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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Old Kaskaskia, by Mary Hartwell Catherwood
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Old Kaskaskia
+
+Author: Mary Hartwell Catherwood
+
+Release Date: May 19, 2006 [EBook #18423]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD KASKASKIA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Stacy Brown, Robert Cicconetti and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions
+(www.canadiana.org))
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+OLD KASKASKIA
+
+
+BY
+
+MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD
+
+AUTHOR OF "THE LADY OF FORT ST. JOHN," "THE ROMANCE OF DOLLARD," ETC.
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+  BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+  HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
+  The Riverside Press, Cambridge
+  1893
+
+
+  Copyright, 1893,
+
+  By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO., and
+  MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD.
+
+  _All rights reserved._
+
+
+  _The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._
+  Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+PART FIRST:                   PAGE
+
+The Bonfire of St. John          1
+
+
+PART SECOND:
+
+A Field Day                     55
+
+
+PART THIRD:
+
+The Rising                     106
+
+
+PART FOURTH:
+
+The Flood                      160
+
+
+
+
+OLD KASKASKIA.
+
+
+
+
+PART FIRST.
+
+THE BONFIRE OF ST. JOHN.
+
+
+Early in the century, on a summer evening, Jean Lozier stood on the
+bluff looking at Kaskaskia. He loved it with the homesick longing of one
+who is born for towns and condemned to the fields. Moses looking into
+the promised land had such visions and ideals as this old lad cherished.
+Jean was old in feeling, though not yet out of his teens. The
+training-masters of life had got him early, and found under his red
+sunburn and knobby joints, his black eyes and bushy eyebrows, the nature
+that passionately aspires. The town of Kaskaskia was his sweetheart. It
+tantalized him with advantage and growth while he had to turn the clods
+of the upland. The long peninsula on which Kaskaskia stood, between the
+Okaw and the Mississippi rivers, lay below him in the glory of sunset.
+Southward to the point spread lands owned by the parish, and known as
+the common pasture. Jean could see the church of the Immaculate
+Conception and the tower built for its ancient bell, the convent
+northward, and all the pleasant streets bowered in trees. The wharf was
+crowded with vessels from New Orleans and Cahokia, and the arched stone
+bridge across the Okaw was a thoroughfare of hurrying carriages.
+
+The road at the foot of the bluff, more than a hundred feet below Jean,
+showed its white flint belt in distant laps and stretches through
+northern foliage. It led to the territorial governor's country-seat of
+Elvirade; thence to Fort Chartres and Prairie du Rocher; so on to
+Cahokia, where it met the great trails of the far north. The road also
+swarmed with carriages and riders on horses, all moving toward Colonel
+Pierre Menard's house. Jean could not see his seignior's chimneys for
+the trees and the dismantled and deserted earthworks of Fort Gage. The
+fort had once protected Kaskaskia, but in these early peaceful times of
+the Illinois Territory it no longer maintained a garrison.
+
+The lad guessed what was going on; those happy Kaskaskians, the fine
+world, were having a ball at Colonel Menard's. Summer and winter they
+danced, they made fêtes, they enjoyed life. When the territorial
+Assembly met in this capital of the West, he had often frosted himself
+late into the winter night, watching the lights and listening to the
+music in Kaskaskia. Jean Lozier knew every bit of its history. The
+parish priest, Father Olivier, who came to hear him confess because he
+could not leave his grandfather, had told it to him. There was a record
+book transmitted from priest to priest from the earliest settlement of
+Cascasquia of the Illinois. Jean loved the story of young D'Artaguette,
+whom the boatmen yet celebrated in song. On moonlight nights, when the
+Mississippi showed its broad sheet four miles away across the level
+plain, he sometimes fooled himself with thinking he could see the fleet
+of young soldiers passing down the river, bearing the French flag;
+phantoms proceeding again to their tragedy and the Indian stake.
+
+He admired the seat where his seignior lived in comfort and great
+hospitality, but all the crowds pressing to Pierre Menard's house seemed
+to him to have less wisdom than the single man who met and passed them
+and crossed the bridge into Kaskaskia. The vesper bell rung, breaking
+its music in echoes against the sandstone bosom of the bluff. Red
+splendors faded from the sky, leaving a pearl-gray bank heaped over the
+farther river. Still Jean watched Kaskaskia.
