum stantiality to the delighted Alice his gallant adventures in the crowded and brilliant ball-rooms of the French- Canadian towns. The rolling burr of his bass voice, deep and resonant, gave force to the improvised de scriptions. Madame Roussillon heard the heavy booming and presently came softly back into the door from the kitchen to listen. She leaned against the facing in an attitude of ponderous attention, a hand on her bulging hip. She could not suppress her unbounded admira tion of her liege lord's manly physique, and jealous to fierceness as she was of his experiences so eloquently and picturesquely related, her woman's nature took fire with enjoyment of the scenes described. This is the mission of the poet and the romancer to sponge out of existence, for a time, the stiff, refrac- 56 Alice of Old Vincennes tory, and unlovely realities and give in their place a scene of ideal mobility and charm. The two women reveled in Gaspard Roussillon's revelations. They saw the brilliant companies, the luxurious surround ings, heard the rustle of brocade and the fine flutter of laces, the hum of sweet voices, breathed in the wafts of costly perfumeries, looked on while the danc ers whirled and flickered in the confusion of lights; and over all and through all poured and vibrated such ravishing music as only the southern imagination could have conjured up out of nothing. Alice was absolutely charmed. She sat on a low wooden stool and gazed into Gaspard Roussillon's face with dilating eyes in which burned that rich and radi ant something we call a passionate soul. She drank in his flamboyant stream of words with a thirst which nothing but experience tould ever quench. He felt her silent applause and the admiring involuntary ab sorption that possessed his wife; the conscious ness of his elementary magnetism augmented the flow of his fine descriptions, and he went on and on, until the arrival of Father Beret put an end to it all. The priest, hearing of M. Roussillon's return, had come to inquire about some friends living at Detroito He took luncheon with the family, enjoying the down right refreshing collation of broiled birds, onions, meal- cakes and claret, ending with a dish of blackberries and cream. M. Ronssillon seized the first opportunity to resume his successful romancing, and presently in the midst The First Mayor of Vincennes 57 of the meal began to tell Father Beret about what he had seen in Quebec. "By the way," he said, with expansive casualness in his voice, "I called upon your old-time friend and co adjutor, Father Sebastien, while up there. A noble old man. He sent you a thousand good messages. Was mightily delighted when I told him how happy and hale you have always been here. Ah, you should have seen his dear old eyes full of loving tears. He would walk a hundred miles to see you, he said, but never expected to in this world. Blessings, blessings upon dear Father Beret, was what he murmured in my ear when we were parting. He says that he will never leave Quebec until he goes to his home above ah!" The way in which M. Roussillon closed his little speech, his large eyes upturned, his huge hands clasped in front of him, was very effective. "I am under many obligations, my son," said Father Beret, "for what you tell me. It was good of you to remember my dear old friend and go to him for his loving messages to me. I am very, very thankful. Help me to another drop of wine, please." Now the extraordinary feature of the situation was that Father Beret had known positively for nearly five years that Father Sebastien was dead and buried. "Ah, yes," M. Roussillon continued, pouring the claret with one hand and making a pious gesture with the other; "the dear old man loves you and prays for you ; his voice quavers whenever he speaks of you." "Doubtless he made his old joke to you about the 58 Alice of Old Vincennes birth-mark on my shoulder," said Father Beret after a moment of apparently thoughtful silence. "He may have said something about it in a playful way, eh?" "True, true, why yes, he surely mentioned the same," assented M. Roussillon, his face assuming an expres sion of confused memory; "it was something sly and humorous, I mind; but it just escapes my recollection. A right jolly old boy is Father Sebastien ; indeed very amusing at times." "At times, yes," said Father Beret, who had no birth-mark on his shoulder, and had never had one there, or on any other part of his person. "How strange!" Alice remarked, "I, too, have a mark on my shoulder a pink spot, just like a small, five-petaled flower. We must be of kin to each other, Father Beret." The priest laughed. "If our marks are alike, that would be some evi dence of kinship," he said. "But what shape is yours, Father?" "I've never seen it," he responded. "Never seen it! Why?" "Well, it's absolutely invisible," and he chuckled heartily, meantime glancing shrewdly at M. Roussillon out of the tail of his eye. "It's on the back part of his shoulder," quickly spoke up M. Roussillon, "and you know priests never use looking-glasses. The mark is quite invisible therefore, so far as Father Beret is concerned !" "You never told me of your birth-mark before, my daughter," said Father Beret, turning to Alice with The First Mayor of Vincennes 59 sudden interest. "It may some day be good fortune to you." "Why so, Father?" "If your family name is really Tarleton, as you sup pose from the inscription on your locket, the birth mark, being of such singular shape, would probably identify you. It is said that these marks run regularly in families. With the miniature and the distinguish ing birth-mark you have enough to make a strong case should you once find the right Tarleton family." "You talk as they write in novels," said Alice. "I've read about just such things in them. Wouldn't it be grand if I should turn out to be some great per sonage in disguise !" The mention of novels reminded Father Beret of that terrible book, Manon Lescaut, which he last saw in Alice's possession, and he could not refrain from men tioning it in a voice that shuddered. "Rest easy, Father Beret," said Alice; "that is one novel I have found wholly distasteful to me. I tried to read it, but could not do it. I flung it aside in utter disgust. You and mother Roussillon are welcome to hide it deep as a well, for all I care. I don't enjoy reading about low, vile people and hopeless unfortu nates; I like sweet and lovely heroines and strong, high-souled, brave heroes." "Read about the blessed saints, then, my daughter; you will find in them the true heroes and heroines of this world," said Father Beret. M. Roussillon changed the subject, for he always somehow dreaded to have the good priest fall into the 60 Alice of Old Vincennes strain of argument he was about to begin. A stray sheep, no matter how refractory, feels a touch of longing when it hears the shepherd's voice. M. Rous- sillon was a Catholic, but a straying one, who avoided the confessional and often forgot