her contradiction in his strange nature. He helped me
light the fire in the great stone chimney-place, and we soon had a pot of
hominy on the crane, and turning on the spit a piece of buffalo steak
which we found in the larder. Nor did a mouthful pass his lips until I
had sped away with a steaming portion to find the Colonel. By this time
the men had broken into the storehouse, and the open place was dotted
with their breakfast fires. Clark was standing alone by the flagstaff,
his face careworn. But he smiled as he saw me coming.

"What's this?" says he.

"Your breakfast, sir," I answered. I set down the plate and the pot
before him and pressed the pewter spoon into his hand.

"Davy," said he.

"Sir?" said I.

"What did you have for your breakfast?"

My lip trembled, for I was very hungry, and the rich steam from the
hominy was as much as I could stand. Then the Colonel took me by the
arms, as gently as a woman might, set me down on the ground beside him,
and taking a spoonful of the hominy forced it between my lips. I was
near to fainting at the taste of it. Then he took a bit himself, and
divided the buffalo steak with his own hands. And when from the
camp-fires they perceived the Colonel and the drummer boy eating together
in plain sight of all, they gave a rousing cheer.

"Swein Poulsson helped get your breakfast, sir, and would eat nothing
either," I ventured.

"Davy," said Colonel Clark, gravely, "I hope you will be younger when you
are twenty."

"I hope I shall be bigger, sir," I answered gravely.

CHAPTER XIV

HOW THE KASKASKEIANS WERE MADE CITIZENS

Never before had such a day dawned upon Kaskaskia. With July fierceness
the sun beat down upon the village, but man nor woman nor child stirred
from the darkened houses. What they awaited at the hands of the Long
Knives they knew not,--captivity, torture, death perhaps. Through the
deserted streets stalked a squad of backwoodsmen headed by John Duff and
two American traders found in the town, who were bestirring themselves in
our behalf, knocking now at this door and anon at that.

"The Colonel bids you come to the fort," he said, and was gone.

The church bell rang with slow, ominous strokes, far different from its
gentle vesper peal of yesterday. Two companies were drawn up in the sun
before the old Jesuit house, and presently through the gate a procession
came, grave and mournful. The tone of it was sombre in the white glare,
for men had don