nt of my struggles that winter to
obtain a foothold in the law. The time was a heyday for young
barristers, and troubles in those early days grew as plentifully in
Kentucky as corn. In short, I got a practice, for Colonel Clark was here
to help me, and, thanks to the men who had gone to Kaskaskia and
Vincennes, I had a fairly large acquaintance in Kentucky. I hired rooms
behind Mr. Crede's store, which was famed for the glass windows which had
been fetched all the way from Philadelphia. Mr. Crede was the embodiment
of the enterprising spirit of the place, and often of an evening he
called me in to see the new fashionable things his barges had brought
down the Ohio. The next day certain young sparks would drop into my room
to waylay the belles as they came to pick a costume to be worn at Mr.
Nickle's dancing school, or at the ball at Fort Finney.

The winter slipped away, and one cool evening in May there came a negro
to my room with a note from Colonel Clark, bidding me sup with him at the
tavern and meet a celebrity.

I put on my best blue clothes that I had brought with me from Richmond,
and repaired expectantly to the tavern about eight of the clock, pushed
through the curious crowd outside, and entered the big room where the
company was fast assembling. Against the red blaze in the great
chimney-place I spied the figure of Colonel Clark, more portly than of
yore, and beside him stood a gentleman who could be no other than General
Wilkinson.

He was a man to fill the eye, handsome of face, symmetrical of figure,
easy of manner, and he wore a suit of bottle-green that became him
admirably. In short, so fascinated and absorbed was I in watching him as
he greeted this man and the other that I started as though something had
pricked me when I heard my name called by Colonel Clark.

"Come here, Davy," he cried across the room, and I came and stood abashed
before the hero. "General, allow me to present to you the drummer boy of
Kaskaskia and Vincennes, Mr. David Ritchie."

"I hear that you drummed them to victory through a very hell of torture,
Mr. Ritchie," said the General. "It is an honor to grasp the hand of one
who did such service at such a tender age."

General Wilkinson availed himself of that honor, and encompassed me with
a smile so benignant, so winning in its candor, that I could only mutter
my acknowledgment, and Colonel Clark must needs apologize, laughing, for
my youth and timidity.

"Mr. Ritchie is