mass. Still, with all his reckless independence, and with all his outward show of large and breezy self-sufficiency, he was not altogether free from the hold that the church had laid upon him in childhood and youth. Moreover, he was fond of Father Beret and had done a great deal for the little church of St. Xavier and the mission it represented; but he distinctly desired to be let alone while he pursued his own course ; and he had promised the dying woman who gave Alice to him that the child should be left as she was, a Protestant, without undue influence to change her from the faith of her parents. This promise he had kept with stubborn persistence and he meant to keep it as long as he lived. Perhaps the very fact that his innermost conscience smote him with vague yet telling blows at times for this departure from the strict religion of his fathers, may have in tensified his resistance of the influence constantly exerted upon Alice by Father Beret and Madame Rous- sillon, to bring her gently but surely to the church. Perverseness is a force to be reckoned with in all orig inal characters. A few weeks had passed after M. Roussillon's re turn, when that big-hearted man took it into his head to celebrate his successful trading ventures with a moonlight dance given without reserve to all the inhab itants of Vincennes. It was certainly a democratic The First Mayor of Vincennes 61 function that he contemplated, and motley to a most picturesque extent. Rene de Ronville called upon Alice a day or two previous to the occasion and duly engaged her as his partenaire; but she insisted upon having the engage ment guarded in her behalf by a condition so obviously fanciful that he accepted it without argument. "If my wandering knight should arrive during the dance, you promise to stand aside and give place to him," she stipulated. "You promise that? You see I'm expecting him all the time. I dreamed last night that he came on a great bay horse and, stooping, whirled me up behind the saddle, and away we went !" There was a childish, half bantering air in her look ; but her voice sounded earnest and serious, notwith standing its delicious timbre of suppressed playfulness. "You promise me?" she insisted. "Oh, I promise to slink away into a corner and chew my thumb, the moment he comes," Rene eagerly as sented. "Of course I'm taking a great risk, I know ; for lords and barons and knights are very apt to appear suddenly in a place like this." "You may banter and make light if you want to," she said, pouting admirably. "I don't care. All the same the laugh will jump to the other corner of your mouth, see if it doesn't. They say that what a person dreams about and wishes for and waits for and believes in, will come true sooner or later." "If that's so," said Rene, "you and I will get mar ried; for I've dreamed it every night of the year, wished for it, waited for it and believed in it, and " 62 Alice of Old Vincennes It was a madly sudden rush. He made it on an im pulse quite irresistible, as hypnotized persons are said to do in response to the suggestion of the hypnotist, and his heart was choking his throat before he could end his speech. Alice interrupted him with a hearty burst of laughter. "A very pretty twist you give to my words, I must declare," she said; "but not new by any means. Little Adrienne Bourcier could tell you that. She says that you have vowed to her over and over that you dream , about her, and wish for her, and wait for her, pre cisely as you have just said to me." Rene's brown face flushed to the temples, partly with anger, partly with the shock of mingled surprise and fear. He was guilty, and the guilt showed in his eyes and paralyzed his tongue, so that he sat there before Alice with his under jaw sagging ludicrously. "Don't you rather think, Monsieur Rene de Ron- ville," she presently added in a calmly advisory tone, "that you had better quit trying to say such foolish things to me, and just be my very good friend? If you don't, I do, which comes to the same thing. What's more, I won't be your partenaire at the dance unless you promise me on your word of honor that you will dance two dances with Adrienne to every one that you have with me. Do you promise?" He dared not oppose her outwardly, although in his heart resistance amounted to furious revolt and riot. "I promise anything you ask me to," he said re signedly, almost sullenly ; "anything for you." "Well, I ask nothing whatever on my own account," The First Mayor of Vincennes 63 Alice quickly replied; "but I do tell you firmly that you shall not maltreat little Adrienne Bourcier and re main a friend of mine. She loves you, Rene de Ron- ville, and you have told her that you love her. If you are a man worthy of respect you will not desert her. Don't you think I am right?" Like a singed and crippled moth vainly trying to rise once again to the alluring yet deadly flame, Rene de Ronville essayed to break out of his embarrass ment and resume equal footing with the girl so sud denly become his commanding superior; but the effort disclosed to him as well as to her that he had fallen to rise no more. In his abject defeat he accepted the terms dictated by Alice and was glad when she adroitly changed her manner and tone in going on to discuss the approaching dance. "Now let me make one request of you," he de manded after a while. "It's a small favor ; may I ask it?" "Yes, but I don't grant it in advance." "I want you to wear, for my sake, the buff gown which they say was your grandmother's." "No, I won't wear it." "But why, Alice?" "None of the other girls have anything like such a dress; it would not be right for me to put it on and make them all feel that I had taken the advantage of them, just because I could ; that's why." "But then none of them is beautiful and educated like you," he said; "you'll outshine them anyway." "Save your compliments for poor pretty little 64 Alice of Old Vincennes Adrienne," she firmly responded, "I positively do not wish to hear them. I have agreed to be your partenaire at this dance of Papa Roussillon's, but it is understood between us that Adrienne is your sweet heart. I am not, and I'm not going to be, either. So for your sake and Adrienne's, as well as out of consideration for the rest of the girls who have no fine dresses, I am not going to wear the buff brocade gown that belonged to Papa Roussillon's mother Iqng ago. I shall dress just as the rest do." It is safe to say that Rene de Ronville went home with a troublesome bee in his bonnet. He was not a bad-hearted fellow. Many a right good young man, before him and since, has loved an Adrienne and been dazzled by an Alice. A violet is sweet, but a rose is the garden's queen. The poor youthful frontiersman ought to have been stronger; but he was not, and what have we to say? As for Alice, since having a confidential talk with Adrienne Bourcier recently, she had come to realize what M. Roussillon meant when he said: "But my little girl is better