n air, however, he quickly regained his activity of both mind
and body, and looked in all directions. The clouds were breaking into
parallel masses with streaks of sky between. The moon hanging aslant
against the blue peeped forth just in time to show him a flying figure
which, even while he looked, reached the postern, opened it and slipped
through.

With but a breath of hesitation between giving the alarm and following
Alice silently and alone, he chose the latter. He was a swift runner
and light footed. With a few bounds he reached the little gate, which
was still oscillating on its hinges, darted through and away, straining
every muscle in desperate pursuit, gaining rapidly in the race, which
bore eastward along the course twice before chosen by Alice in leaving
the stockade.

CHAPTER XVII.

A MARCH THROUGH COLD WATER

On the fifth day of February, 1779, Colonel George Rogers Clark led an
army across the Kaskaskia River and camped. This was the first step in
his march towards the Wabash. An army! Do not smile. Fewer than two
hundred men, it is true, answered the roll-call, when Father Gibault
lifted the Cross and blessed them; but every name told off by the
company sergeants belonged to a hero, and every voice making response
struck a full note in the chorus of freedom's morning song.

It was an army, small indeed, but yet an army; even though so rudely
equipped that, could we now see it before us, we might wonder of what
use it could possibly be in a military way.

We should nevertheless hardly expect that a hundred and seventy of our
best men, even if furnished with the latest and most deadly engines of
destruction, could do what those pioneers cheerfully undertook and
gloriously accomplished in the savage wilderness which was to be the
great central area of the United States of America.

We look back with a shiver of awe at the three hundred Spartans for
whom Simonides composed his matchless epitaph. They wrought and died
gloriously; that was Greek. The one hundred and seventy men, who, led
by the backwoodsman, Clark, made conquest of an empire's area for
freedom in the west, wrought and lived gloriously; that was American.
It is well to bear in mind this distinction by which our civilization
separates itself from that of old times. Our heroism has always been of
life--our heroes have conquered and lived to see the effect of
conquest. We have fought all sorts of wars and have never yet felt
defea