"The signal!" exclaimed Clark.

Immediately a pandemonium broke on the silence of the night that must
have struck cold terror in the hearts of the poor Creoles sleeping in
their beds. The war-whoop, the scalp halloo in the dead of the morning,
with the hideous winding notes of them that reached the bluff beyond
and echoed back, were enough to frighten a man from his senses. In the
intervals, in backwoods French, John Duff and his companions were heard
in terrifying tones crying out to the habitants to venture out at the
peril of their lives.

Within the fort a score of lights flew up and down like
will-o'-the-wisps, and Colonel Clark, standing on the steps of the
governor's house, gave out his orders and despatched his messengers. Me
he sent speeding through the village to tell Captain Bowman to patrol
the outskirts of the town, that no runner might get through to warn Fort
Chartres and Cohos, as some called Cahokia. None stirred save the few
Indians left in the place, and these were brought before Clark in
the fort, sullen and defiant, and put in the guard-house there. And
Rocheblave, when he appeared, was no better, and was put back in his
house under guard.

As for the papers in the despatch box, they revealed I know not what
briberies of the savage nations and plans of the English. But of
other papers we found none, though there must have been more. Madame
Rocheblave was suspected of having hidden some in the inviolable
portions of her dress.

At length the cocks crowing for day proclaimed the morning, and while
yet the blue shadow of the bluff was on the town, Colonel Clark sallied
out of the gate and walked abroad. Strange it seemed that war had come
to this village, so peaceful and remote. And even stranger it seemed to
me to see these Arcadian homes in the midst of the fierce wilderness.
The little houses with their sloping roofs and wide porches, the gardens
ablaze with color, the neat palings,--all were a restful sight for our
weary eyes. And now I scarcely knew our commander. For we had not gone
far ere, timidly, a door opened and a mild-visaged man, in the simple
workaday smock that the French wore, stood, hesitating, on the steps.
The odd thing was that he should have bowed to Clark, who was dressed
no differently from Bowman and Harrod and Duff; and the man's voice
trembled piteously as he spoke. It needed not John Duff to tell us that
he was pleading for the lives of his family.

"He will sell himse