than most of them, not a foolish mischief-maker, I hope." She saw through the situ ation with a quick understanding of what Adrienne might suffer should Rene prove permanently fickle. The thought of it aroused all her natural honesty and serious nobleness of character, which lay deep under the almost hoydenish levity usually observable in her manner. Crude as her sense of life's larger significance was, and meager as had been her experience in the things which count for most in the sum of a young The First Mayor of Vincennes 65 girl's existence under fair circumstances, she grasped intuitively the gist of it all. The dance did not come off ; it had to be postponed indefinitely on account of a grave change in the political relations of the little post. A day or two before the time set for that function a rumor ran through the town that something of importance was about to happen. Father Gibault, at the head of a small party, had arrived from Kaskaskia, far away on the Mississippi, with the news that France and the American Colonies had made common cause against the English in the great war of which the people of Vincennes neither knew the cause nor cared a straw about the outcome. It was Oncle Jazon who came to the Roussillon place to tell M. Roussillon that he was wanted at the river house. Alice met him at the door. "Come in, Oncle Jazon," she cheerily said, "you are getting to be a stranger at our house lately. Come in ; what news do you bring ? Take off your cap and rest your hair, Oncle Jazon." The scalpless old fighter chuckled raucously and bowed to the best of his ability. He not only took off his queer cap, but looked into it with a startled gaze, as if he expected something infinitely dangerous to jump out and seize his nose. "A thousand thanks, Ma'm'selle," he presently said, "will ye please tell Mo'sieu' Roussillon that I would wish to see J im?" "Yes, Oncle Jazon; but first be seated, and let me offer you just a drop of eau de vie; some that Papa 66 Alice ot Old Vmcennes Roussillon brought back with him from Quebec. He says it's old and fine." She poured him a full glass, then setting the bottle on a little stand, went to find M. Roussillon. While she was absent Oncle Jazon improved his opportunity! to the fullest extent. At least three additional glasses of the brandy went the way of the first. He grinned atrociously and smacked his corrugated lips ; -but when Gaspard Roussillon came in, the old man was sitting at some distance from the bottle and glass gazing in differently out across the veranda. He told his story curtly. Father Gibault, he said, had sent him to ask M. Roussillon to come to the river house, as he had news of great importance to communicate. "Ah, well, Oncle Jazon, we'll have a nip of brandy together before we go," said the host. "Why;, yes, jes' one agin' the broilin' weather," assented Oncle Jazon ; "I don't mind jes' one." "A very rich friend of mine in Quebec gave me this brandy, Oncle Jazon," said M. Roussillon, pouring the liquor with a grand flourish; "and I thought of you as soon as I got it. Now, says I to myself, if any man knows good brandy when he tastes it, it's Oncle Jazon, and I'll give him a good chance at this bottle just the first of all my friends." "It surely is delicious," said Oncle Jazon, "very de licious." He spoke French with a curious accent, having spent long years with English-speaking fron tiersmen in the Carolinas and Kentucky, so that their lingo had become his own. As they walked side by side down the way to the The First Mayor of Vmcennes 67 river house they looked like typical extremes of rough, Sun-burned and weather-tanned manhood ; Oncle Jazon a wizened, diminutive scrap, wrinkled and odd in every respect; Gaspard Roussillon towering six feet two, wide shouldered, massive, lumbering, muscular, a giant with long curling hair and a superb beard. They did not know that they were going down to help dedicate the great Northwest to freedom. CHAPTER V FATHER GIBAULT. Great movements in the affairs of men are like tides of the seas which reach and affect the remotest and quietest nooks and inlets, imparting a thrill and a swell of the general motion. Father Gibault brought the wave of the American Revolution to Vincennes. He was a simple missionary ; but he was, besides, a man of great worldly knowledge and personal force. Colonel George Rogers Clark made Father Gibault's acquaint ance at Kaskaskia, when the fort and its garrison sur rendered to his command, and, quickly discerning the fine qualities of the priest's character, sent him to the post on the Wabash to win over its people to the cause of freedom and independence. Nor was the task assumed a hard one, as Father Gibault probably well knew before he undertook it. A few of the leading men of Vincennes, presided over by Gaspard Roussillon, held a consultation at the river house, and it was agreed that a mass meeting should be called bringing all of the inhabitants to gether in the church for the purpose of considering the course to be taken under the circumstances made known by Father Gibault. Oncle Jazon constituted himself an executive committee of one to stir up a noise for the occasion. It was a great day for Vincennes. The volatile temperament of the French frontiersmen bubbled over 8 Father Gibault 69 with enthusiasm at the first hint of something new and revolutionary in which they might be expected to take part. Without knowing in the least what it was that Father Gibault and Oncle Jazon wanted of them, they were all in favor of it at a venture. Rene de Ronville, being an active and intelligent young man, was sent about through the town to let everybody know of the meeting. In passing he stepped into the cabin of Father Beret, who was sit ting on the loose puncheon floor, with his back turned toward the entrance and so absorbed in trying to put together a great number of small paper fragments that he did not hear or look up. "Are you not going to the meeting, Father?" Rene bluntly demanded. In the hurry that was on him he did not remember to be formally polite, as was his habit. The old priest looked up with a startled face. At the same time he swept the fragments of paper to gether and clutched them hard in his right hand. "Yes, yes, my son yes I am going, but the time has not yet come for it, has it ?" he stammered. "Is it late?" He sprang to his feet and appeared confused, as if caught in doing something very improper. Rene wondered at this unusual behavior, but merely said: "I beg pardon, Father Beret, I did not mean to dis turb you," and went his way. Father Beret stood for some minutes as if dazed, then squeezed the paper fragments into a tight ball, 7O Alice of Old Vincennes just as they were when he took them from under the floor some time before Rene came in, and put it in his pocket. A little later he was kneeling, as we have seen him once before, in silent yet fervent prayer, his clasped hands lifted toward the crucifix on the wall, "Jesus, give