+
+      "But the glory remains when the light fades away,"
+
+he sung to himself. He had caught the line from some English boatmen.
+
+"Ye dog, ye dog, where are you, ye dog?" called a voice from the woods
+behind him.
+
+"Here, grandfather," answered Jean, starting like a whipped dog. He took
+his red cap from under his arm, sighing, and slouched away from the
+bluff edge, the coarse homespun which he wore revealing knots and joints
+in his work-hardened frame.
+
+"Ye dog, am I to have my supper to-night?"
+
+"Yes, grandfather."
+
+But Jean took one more look at the capital of his love, which he had
+never entered, and for which he was unceasingly homesick. The governor's
+carriage dashed along the road beneath him, with a military escort from
+Fort Chartres. He felt no envy of such state. He would have used the
+carriage to cross the bridge.
+
+"If I but lived in Kaskaskia!" whispered Jean.
+
+The man on horseback, who met and passed the ball-goers, rode through
+Kaskaskia's twinkling streets in the pleasant glow of twilight. Trade
+had not reached its day's end. The crack of long whips could be heard,
+flourished over oxen yoked by the horns, or three or four ponies hitched
+tandem, all driven without reins, and drawing huge bales of merchandise.
+Few of the houses were more than one story high, but they had a
+sumptuous spread, each in its own square of lawn, orchard, and garden.
+They were built of stone, or of timbers filled in with stone and mortar.
+
+The rider turned several corners, and stopped in front of a small house
+which displayed the wares of a penny-trader in its window.
+
+From the open one of the two front doors a black boy came directly out
+to take the bridle; and behind him skipped a wiry shaven person, whose
+sleek crown was partly covered by a Madras handkerchief, the common
+headgear of humble Kaskaskians. His feet clogged their lightness with a
+pair of the wooden shoes manufactured for slaves. A sleeved blanket,
+made with a hood which lay back on his shoulders, almost covered him,
+and was girdled at the waist by a knotted cord.
+
+"Here I am again, Father Baby," hailed the rider, alighting.
+
+"Welcome home, doctor. What news from Fort Chartres?"
+
+"No news. My friend the surgeon is doing well. He need not have sent for
+me; but your carving doctor is a great coward when it comes to
+physicking himself."
+
+They entered the shop, while the slave led the horse away; and no
+customers demanding the trading friar's attention, he followed his
+lodger to an inner room, having first lighted candles in his wooden
+sconces. Their yellow lustre showed the tidiness of the shop, and the
+penny merchandise arranged on shelves with that exactness which has been
+thought peculiar to unmarried women. Father Baby was a scandal to the
+established confessor of the parish, and the joke of the ungodly. Some
+said he had been a dancing-master before he entered the cloister, and it
+was no wonder he turned out a renegade and took to trading. Others
+declared that he had no right to the gray capote, and his tonsure was a
+natural loss of hair; in fact, that he never had been a friar at all.
+But in Kaskaskia nobody took him seriously, and Father Olivier was not
+severe upon him. Custom made his harlequin antics a matter of course;
+though Indians still paused opposite his shop and grinned at sight of a
+long-gown peddling. His religious practices were regular and severe, and
+he laid penance on himself for all the cheating he was able to
+accomplish.
+
+"I rode down from Elvirade with Governor Edwards," said the doctor. "He
+and all Kaskaskia appear to be going to Colonel Menard's to-night."
+
+"Yes, I stood and counted the carriages: the Bonds, the Morrisons, the
+Vigos, the Sauciers, the Edgars, the Joneses"--
+
+"Has anything happened these three days past?" inquired the doctor,
+breaking off this list of notable Kaskaskians.
+
+"Oh, many things have happened. But first here is your billet."
+
+The young man broke the wafer of his invitation and unfolded the paper.
+
+"It is a dancing-party," he remarked. His nose took an aquiline curve
+peculiar to him. The open sheet, as he held it, showed the name of "Dr.
+Dunlap" written on the outside. He leaned against a high black mantel.
