certain Monsieur Cerre, merchant and trader, then absent at
St. Louis. When at length the Colonel had succeeded in bringing their
denunciations to an end and they had departed, he looked at me comically
as I stood in the doorway.

"Davy," said he, "all I ask of the good Lord is that He will frighten me
incontinently for a month before I die."

"I think He would find that difficult, sir," I answered.

"Then there's no hope for me," he answered, laughing, "for I have
observed that fright alone brings a man into a fit spiritual state to
enter heaven. What would you say of those slanderers of Monsieur Cerre?"

Not expecting an answer, he dipped his quill into the ink-pot and turned
to his papers.

"I should say that they owed Monsieur Cerre money," I replied.

The Colonel dropped his quill and stared. As for me, I was puzzled to
know why.

"Egad," said Colonel Clark, "most of us get by hard knocks what you seem
to have been born with." He fell to musing, a worried look coming on his
face that was no stranger to me later, and his hand fell heavily on
the loose pile of paper before him. "Davy," says he, "I need a
commissary-general."

"What would that be, sir," I asked.

"A John Law, who will make something out of nothing, who will make
money out of this blank paper, who will wheedle the Creole traders into
believing they are doing us a favor and making their everlasting fortune
by advancing us flour and bacon."

"And doesn't Congress make money, sir?" I asked.

"That they do, Davy, by the ton," he replied, "and so must we, as
the rulers of a great province. For mark me, though the men are happy
to-day, in four days they will be grumbling and trying to desert in
dozens."

We were interrupted by a knock at the door, and there stood Terence
McCann.

"His riverence!" he announced, and bowed low as the priest came into the
room.

I was bid by Colonel Clark to sit down and dine with them on the good
things which Monsieur Rocheblave's cook had prepared. After dinner they
went into the little orchard behind the house and sat drinking (in the
French fashion) the commandant's precious coffee which had been sent
to him from far-away New Orleans. Colonel Clark plied the priest with
questions of the French towns under English rule: and Father Gibault,
speaking for his simple people, said that the English had led them
easily to believe that the Kentuckians were cutthroats.

"Ah, monsieur," he said, "if they but knew y