me strength to hold on and do my work," he murmured beseechingly, "and oh, free thy poor servant from bitter temptation." Father Gibault had come prepared to use his elo quence upon the excitable Creoles, and with consider able cunning he addressed a motley audience at the church, telling them that an American force had taken Kaskaskia and would henceforth hold it; that France had joined hands with the Americans against the Brit ish, and that it was the duty of all Frenchmen to help uphold the cause of freedom and independence. "I come," said he, "directly from Colonel George Rogers Clark, a noble and brave officer of the Amer ican army, who told me the news that I have brought to you. He sent me here to say to you that if you will give allegiance to his government you shall be protected against all enemies and have the full free dom of citizens. I think you should do this without a moment's hesitation, as I and my people at Kas kaskia have already done. But perhaps you would like to have a word from your distinguished fellow- citizen, Monsieur Gaspard Roussillon. Speak to your friends, my son, they will be glad to take counsel of your wisdom." There was a stir and a craning of necks. M. Rous sillon presently appeared near the little chancel, his Father Gibault 71 great form towering majestically. He bowed and waved his hand with the air of one who accepts distinc tion as a matter of course; then he took his big silver watch and looked at it. He was the only man in Vincennes who owned a watch, and so the incident was impressive. Father Gibault looked pleased, and already a murmur of applause went through the audi ence. M. Roussillon stroked the bulging crystal of the time-piece with a circular motion of his thumb and bowed again, clearing his throat resonantly, his face growing purplish above his beard. "Good friends," he said, "what France does all high- class Frenchmen applaud." He paused for a shout of approbation, and was not disappointed. "The other name for France is glory," he added, "and all true Frenchmen love both names. I am a true Frenchman !" and he struck his breast a resounding blow with the hand that still held the watch. A huge horn button on his buckskin jerkin came in contact with the crystal, and there was a smash, followed by a scattered tinkling of glass fragments. All Vincennes stood breathless, contemplating the irreparable accident. M. Roussillon had lost the effect of a great period in his speech, but he was quick. Lifting the watch to his ear, he listened a moment with superb dignity, then slowly elevating his head and spreading his free hand over his heart he said : "The faithful time-piece still tells off the seconds, and the loyal heart of its owner still throbs with patri otism." Oncle Jazon, who stood in front of the speaker.- 72 Alice of Old Vincennes swung his shapeless cap as high as he could and yelled like a savage. Then the crowd went wild for a time. "Vive la France! A bas V Angleterre!" Everybody shouted at the top of his voice. "What France does we 1 all do," continued M. Rous- sillon, when the noise subsided. "France has clasped hands with George Washington and his brave com patriots; so do we." "Vive Zhorzh Vasinton!" shrieked Oncle Jazon ia a piercing treble, tiptoeing and shaking his cap reck lessly under M. Roussillon's nose. The orator winced and jerked his head back, but nobody saw it, save perhaps Father Gibault, who laughed heartily. Great sayings come suddenly, unannounced and un expected. They have the mysterious force of prophetic accident combined with happy economy of phrasing- The southern blood in M. Roussillon's veins was effer vescing upon his brain ; his tongue had caught the fine freedom and abandon of inspired oratory. He towered and glowed ; words fell melodiously from his lips ; his gestures were compelling, his visage magnetic. In con clusion he said: "Frenchmen, America is the garden-spot of the world and will one day rule it, as did Rome of old. Where freedom makes her home, there is the centre of power!" It was in a little log church on the verge of a hum mock overlooking a marshy wild meadow. Westward for two thousand miles stretched the unbroken prairies, woods, mountains, deserts reaching to the Pacific; Father Gibault 73 southward for a thousand miles rolled the green bil lows of the wilderness to the warm Gulf shore ; north ward to the pole and eastward to the thin fringe of settlements beyond the mountains, all was houseless solitude. If the reader should go to Vincennes to-day and walk southward along Second Street to its intersection with Church Street, the spot then under foot would be probably very near where M. Roussillon stood while uttering his great sentence. Mind you, the pres ent writer does not pretend to know the exact site of old Saint Xavier church. If it could be fixed beyond doubt the spot should have an imperishable monument of Indiana stone. When M. Roussillon ceased speaking the audience again exhausted its vocal resources; and then Father Gibault called upon each man to come forward and solemnly pledge his loyalty to the American cause. Not one of them hesitated. Meantime a woman was doing her part in the trans formation of Post Vincennes from a French-English picket to a full-fledged American fort and town. Ma dame Godere, finding out what was about to happen, fell to work making a flag in imitation of that under which George Washington was fighting. Alice chanced to be in the Godere home at the time and joined en thusiastically in the sewing. It was an exciting task. Their fingers trembled while they worked, and the thread, heavily coated with beeswax, squeaked as they drew it through the cloth. "We shall not be in time/' said Madame Godere; 74 Alice of Old Vincennes "I know we shall not. Everything hinders me. My thread breaks or gets tangled and my needle's so rusty I can hardly stick it through the cloth. O dear !" Alice encouraged her with both words and work, and they had almost finished when Rene came with a staff which he had brought from the fort. "Mon dieu, but we have had a great meeting !" he cried. He was perspiring with excitement and fast walking; leaning on the staff he mopped his face with a blue handkerchief. "We heard much shouting and noise," said Madame Godere. "M. Roussillon's voice rose loud above the rest. He roared like a lion." "Ah, he was speaking to us; he was very elo quent," Rene replied. "But now they are waiting at the fort for the new flag. I have come for it." "It is ready," said Madame Godere. With flying fingers Alice sewed it to the staff. "Void!" she cried, "vwe la republique Americaine!" She lifted the staff and let the flag droop over her from head to foot. "Give it to me," said Rene, holding forth a hand for it, "and I'll run to the fort with it." "No," said Alice, her face suddenly lighting up with resolve. "No, I am going to take it myself," and without a moment's delay off she went. Rene was so caught by surprise that he stood gazing after