+
+"You will want hot shaving-water and your best ruffled shirt," urged the
+friar.
+
+"I never dance," said the other indifferently.
+
+"And you do well not to," declared Father Baby, with some contemptuous
+impatience. "A man who shakes like a load of hay should never dance. If
+I had carried your weight, I could have been a holier man."
+
+Dr. Dunlap laughed, and struck his boot with his riding-whip.
+
+"Don't deceive yourself, worthy father. The making of an abbot was not
+in you. You old rascal, I am scarcely in the house, and there you stand
+all of a tremble for your jig."
+
+Father Baby's death's-head face wrinkled itself with expectant smiles.
+He shook off his wooden shoes and whirled upon one toe.
+
+The doctor went into another room, his own apartment in the friar's
+small house. His office fronted this, and gave him a door to the street.
+Its bottles and jars and iron mortar and the vitreous slab on which he
+rolled pills were all lost in twilight now. There were many other
+doctors' offices in Kaskaskia, but this was the best equipped one, and
+was the lair of a man who had not only been trained in Europe, but had
+sailed around the entire world. Dr. Dunlap's books, some of them in
+board covers, made a show on his shelves. He had an articulated
+skeleton, and ignorant Kaskaskians would declare that they had seen it
+whirl past his windows many a night to the music of his violin.
+
+"What did you say had happened since I went away?" he inquired,
+sauntering back and tuning his fiddle as he came.
+
+"There's plenty of news," responded Father Baby. "Antoine Lamarche's
+cow fell into the Mississippi."
+
+Dr. Dunlap uttered a note of contempt.
+
+"It would go wandering off where the land crumbles daily with that
+current setting down from the northwest against us; and Antoine was far
+from sneering in your cold-blooded English manner when he got the news."
+
+"He tore his hair and screamed in your warm-blooded French manner?"
+
+"That he did."
+
+The doctor stood in the bar of candle-light which one of the shop
+sconces extended across the room, and lifted the violin to his neck. He
+was so large that all his gestures had a ponderous quality. His dress
+was disarranged by riding, and his blond skin was pricked through by the
+untidy growth of a three-days' beard, yet he looked very handsome.
+
+Dr. Dunlap stood in the light, but Father Baby chose the dark for those
+ecstatic antics into which the fiddle threw him. He leaped high from
+the floor at the first note, and came down into a jig of the most
+perfect execution. The pat of his bare soles was exquisitely true. He
+raised the gown above his ankles, and would have seemed to float but for
+his response in sound. Yet through his most rapturous action he never
+ceased to be conscious of the shop. A step on the sill would break the
+violin's charm in the centre of a measure.
+
+But this time no step broke it, and the doctor kept his puppet friar
+going until his own arm began to weary. The tune ended, and Father Baby
+paused, deprived of the ether in which he had been floating.
+
+Dr. Dunlap sat down, nursing the instrument on his crossed knees while
+he altered its pitch.
+
+"Are you not going to Colonel Menard's at all?" inquired the friar.
+
+"It would be a great waste of good dancing not to," said the doctor
+lazily. "But you haven't told me who else has lost a cow or had an
+increase of goats while I was away."
+
+"The death of even a beast excites pity in me."
+
+"Yes, you are a holy man. You would rather skin a live Indian than a
+dead sheep."
+
+The doctor tried his violin, and was lifting it again to position when
+Father Baby remarked:--
+
+"They doubtless told you on the road that a party has come through from
+Post Vincennes."
+
+"Now who would doubtless tell me that?"
+
+"The governor's suite, since they must have known it. The party was in
+almost as soon as you left. Perhaps," suggested the friar, taking a
+crafty revenge for much insolence, "nobody would mention it to you on
+account of Monsieur Zhone's sister."
+
+The violin bow sunk on the strings with a squeak.
+
+"What sister?"
+
+"The only sister of Monsieur Reece Zhone, Mademoiselle Zhone, from
+Wales. She came to Kaskaskia with the party from Post Vincennes."
+
+On Dr. Dunlap's face the unshorn beard developed like thorns on a mask
+of wax. The spirit of manly beauty no longer infused it.
