e off our backs."

"Tony Lamarche," drawled a Virginian, "you don't know what you're
talking about. You haven't e'er a slave to your name; and you don't own
a foot of the Territory. As for your hide, it wouldn't make a drumhead
nohow. So what are you dancin' about?"

"If I got no land, I got some of dose rights of a citizen, eh?" snorted
Antoine, planting himself in front of the Virginian, and bending forward
until they almost touched noses.

"I reckon you have, and I reckon you better use them. You git your
family over on to the bluff before your house is sucked into the Okaw."

"And go and hoe the weeds out of your maize patch, Antoine," exhorted
Father Baby, setting an empty glass back on the bar. "I cleaned part of
them out for you myself, with the rain streaming down my back, thinking
only of your breadless children. And what do I find when I come home to
my shop but that Antoine Lamarche has been in and carried off six
dog-leg twists of tobacco on credit! I say nothing about it. I am a
childless old friar; but I have never seen children eat tobacco."

The baited Frenchman turned on Father Baby; but, like a skittish girl,
the friar hopped across the room, shook off his wooden shoes, picked up
the skirt of his habit, and began to dance. The exhilarating drink, the
ruddiness of the fire, the discomfort outside, the smoothness of the oak
boards,--these were conditions of happiness for Father Baby. This was
perhaps the crowning instant of his experience. He was a butterfly man.
He saw his lodger, Dr. Dunlap, appear at the door as haggard as the
dead. The friar's first thought was:--

"That fellow has proposed for Mademoiselle Saucier and been
rejected. I'm glad I'm a churchman, and not yoked up to draw a
family, like these fools, and like he wants to be. This bowing
down and worshiping another human being,--crazy if you don't get
her, and crazed by her if you do,--I'll have none of it."

Dr. Dunlap raised his arms and shouted to the company in the bar-room.
What he said no one could hear. Hissing and roaring filled the world,
submerging the crackling of the fire, the banjo tunes, and human voices.
Men looked at each other, stupefied, holding their pipes from their
mouths. Then a wave struck the solid old tavern, hissed across its
gallery, and sprawled through the hall upon the bar-room floor. Not a
person in the house could understand what had happened to Kaskaskia
peninsula; but Je