her until she passed behind a house, where the way turned, the shining flag rippling around her, and her moccasins twinkling as she ran. At the blockhouse, awaiting the moment when the Father Gibault 75 symbol of freedom should rise like a star over old Vincennes, the crowd had picturesquely broken into scattered groups. Alice entered through a rent in the stockade, as that happened to be a shorter route than through the gate, and appeared suddenly almost in their midst. It was a happy surprise, a pretty and catching spec tacular apparition of a sort to be thoroughly appreci ated by the lively French fancy of the audience. The men caught the girl's spirit, or it caught them, and they made haste to be noisy. "Via! Vial I'p'tite Alice et la banniere de Zhorzh Vasinton! (Look, look, little Alice and George Wash ington's flag!)" shouted Oncle Jazon. He put his wiry little legs through a sort of pas de zephyr and winked at himself with concentrated approval. All the men danced around and yelled till they were hoarse. By this time Rene had reached Alice's side ; but she did not see him; she ran into the blockhouse and climbed up a rude ladder-way; then she appeared on the roof, still accompanied by Rene, and planted the staff in a crack of the slabs, where it stood bravely up, the colors floating free. She looked down and saw M. Roussillon, Father Gibault and Father Beret grouped in the centre of the area. They were waving their hands aloft at her, while a bedlam of voices sent up applause which went through her blood like strong wine. She smiled radi antly, and a sweet flush glowed in her cheeks. No one of all that wild crowd could ever forget 76 Alice of Old Vincennes the picture sketched so boldly at that moment when, after planting the staff, Alice stepped back a space and stood strong and beautiful against the soft blue sky. She glanced down first, then looked up, her arms folded across her bosom. It was a pose as un consciously taken as that of a bird, and the grace of it went straight to the hearts of those below. She turned about to descend, and for the first time saw that Rene had followed her. His face was beam ing. "What a girl you are!" he exclaimed, in a tone of exultant admiration. "Never was there another like you!" Alice walked quickly past him without speaking; for down in the space where some women were huddled aside from the crowd, looking on, she had seen little Adrienne Bourcier. She made haste to descend. Now that her impulsively chosen enterprise was completed her boldness deserted her and she slipped out through a dilapidated postern opposite the crowd. On her right was the rh-er, while southward before her lay a great flat plain, beyond which rose some hillocks covered with forest. The sun blazed between masses of slowly drifting clouds that trailed creeping fantastic shadows across the marshy waste. Alice walked along under cover of the slight land- swell which then, more plainly marked than it is now, formed the contour line of hummock upon which the fort and village stood. A watery swale grown full of tall aquatic weeds meandered parallel with the bluff, so to call it, and there was a soft melancholy whisper- Father Gibault 77 ing of wind among the long blades and stems. She passed the church and Father Beret's hut and con tinued for some distance in the direction of that pretty knoll upon which the cemetery is at present so taste fully kept. She felt shy now, as if to run away and hide would be a great relief. Indeed, so relaxed were her nerves that a slight movement in the grass and cat-tail flags near by startled her painfully, making her jump like a fawn. "Little friend not be 'fraid," said a guttural voice in broken French. "Little friend not make noise." At a glance she recognized Long-Hair, the Indian, rising out of the matted marsh growth. It was a hideous vision of embodied cunning, soullessness and murderous cruelty. "Not tell white man you see me?" he grunted in terrogatively, stepping close to her. He looked so wicked that she recoiled and lifted her hands de fensively. She trembled from head to foot, and her voice failed her ; but she made a negative sign and smiled at him, turning as white as her tanned face could become. In his left hand he held his bow, while in his right he half lifted a murderous looking tomahawk. "What new flag mean?" he demanded, waving the bow's end toward the fort and bending his head down close to hers. "Who yonder?" "The great American Father has taken us under his protection," she explained. "We are big-knives now.** It almost choked her to speak. 78 Alice of Old Vincennes "Ugh! heap damn fools," he said with a dark scowl. ''Little friend much damn fool." He straightened up his tall form and stood leering at her for some seconds, then added : "Little friend get killed, scalped, maybe." The indescribable nobility of animal largeness, sym metry and strength showed in his form and attitude, but the expression of his countenance was absolutely repulsive cold, hard, beastly. He did not speak again, but turned quickly, and stooping low, disappeared like a great brownish red serpent in the high grass, which scarcely stirred as he moved through it. Somehow that day made itself strangely memor able to Alice. She had been accustomed to stirring scenes and sudden changes of conditions ; but this was the first time that she had ever joined actively in a public movement of importance. Then, too, Long- Hair's picturesque and rudely dramatic reappearance affected her imagination with an indescribable force. Moreover, the pathetic situation in the love affair be tween Rene and Adrienne had taken hold of her con science with a disturbing grip. But the shadowy sense of impending events, of which she could form no idea, was behind it all. She had not heard of Brandywine, Or Bunker Hill, or Lexington, or Concord ; but some thing like a waft of their significance had blown through her mind. A great change was coming into her idyllic life. She was indistinctly aware of it, as we sometimes are of an approaching storm, while yet the sky is sweetly blue and serene. When she reached Father Gibault 79 home the house was full of people to whom M. Rous- sillon, in the gayest of moods, was dispensing wine and brandy. "Vive Zhorzh Vasinton!" shouted Oncle Jazon as soon as he saw her. And then they all talked at once, saying flattering things about her. Madame Roussillon tried to scold as usual; but the lively chattering of the guests drowned her voice. "I suppose the American commander will send a garrison here," some one said to Father Gibault, "and repair the fort." "Probably," the priest replied, "in a very few weeks. Meantime we will garrison it ourselves." "And we will have M. Roussillon for commander," spoke up Rene de Ronville, who was standing by. "A good suggestion," assented Father Gibault ; "let us organize at once." Immediately the word was passed that there would be a meeting at the fort that evening for the purpose of choosing a