+
+"Why didn't you tell me this at first?" he asked roughly.
+
+"Is the name of Zhone so pleasant to you?" hinted the shrugging friar.
+"But take an old churchman's advice now, my son, and make up your
+quarrel with the lawyer. There will be occasion. That pretty young thing
+has crossed the sea to die. I heard her cough."
+
+The doctor's voice was husky as he attempted to inquire,--
+
+"Did you hear what she was called?"
+
+"Mademoiselle Mareea Zhone."
+
+The young man sagged forward over his violin. Father Baby began to
+realize that his revel was over, and reluctantly stuck his toes again
+into his wooden shoes.
+
+"Will you have something to eat and drink before you start?"
+
+"I don't want anything to eat, and I am not going to Colonel Menard's
+to-night."
+
+"But, my son," reasoned the staring friar, "are you going to quit your
+victuals and all good company because one more Zhone has come to town,
+and that one such a small, helpless creature? Mademoiselle Saucier will
+be at Menard's."
+
+Dr. Dunlap wiped his forehead. He, and not the cool friar, appeared to
+have been the dancer. A chorus of slaves singing on some neighboring
+gallery could be heard in the pause of the violin. Beetles, lured by the
+shop candles, began to explore the room where the two men were, bumping
+themselves against the walls and buzzing their complaints.
+
+"A man is nothing but a young beast until he is past twenty-five years
+old," said Dr. Dunlap.
+
+Father Baby added his own opinion to this general remark.--
+
+"Very often he is nothing but an old beast when you catch him past
+seventy. But it all depends on what kind of a man he is."
+
+"Friar, do you believe in marriage?"
+
+"How could I believe in marriage?"
+
+"But do you believe in it for other people?"
+
+"The Church has always held it to be a sacred institution."
+
+Dr. Dunlap muttered a combination of explosive words which he had
+probably picked up from sailors, making the churchman cross himself. He
+spoke out, with a reckless laugh:--
+
+"I married as soon as I came of age, and here I am, ruined for my prime
+by that act."
+
+"What!" exclaimed Father Baby, setting his hands on his hips, "you a man
+of family, and playing bachelor among the women of Kaskaskia?"
+
+"Oh, I have no wife now. She finally died, thank Heaven. If she had only
+died a year sooner! But nothing matters now."
+
+"My son," observed Father Baby severely, "Satan has you in his net. You
+utter profane words, you rail against institutions sanctioned by the
+Church, and you have desired the death of a human being. Repent and do
+penance"--
+
+"You have a customer, friar," sneered the young man, lifting his head to
+glance aside at a figure entering the shop. "Vigo's idiot slave boy is
+waiting to be cheated."
+
+"By my cappo!" whispered Father Baby, a cunning look netting wrinkles
+over his lean face, "you remind me of the bad shilling I have laid by me
+to pass on that nigger. O Lamb of mercy,"--he turned and hastily plumped
+on his knees before a sacred picture on the wall,--"I will, in expiation
+for passing that shilling, say twelve paters and twelve aves at the foot
+of the altar of thy Virgin Mother, or I will abstain from food a whole
+day in thy honor."
+
+Having offered this compromise, Father Baby sprung with a cheerful
+eagerness to deal with Vigo's slave boy.
+
+The doctor sat still, his ears closed to the chatter in the shop. His
+bitter thoughts centred on the new arrival in Kaskaskia, on her brother,
+on all her family.
+
+She herself, unconscious that he inhabited the same hemisphere with her,
+was standing up for the reel in Pierre Menard's house. The last carriage
+had driven to the tall flight of entrance steps, discharged its load,
+and parted with its horses to the huge stone stable under the house. The
+mingling languages of an English and French society sounded all around
+her. The girl felt bewildered, as if she had crossed ocean and forest to
+find, instead of savage wilderness, an enchanted English county full of
+French country estates. Names and dignitaries crowded her memory.
