her. With them appeared also Simon Kenton, greatly to the delight of
Oncle Jazon, who had worried much about his friend since their latest
fredaine--as he called it--with the Indians. Meantime an expedition
under Captain Helm had been sent up the river with the purpose of
capturing a British flotilla from Detroit.

Gaspard Roussillon, immediately after Clark's victory, thought he saw a
good opening favorable to festivity at the river house, for which he
soon began to make some of his most ostentatious preparations. Fate,
however, as usual in his case, interfered. Fate seemed to like pulling
the big Frenchman's ear now and again, as if to remind him of the
fact--which he was apt to forget--that he lacked somewhat of
omnipotence.

"Ziff! Je vais donner un banquet a tout le moonde, moi!" he cried,
hustling and bustling hither and thither.

A scout from up the river announced the approach of Philip Dejean with
his flotilla richly laden, and what little interest may have been
gathering in the direction of M. Roussillon's festal proposition
vanished like the flame of a lamp in a puff of wind when this news
reached Colonel Clark and became known in the town.

Beverley and Alice sat together in the main room of the Roussillon
cabin--you could scarcely find them separated during those happy
days--and Alice was singing to the soft tinkle of a guitar, a Creole
ditty with a merry smack in its scarcely intelligible nonsense. She
knew nothing about music beyond what M. Roussillon, a jack of all
trades, had been able to teach her,--a few simple chords to accompany
her songs, picked up at hap-hazard. But her voice, like her face and
form, irradiated witchery. It was sweet, firm, deep, with something
haunting in it--the tone of a hermit thrush, marvelously pure and
clear, carried through a gay strain like the mocking-bird's. Of course
Beverley thought it divine; and when a message came from Colonel Clark
bidding him report for duty at once, he felt an impulse toward mutiny
of the rankest sort. He did not dream that a military expedition could
be on hand; but upon reaching headquarters, the first thing he heard
was:

"Report to Captain Helm. You are to go with him up the river and
intercept a British force. Move lively, Helm is waiting for you,
probably."

There was no time for explanations. Evidently Clark expected neither
questions nor delay. Beverley's love of adventure and his patriotic
desire to serve his country came to his