garrison and a commander. Everybody went promptly at the hour set. M. Roussillon was elected Captain by acclamation, with Rene de Ronville as his Lieutenant. It was observed that Oncle Jazon had resumed his dignity, and that he looked into his cap several times without speaking. Meantime certain citizens, who had been in close relations with Governor Abbott during his stay, quiet' ly slipped out of town, manned a batteau and went up the river, probably to Ouiatenon first and then to 8o Alice of Old Vincennes Detroit. Doubtless they suspected that things might soon grow too warm for their comfort. It was thus that Vincennes and Fort Sackville first acknowledged the American Government and hoisted the flag which, as long as it floated over the blockhouse, was lightly and lovingly called by every one la banniere d' Alice Roussillon. Father Gibault returned to Fort Kaskaskia and a lit tle later Captain Leonard Helm, a jovial man, but past the prime of life, arrived at Vincennes with a com mission from Col. Clark authorizing him to super sede M. Roussillon as commander, and to act as Indian agent for the American Government in the Department of the Wabash. He was welcomed by the villagers, and at once made himself very pleasing to them by adapting himself to their ways and entering heartily into their social activities. M. Roussillon was absent when Captain Helm and his party came. Rene de Ronville, nominally in com mand of the fort, but actually enjoying some excellent grouse shooting with a bell-mouthed old fowling piece on a distant prairie, could not be present to deliver up the post; and as there was no garrison just then visible, Helm took possession, without any formalities. "I think, Lieutenant, that you'd better look around through the village and see if you can scare up this Captain what's-his-name," said the new commander to a stalwart young officer who had come with him. "I can't think of these French names without getting my brain in a twist. Do you happen to recollect the Cap tain's name, Lieutenant ?" Father Gibault 81 "Yes, sir; Gaspard Roussillon it reads in Colonel Clark's order ; but I am told that he's away on a trading tour," said the young man, "You may be told anything by these hair-tongued parlyvoos," Helm remarked. "It won't hurt, anyway, to find out where he lives and make a formal call, just for appearance sake, and to enquire about his health,, I wish you would try it, sir, and let me know the result." The Lieutenant felt that this was a peremptory order and turned about to obey promptly. "And I say, Beverley, come back sober, if you possi bly can," Helm added in his most genial tone, thinking it a great piece of humor to suggest sobriety to a man whose marked difference from men generally, of that time, was his total abstinence from intoxicating drinks. Lieutenant Fitzhugh Beverley was a Virginian of Virginians. His family had long been prominent in colonial affairs and boasted a record of great achieve ments both in peace and in war. He was the only son of his parents and heir to a fine estate consisting of lands and slaves ; but, like many another of the restless young cavaliers of the Old Dominion, he had come in search of adventure over into Kentucky, along the path blazed by Daniel Boone; and when Clark organized his little army, the young man's patriotic and chival rous nature leaped at the opportunity to serve his coun try under so gallant a commander. Beverley was not a mere youth, although yet some what under thirty. Educated abroad and naturally of a thoughtful and studious turn, he had enriched his mind 82 Alice of Old Vincennes far beyond the usual limit among young Americans oi the very best class in that time; and so he appeared older than he really was: an effect helped out by his large and powerful form and grave dignity of bearing. Clark, who found him useful in emergencies, cool, in trepid, daring to a fault and possessed of excellent judgement, sent him with Helm, 'hoping that he would offset with his orderly attention to details the somewhat go-as-you-please disposition of that excellent officer. Beverley set out in search of the French command er's house, impressed with no particular respect foi him or his office. Somehow Americans of Anglo- Saxon blood were slow to recognize any good qualities whatever in the Latin Creoles of the West and South. It seemed to them that the Frenchman and the Span iard were much too apt to equalize themselves socially and matrimonially with Indians and negroes. The very fact that for a century, while Anglo-American.* had been in constant bloody warfare with savages, Frenchmen had managed to keep on easy and highly profitable trading terms with them, tended to confirm the worst implication. "Eat frogs and save your scalp," was a bit of contemptuous frontier humor indicative of what sober judgement held in reserve on the subject. Intent upon his formal mission, Lieutenant Beverley stalked boldly into the inclosure at Roussillon place and was met on the gallery by Madame Roussillon in one of her worst moods. She glared at him with her hands on her hips, her mouth set irritably aslant upward, her eyebrows gathered into a dark knot over her nose. It would be hard to imagine a more forbidding counte*- Father Gibault 83 nance ; and for supplementary effect out popped httnch- back Jean to stand behind her, with his big head lying back in the hollow of his shoulders and his long chin, elevated, while he gawped intently up into Beverley's face. "Bon jour, Madame," said the Lieutenant, lifting his hat and speaking with a pleasant accent. "Would it be agreeable to Captain Roussillon for me to see him a moment ?" Despite Beverley's cleverness in using the French language, he had a decided brusqueness of manner and a curt turn of voice not in the least Gallic. True, the soft Virginian intonation marked every word, and his obeisance was as low as if Madame Roussillon had been a queen ; but the light French grace was wholly lacking. "What do you want of my husband?" Madame Roussillon demanded. "Nothing unpleasant, I assure you, Madame," said Beverley. "Well, he's not at home, Mo'sieu ; he's up the river for a few days. She relaxed her stare, untied her eyebrows, and even let fall her hands from her shelf-like hips. "Thank you, Madame," said Beverley, bowing again, "1 am sorry not to have seen him." As he was turning to go a shimmer of brown hair streaked with gold struck upon his vision from just within the door. He paused, as if in response to a military command, while a pair of gray eyes met his with a flash. The cabin room was ill lighted ; but the crepuscular dimness did not seem to hinder his sight. 