+
+A great clear glass, gilt-framed and divided into three panels, stood
+over the drawing-room mantel. It reflected crowds of animated faces, as
+the dance began, crossing and recrossing or running the reel in a vista
+of rooms, the fan-lights around the hall door and its open leaves
+disclosing the broad gallery and the dusky world of trees outside; it
+reflected cluster on cluster of wax-lights. To this day the great glass
+stands there, and, spotless as a clear conscience, waits upon the
+future. It has held the image of Lafayette and many an historic
+companion of his.
+
+On the other side of the hall, in the dining-room, stood a carved
+mahogany sideboard holding decanters and glasses. In this quiet retreat
+elderly people amused themselves at card-tables. Apart from them, but
+benignantly ready to chat with everybody, sat the parish priest; for
+every gathering of his flock was to him a call for social ministration.
+
+A delicious odor of supper escaped across a stone causeway from the
+kitchen, and all the Menard negroes, in their best clothes, were
+collected on the causeway to serve it. Through open doors they watched
+the flying figures, and the rocking of many a dusky heel kept time to
+the music.
+
+The first dance ended in some slight confusion. A little cry went
+through the rooms: "Rice Jones's sister has fainted!" "Mademoiselle
+Zhone has fainted!" But a few minutes later she was sitting on a
+gallery chair, leaning against her brother and trying to laugh through
+her coughing, and around her stood all girlish Kaskaskia, and the
+matrons also, as well as the black maid Colonel Menard had sent with
+hartshorn.
+
+Father Olivier brought her a glass of wine; Mrs. Edwards fanned her; the
+stars shone through the pecan-trees, and all the loveliness of this new
+hemisphere and home and the kindness of the people made her close her
+eyes to keep the tears from running out. The separation of the sick from
+all healthy mankind had never so hurt her. Something was expected of
+her, and she was not equal to it. She felt death's mark branding in, and
+her family spoke of her recovery! What folly it was to come into this
+gay little world where she had no rights at all! Maria Jones wondered
+why she had not died at sea. To be floating in that infinity of blue
+water would be better than this. She pictured herself in the weighted
+sack,--for we never separate ourselves from our bodies,--and tender
+forgiveness covering all her mistakes as the multitude of waters covered
+her.
+
+"I will not dance again," laughed Maria. Her brother Rice could feel her
+little figure tremble against him. "It is ridiculous to try."
+
+"We must have you at Elvirade," said the governor's wife soothingly. "I
+will not let the young people excite you to too much dancing there."
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Edwards!" exclaimed Peggy Morrison. "I never do dance quite as
+much anywhere else, or have quite as good a time, as I do at Elvirade."
+
+"Hear these children slander me when I try to set an example of sobriety
+in the Territory!"
+
+"You shall not want a champion, Mrs. Edwards," said Rice Jones. "When I
+want to be in grave good company, I always make a pilgrimage to
+Elvirade."
+
+"One ought to be grave good company enough for himself," retorted
+Peggy, looking at Rice Jones with jealous aggressiveness. She was a
+lean, sandy girl, at whom he seldom glanced, and her acrid girlhood
+fought him. Rice Jones was called the handsomest man in Kaskaskia, but
+his personal beauty was nothing to the ambitious force of his presence.
+The parted hair fitted his broad, high head like a glove. His straight
+nose extended its tip below the nostrils and shadowed the long upper
+lip. He had a long chin, beautifully shaped and shaven clean as marble,
+a mouth like a scarlet line, and a very round, smooth throat, shown by
+his flaring collar. His complexion kept a cool whiteness which no
+exposure tanned, and this made striking the blackness of his eyes and
+hair.
+
+"Please will you all go back into the drawing-room?" begged Maria. "My
+brother will bring me a shawl, and then I shall need nothing else."
+
+"But may I sit by you, mademoiselle?"
+
+It was Angélique Saucier leaning down to make this request, but Peggy
+Morrison laughed.
+
+"I warn you against Angélique, Miss Jones. She is the man-slayer of
+Kaskaskia. They all catch her like measles. If she stays out here, they
+will sit in a row along the gallery edge, and there will be no more
+dancing."
+
+"Do not observe what Peggy says, mademoiselle. We are relations, and so
+we take liberties."
+
+"But no one must give up dancing," urged Maria.
