will not
permit it. Shoot the next man that offers to do such a thing!"

One of the creole youths, a handsome, swarthy Adonis in buckskin,
tossed his shapely head with a debonair smile and said:

"To be sure, mon Colonel! but what have they been doing to us? We have
amused them all winter; it's but fair that they should give us a little
fun now."

Clark shrugged his broad shoulders and passed on. He understood
perfectly what the people of Vincennes had suffered under Hamilton's
brutal administration.

At nine o'clock an order was passed to cease firing, and a flag of
truce was seen going from Clark's headquarters to the fort. It was a
peremptory demand for unconditional surrender. Hamilton refused, and
fighting was fiercely resumed from behind rude breastworks meantime
erected. Every loop-hole and opening of whatever sort was the focus
into which the unerring backwoods rifles sent their deadly bullets. Men
began to fall in the fort, and every moment Hamilton expected an
assault in force on all sides of the stockade. This, if successful,
would mean inevitable massacre. Clark had warned him of the terrible
consequences of holding out until the worst should come. "For," said he
in his note to the Governor, "if I am obliged to storm, you may depend
upon such treatment as is justly due to a murderer."

Historians have wondered why Hamilton became so excited and acted so
strangely after receiving the note. The phrase, "justly due to a
murderer," is the key to the mystery. When he read it his heart sank
and a terrible fear seized him. "Justly due to a murderer!" ah, that
calm, white, beautiful girlish face, dead in the moonlight, with the
wisp of shining hair across it! "Such treatment as is justly due to a
murderer!" Cold drops of sweat broke out on his forehead and a shiver
went through his body.

During the truce Clark's weary yet still enthusiastic besiegers enjoyed
a good breakfast prepared for them by the loyal dames of Vincennes.
Little Adrienne Bourcier was one of the handmaidens of the occasion.
She brought to Beverley's squad a basket, almost as large as herself,
heaped high with roasted duck and warm wheaten bread, while another
girl bore two huge jugs of coffee, fragrant and steaming hot. The men
cheered them lustily and complimented them without reserve, so that
before their service was over their faces were glowing with delight.

And yet Adrienne's heart was uneasy, and full of longing to hear
something