84 Alice of Old Vincennes Beyond the girl's figure, a pair of slender swords hung crossed aslant on the wall opposite the low door. Beverley had seen, in the old world galleries, pictures in which the shadowy and somewhat uncertain back ground thus forced into strongest projection the main figure, yet without clearly defining it. The rough frame o f the doorway gave just the rustic setting suited to Alice's costume, the most striking part of which was a grayish short gown ending just above her fringed buckskin moccasins. Around her head she had bound a blue kerchief, a wide corner of which lay over her crown like a loose cap. Her bright hair hung free upon her shoulders in tumbled half curls. As a picture, the figure and its entourage might have been artistically effective ; but as Beverley saw it in actual life the first impression was rather embarrassing. Somehow he felt almost irresistibly invited to laugh, though he had never been much given to risibility. The blending, or rather the juxtaposition, of extremes a face, a form immediately witching, and a costume odd to grotes- query had made an assault upon his comprehension at once so sudden and so direct that his dignity came near being disastrously broken up. A splendidly beau tiful child comically clad would have made much the same half delightful, half displeasing impression. Beverley could not stare at the girl, and no sooner had he turned his back upon her than the picture in his mind changed like a scene in a kaleidoscope. He now saw a tall, finely developed figure and a face delicately oval, with a low, wide forehead, arched brows, a straight, slightly tip-tilted nose, a mouth sweet and Father Gibault 85 dimpled cheeks, and a strong chin set above a faultless throat. His imagination, in casting off its first im pression, was inclined to exaggerate Alice's beauty arid to dwell upon its picturesqueness. He smiled as he walked back to the fort, and even found himself whis tling gayly a snatch from a rollicking fiddle-tune that he had heard when a boy. CHAPTER VI A FENCING BOUT A few days after Helm's arrival, M. Roussillon re turned to Vincennes, and if he was sorely touched in his amour propre by seeing his suddenly acquired mili tary rank and title drop away, he did not let it be known to his fellow citizens. He promptly called upon the new commander and made acquaintance with Lieuten ant Fitzhugh Beverley, who just then was superintend ing the work of cleaning up an old cannon in the fort and mending some breaks in the stockade. Helm formed a great liking for the big Frenchman^ whose breezy freedom of manner and expansive good humor struck him favorably from the beginning. M. Roussillon's ability to speak English with considerable ease helped the friendship along, no doubt ; at all events their first interview ended with a hearty show of good fellowship, and as time passed they became almost in separable companions during M. Roussillon's periods of rest from his trading excursions among the Indians. They played cards arid brewed hot drinks over which they told marvelous stories, the latest one invariably; surpassing all its predecessors. Helm had an eye to business, and turned M. Rous sillon's knowledge of the Indians to valuable account, so that he soon had very pleasant relations with most of the tribes within reach of his agents. This gave a feeling of great security to the people of Vincennes. 86 A Fencing Bout 87 They pursued their narrow agricultural activities with excellent results and redoubled those social gayeties which, even in hut and cabin under all the adverse con ditions of extreme frontier life, were dear to the volatile and genial French temperament. Lieutenant Beverley found much to interest him in the quaint town ; but the piece de resistance was Oncle Jazon, who proved to be both fascinating and unman ageable; a hard nut to crack, yet possessing a kernel absolutely original in flavor. Beverley visited him one evening in his hut it might better be called den a curiously built thing, with walls of vertical poles set in a quadrangular trench dug in the ground, and roofed with grass. Inside and out it was plastered with clay, and the floor of dried mud was as smooth and hard as concrete paving. In one end there was a wide fire place grimy with soot, in the other a mere peep hole for a window ; a wooden bench, a bed of skins and two or three stools were barely visible in the gloom. In the doorway Oncle Jazon sat whittling a slender billet of hickory into a ramrod for his long flint-lock American rule. "Maybe ye know Simon Kenton," said the old man, after he and Beverley had conversed for a while., "see ing that you are from Kentucky eh ?" "Yes, I do know him well; he's a warm personal friend of mine," said Beverley with quick interest, for it surprised him that Oncle Jazon should know any thing about Kenton. "Do you know him, Monsieur Jazon?" Oncle Jazon winked conceitedly and sighted along 88 Alice of Old Vincennes his rudimentary ramrod to see if it was straight; then puckering his lips, as if on the point of whistling, made an affirmative noise quite impossible to spell. "Well, I'm glad you are acquainted with Kenton," said Beverley. "Where did you and he come to gether?" Oncle Jazon chuckled reminiscently and scratched the skinless, cicatrized spot where his scalp had once flourished. "Oh, several places," he answered. "Ye see thet hair a hangin' there on the wall?" He pointed at a dry wisp dangling under a peg in a log barely visible by the bad light. "Well, thet's my scalp, he ! he ! he !" He snickered as if the fact were a most enjoyable joke. "Simon Kenton can tell ye about thet little affair ! The Indians thought I was dead, and they took my hair; but I wasn't dead; I was just a givin' 'em a 'possum act. When they was gone I got up from where I was a layin* and trotted off. My head was sore and ventrebleu! but I was mad, he ! he ! he !" All this time he spoke in French, and the English but poorly paraphrases his odd turns of expression. His grimaces and grunts cannot even be hinted. It was a long story, as Beverley received it, told scrappily, but with certain rude art. In the end Oncle Jazon said with unctuous self-satisfaction : "Accidents will happen. I got my chance at that damned Indian who skinned my head, and I jes took a bead on 'im with my old rifle. I can't shoot much, never could, but I happened to hit 'im square in the lef eye, what I shot at, and it was a hundred yards. A Fencing Bout 89 Down he tumbles, and I runs to 'im and finds my same old scalp a hangin' to his belt. Well, I lifted off his hair with my knife, and untied mine from the belt, and then I had both scalps, he! he! he! You ask Simon Kenton when ye see 'im. He was along at the same time, and they made 'im run the ga'ntlet and pretty nigh beat the life out o' 'im. Ventrebleu!" Beverley now recollected hearing Kenton tell the same grim story by a camp-fire in the hills of Ken tucky. Somehow it had caught a new spirit in the French rendering, which linked it with the old tales of adventure that he had read in his boyhood, and it sud denly endeared Oncle Jazon to him. The rough old scrap of a man and the powerful youth chatted to gether until sundown, smoking their pipes, each feeling for what was best in the other, half aware that in