+
+They arranged for her in spite of protest, however. Rice muffled her in
+a shawl, Mademoiselle Saucier sat down at her right side and Peggy
+Morrison at her left, and the next dance began.
+
+Maria Jones had repressed and nestling habits. She curled herself into a
+very small compass in the easy gallery chair, and looked off into the
+humid mysteries of the June night. Colonel Menard's substantial slave
+cabins of logs and stone were in sight, and up the bluff near the house
+was a sort of donjon of stone, having only one door letting into its
+base.
+
+"That's where Colonel Menard puts his bad Indians," said Peggy Morrison,
+following Maria's glance.
+
+"It is simply a little fortress for times of danger," said Mademoiselle
+Saucier, laughing. "It is also the colonel's bureau for valuable papers,
+and the dairy is underneath."
+
+"Well, you French understand one another's housekeeping better than we
+English do; and may be the colonel has been explaining these things to
+you."
+
+"But are there any savage men about here now?"
+
+"Oh, plenty of them," declared Peggy. "We have some Pottawatomies and
+Kickapoos and Kaskaskias always with us,--like the poor. Nobody is
+afraid of them, though. Colonel Menard has them all under his thumb, and
+if nobody else could manage them he could. My father says they will
+give their furs to him for nothing rather than sell them to other
+people. You must see that Colonel Menard is very fascinating, but I
+don't think he charms Angélique as he does the Indians."
+
+Mademoiselle Saucier's smile excused anything Peggy might say. Maria
+thought this French girl the most beautiful woman she had ever seen. The
+waist of her clinging white gown ended under the curve of her girlish
+breasts, and face, neck, and arms blossomed out with the polish of
+flower-petals. Around her throat she wore gold beads suspending a cross.
+Her dark hair, which had an elusive bluish mist, like grapes, was pinned
+high with a gold comb. Her oval face was full of a mature sympathy
+unusual in girls. Maria had thought at first she would rather be alone
+on the gallery, but this reposeful and tender French girl at once became
+a necessity to her.
+
+"Peggy," said Angélique, "I hear Jules Vigo inquiring for you in the
+hall."
+
+"Then I shall take to the roof," responded Peggy.
+
+"Have some regard for Jules."
+
+"You may have, but I shan't. I will not dance with a kangaroo."
+
+"Do you not promise dances ahead?" inquired Maria.
+
+"No, our mothers do not permit that," answered Angélique. "It is
+sometimes best to sit still and look on."
+
+"That means, Miss Jones," explained Peggy, "that she has set a fashion
+to give the rest of the girls a chance. I wouldn't be so mealy-mouthed
+about cutting them out. But Angélique has been ruined by waiting so much
+on her tante-gra'mère. When you bear an old woman's temper from dawn
+till dusk, you soon forget you're a girl in your teens."
+
+"Don't abuse the little tante-gra'mère."
+
+"She gets praise enough at our house. Mother says she's a discipline
+that keeps Angélique from growing vain. Thank Heaven, we don't need such
+discipline in our family."
+
+"It is my father's grand-aunt," explained Angélique to Maria, "and when
+you see her, mademoiselle, you will be surprised to find how well she
+bears her hundred years, though she has not been out of her bed since I
+can remember. Mademoiselle, I hope I never shall be very old."
+
+Maria gave Angélique the piercing stare which unconsciously belongs to
+large black eyes set in a hectic, nervous face.
+
+"Would you die now?"
+
+"I feel always," said the French girl, "that we stand facing the mystery
+every minute, and sometimes I should like to know it."
+
+"Now hear that," said Peggy. "I'm no Catholic, but I will say for the
+mother superior that she never put that in your head at the convent. It
+is wicked to say you want to die."
+
+"But I did not say it. The mystery of being without any body,--that is
+what I want to know. It is good to meditate on death."
+
+"It isn't comfortable," said Peggy. "It makes me have chills down my
+back."
+
+She glanced behind her through the many-paned open window into the
+dining-room. Three little girls and a boy were standing there, so close
+to the sill that their breath had touched Peggy's neck. They were
+Colonel Menard's motherless children. A black maid was with them,
+holding the youngest by the hand. They were whispering in French under
+cover of the music. French was the second mother tongue of every
+Kaskaskia girl, and Peggy heard what they said by merely taking her
+attention from her companions.
