rit.
Then while the converts recounted how God had chastened and saved
them,--
Children whose golden locks yet shone with the lingering effulgence
Of the touches of Him who blessed little children forever,--
Old men whose yearning eyes were dimmed with the far-streaming
brightness
Seen through the opening gates in the heart of the heavenly city,--
Stealthily through the harking woods the lengthening shadows
Chased the wild things to their nests, and the twilight died into
darkness.

Now the four great pyres that were placed there to light the encampment,
High on platforms raised above the people, were kindled.
Flaming aloof, as if from the pillar by night in the Desert,
Fell their crimson light on the lifted orbs of the preachers,
On the withered brows of the old men, and Israel's mothers,
On the bloom of youth, and the earnest devotion of manhood,
On the anguish and hope in the tearful eyes of the mourners.
Flaming aloof, it stirred the sleep of the luminous maples
With warm summer-dreams, and faint, luxurious languor.
Near the four great pyres the people closed in a circle,
In their midst the mourners, and, praying with them, the exhorters,
And on the skirts of the circle the unrepentant and scorners,--
Ever fewer and sadder, and drawn to the place of the mourners,
One after one, by the prayers and tears of the brethren and sisters,
And by the Spirit of God, that was mightily striving within them,
Till at the last alone stood Louis Lebeau, unconverted.

Louis Lebeau, the boatman, the trapper, the hunter, the fighter,
From the unlucky French of Gallipolis he descended,
Heir to Old-World want and New-World love of adventure.
Vague was the life he led, and vague and grotesque were the rumors
Wherethrough he loomed on the people, the hero of mythical hearsay,--
Quick of hand and of heart, _insouciant_, generous, Western,--
Taking the thought of the young in secret love and in envy.
Not less the elders shook their heads and held him for outcast,
Reprobate, roving, ungodly, infidel, worse than a Papist,
With his whispered fame of lawless exploits at St. Louis,
Wild affrays and loves with the half-breeds out on the Osage,
Brawls at New-Orleans, and all the towns on the rivers,
All the godless towns of the many-ruffianed rivers.
Only she that loved him the best of all, in her loving,
Knew him the best of all, and other than that of t