the future they would be tested together in the fire of wild adventure. Every man is more or less a prophet at certain points in his life. Twilight and moonlight were blending softly when Beverley, on his way back to the fort, departing from a direct course, went along the river's side southward to have a few moments of reflective strolling within reach of the water's pleasant murmur and the town's indef inite evening stir. Rich sweetness, the gift of early autumn, was on the air blowing softly out of a lilac west and singing in the willow fringe that hung here and there over the bank. On the farther side of the river's wide flow, swollen by recent heavy rains, Beverley saw a pirogue, in one end of which a dark figure swayed to the strokes of a 90 Alice of Old Vincennes paddle. The slender and shallow little craft was bobbing on the choppy waves and taking a zig-zag course among floating logs and masses of lighter drift wood, while making slow but certain headway toward the hither bank. Beverley took a bit of punk and a flint and steel from his pocket, relit his pipe and stood watching the skilful boatman conduct his somewhat dangerous voy age diagonally against the rolling current. It was a shifting, hide-and-seek scene, its features appearing and disappearing with the action of the waves and the doubtful light reflected from fading clouds and sky. Now and again the man stood up in his skittish pi rogue, balancing himself with care to use a short pole in shoving driftwood out of his way; and more than once he looked to Beverley as if he had plunged head long into the dark water. The spot, as nearly as it can be fixed, was about two hundred yards below where the public road-bridge at present spans the Wabash. The bluff was then far dif ferent from what it is now, steeper and higher, with less silt and sand between it and the water's edge. Indeed, swollen as the current was, a man could stand on the top of the bank and easily leap into the deep water. At a point near the middle of the river a great mass of drift-logs and sand had long ago formed a bar rier which split the stream so that one current came heavily shoreward on the side next the town and swashed with its muddy foam, making a swirl and eddy just below where Beverley stood. The pirogue rounded the upper angle of this ob- A Fencing Bout 91 struction, not without difficulty to its crew of one, and swung into the rapid shoreward rush, as was evidently planned for by the steersman, who now paddled against the tide with all his might to keep from being borne too far down stream for a safe landing place. Beverley stood at ease idly and half dreamily looking on, when suddenly something caused a catastrophe, which for a moment he did not comprehend. In fact the man in the pirogue came to grief, as a man in a pirogue is very apt to do, and fairly somersaulted overboard into the water. Nothing serious would have threatened (for the man could swim like an otter) had not a floating, half submerged log thrust up some short, stiff stumps of boughs, upon the points of which the man struck heavily and was not only hurt, but had his clothes impaled securely by one of the ugly spears, so that he hung in a helpless position, while the water's motion alternately lifted and submerged him, his arms beating about wildly. When Beverley heard a strangling cry for help, he pulled himself promptly together, flung off his coat, as if by a single motion, and leaped down the bank into the water. He was a swimmer whose strokes counted for all that prodigious strength and excellent training could afford; he rushed through the water with long sweeps, making a semicircle, rounding against the current, so as to swing down upon the drowning man. Less than a half-hour later a rumor by some means spread throughout the town that Father Beret and Lieutenant Beverley were drowned in the Wabash. But when a crowd gathered to verify the terrible news 92 Alice of Old Vincennes it turned out to be untrue. Gaspard Roussillon had once more distinguished himself by an exhibition of heroic nerve and muscle. "Ventrebleu! Quel homme!" exclaimed Oncle Ja- zon, when told that M. Roussillon had come up the bank of the Wabash with Lieutenant Beverley under one arm and Father Beret under the other, both men apparently dead. "Bring them to my house immediately," M. Rous sillon ordered, as soon as they were restored to con sciousness ; and he shook himself, as a big wet animal sometimes does, covering everybody near him with muddy water. Then he led the way with melodramatic strides. In justice to historical accuracy there must be a trifling reform of what appeared on the face of things to be grandly true. Gaspard Roussillon actually dragged Father Beret and Lieutenant Beverley one at a time out of the eddy water and up the steep river bank. That was truly a great feat ; but the hero never explained. When men arrived h? was standing be tween the collapsed forms, panting and dripping. Doubtless he looked just as if he had dropped them from under his arms, and why shouldn't he have the benefit of a great implication ? "I've saved them both/' he roared ; from which, or course, the ready Creole imagination inferred the ex treme of possible heroic performance. "Bring them to my house immediately," and it was accordingly done. The procession, headed by M. Roussillon, moved A Fencing Bout 93 noisily, for the French tongue must shake off what comes to it on the thrill of every exciting moment. The only silent Frenchman is the dead one. Father Beret was not only well-nigh drowned, but seriously hurt. He lay for a week on a bed in M. Rous- sillon's house before he could sit up. Alice hung over him night and day, scarcely sleeping or eating until he was past all danger. As for Beverley, he shook off all the effects of his struggle in a little while. Next day he was out, as well and strong as ever, busy with the affairs of his office. Nor was he less happy on account of what the little adventure had cast into his experience. It is good to feel that one has done an unselfish deed, and no young man's heart repels the freshness of what comes to him when a beautiful girl first enters his life. Naturally enough Alice had some thoughts of Bev erley while she was so attentively caring for Father Beret. She had never before seen a man like him, nor had she read of one. Compared with Rene de Ronville, the best youth of her acquaintance, he was in every way superior; this was too evident for analysis; but referred to the romantic standard taken out of the novels she had read, he somehow failed; and yet he loomed bravely in her vision, not exactly a knight of the class she had most admired, still unquestionably a hero of large proportions. Beverley stepped in for a few minutes every day to see Father Beret, involuntarily lengthening his visit by a sliding ratio as he became better acquainted. He began to enjoy the priest's conversation, with its sly worldly wisdom cropping up through fervid religious