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
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 'im?"

"Yes, Oncle Jazon; but first be seated, and let me offer you just a
drop of eau de vie; some that Papa 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 indifferently 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