ruck the faces of the people in the field. And
like the heavens, the assembly itself was charged with we knew not what.
Was it peace or war? As before, a white man sat with supreme
indifference at a table, and in front of him three most unhappy chiefs
squatted in the grass, the shame of their irons hidden under the blanket
folds. Audacity is truly a part of the equipment of genius. To have
rescued the North Wind and his friends would have been child's play; to
have retired from the council with threats of war, as easy.

And yet they craved pardon.

One chief after another rose with dignity in the ring and came to the
table to plead. An argument deserving mention was that the North Wind
had desired to test the friendship of the French for the Big Knives,--set
forth without a smile. To all pleaders Colonel Clark shook his head.
He, being a warrior, cared little whether such people were friends or
foes. He held them in the hollow of his hand. And at length they came
no more.

The very clouds seemed to hang motionless when he rose to speak, and you
who will may read in his memoir what he said. The Hungry Wolf caught the
spirit of it, and was eloquent in his own tongue, and no word of it was
lost. First he told them of the causes of war, of the thirteen council
fires with the English, and in terms that the Indian mind might grasp,
and how their old father, the French King, had joined the Big Knives in
this righteous fight.

"Warriors," said he, "here is a bloody belt and a white one; take which
you choose. But behave like men. Should it be the bloody path, you may
leave this town in safety to join the English, and we shall then see
which of us can stain our shirts with the most blood. But, should it be
the path of peace as brothers of the Big Knives and of their friends the
French, and then you go to your homes and listen to the bad birds, you
will then no longer deserve to be called men and warriors,--but creatures
of two tongues, which ought to be destroyed. Let us then part this
evening in the hope that the Great Spirit will bring us together again
with the sun as brothers."

So the council broke up. White man and red went trooping into town,
staring curiously at the guard which was leading the North Wind and his
friends to another night of meditation. What their fate would be no man
knew. Many thought the tomahawk.

That night the citizens of the little village of Pain Court, as St. Louis
was called, might have se