he sky, leaving a pearl-gray bank heaped over the
farther river. Still Jean watched Kaskaskia.

"But the glory remains when the light fades away,"

he sung to himself. He had caught the line from some English boatmen.

"Ye dog, ye dog, where are you, ye dog?" called a voice from the woods
behind him.

"Here, grandfather," answered Jean, starting like a whipped dog. He took
his red cap from under his arm, sighing, and slouched away from the
bluff edge, the coarse homespun which he wore revealing knots and joints
in his work-hardened frame.

"Ye dog, am I to have my supper to-night?"

"Yes, grandfather."

But Jean took one more look at the capital of his love, which he had
never entered, and for which he was unceasingly homesick. The governor's
carriage dashed along the road beneath him, with a military escort from
Fort Chartres. He felt no envy of such state. He would have used the
carriage to cross the bridge.

"If I but lived in Kaskaskia!" whispered Jean.

The man on horseback, who met and passed the ball-goers, rode through
Kaskaskia's twinkling streets in the pleasant glow of twilight. Trade
had not reached its day's end. The crack of long whips could be heard,
flourished over oxen yoked by the horns, or three or four ponies hitched
tandem, all driven without reins, and drawing huge bales of merchandise.
Few of the houses were more than one story high, but they had a
sumptuous spread, each in its own square of lawn, orchard, and garden.
They were built of stone, or of timbers filled in with stone and mortar.

The rider turned several corners, and stopped in front of a small house
which displayed the wares of a penny-trader in its window.

From the open one of the two front doors a black boy came directly out
to take the bridle; and behind him skipped a wiry shaven person, whose
sleek crown was partly covered by a Madras handkerchief, the common
headgear of humble Kaskaskians. His feet clogged their lightness with a
pair of the wooden shoes manufactured for slaves. A sleeved blanket,
made with a hood which lay back on his shoulders, almost covered him,
and was girdled at the waist by a knotted cord.

"Here I am again, Father Baby," hailed the rider, alighting.

"Welcome home, doctor. What news from Fort Chartres?"

"No news. My friend the surgeon is doing well. He need not have sent for
me; but your carving doctor is a great coward when it comes to
physicking himself."

They entered the shop,