+
+"I will get Jean Lozier to beat Monsieur Reece Zhone. Jean Lozier is
+such an obliging creature he will do anything I ask him."
+
+"But, Odile," argued the boy, with some sense of equity, "she is not yet
+engaged to our family."
+
+"And how shall we get her engaged to us if Monsieur Reece Zhone must
+hang around her? Papa says he is the most promising young man in the
+Territory. If I were a boy, Pierre Menard, I would do something with
+him."
+
+"What would you do?"
+
+"I would shoot him. He has duels."
+
+"But my father might punish me for that."
+
+"Very well, chicken-heart. Let Mademoiselle Saucier go, then. But I will
+tell you this: there is no one else in Kaskaskia that I will have for a
+second mother."
+
+"Yes, we have all chosen her," owned Pierre, "but it seems to me papa
+ought to make the marriage."
+
+"But she would not know we children were willing to have her. If you did
+something to stop Monsieur Zhone's courtship, she would then know."
+
+"Why do you not go out on the gallery now and tell her we want her?"
+exclaimed Pierre. "The colonel says it is best to be straightforward in
+any matter of business."
+
+"Pierre, it is plain to be seen that you do not know how to deal with
+young ladies. They like best to be fought over. It is not proper to
+_tell_ her we are willing to have her. The way to do is to drive off the
+other suitors."
+
+"But there are so many. Tante Isidore says all the young men in
+Kaskaskia and the officers left at Fort Chartres are her suitors.
+Monsieur Reece Zhone is the worst one, though. I might ask him to go out
+to papa's office with me to-night, but we shall be sent to bed directly
+after supper. Besides, here sits his sister who was carried out
+fainting."
+
+"While he is in our house we are obliged to be polite to him," said
+Odile. "But if I were a boy, I would, some time, get on my pony and ride
+into Kaskaskia"--The conspiring went on in whispers. The children's
+heads bobbed nearer each other, so Peggy overheard no more.
+
+It was the very next evening, the evening of St. John's Day, that young
+Pierre rode into Kaskaskia beside his father to see the yearly bonfire
+lighted. Though many of the old French customs had perished in a mixing
+of nationalities, St. John's Day was yet observed; the Latin race
+drawing the Saxon out to participate in the festival, as so often
+happens wherever they dwell.
+
+The bonfire stood in the middle of the street fronting the church. It
+was an octagonal pyramid, seven or eight feet high, built of dry oak and
+pecan limbs and logs, with straw at all the corners.
+
+The earth yet held a red horizon rim around its dusky surface. Some
+half-distinct swallows were swarming into the church belfry, as silent
+as bats; but people swarming on the ground below made a cheerful noise,
+like a fair. The St. John bonfire was not a religious ceremony, but its
+character lifted it above the ordinary burning of brushwood at night.
+The most dignified Kaskaskians, heretics as well as papists, came out to
+see it lighted; the pagan spell of Midsummer Night more or less
+affecting them all.
+
+Red points appeared at the pile's eight corners and sprung up flame,
+showing the eight lads who were bent down blowing them; showing the
+church front, and the steps covered with little negroes good-naturedly
+fighting and crowding one another off; showing the crosses of slate and
+wood and square marble tombs in the graveyard, and a crowd of honest
+faces, red kerchiefs, gray cappos, and wooden shoes pressing close
+around it. Children raced, shouting in the light, perpetuating
+unconsciously the fire-worship of Asia by leaping across outer edges of
+the blaze. It rose and showed the bowered homes of Kaskaskia, the tavern
+at an angle of the streets, with two Indians, in leggins and
+hunting-shirts, standing on the gallery as emotionless spectators. It
+illuminated fields and woods stretching southward, and little weeds
+beside the road whitened with dust. The roaring and crackling heat drove
+venturesome urchins back.
+
+Father Baby could be seen established behind a temporary counter,
+conveniently near the pile, yet discreetly removed from the church
+front. Thirsty rustics and flatboat men crowded to his kegs and clinked
+his glasses. The firelight shone on his crown which was bare to the sky.
+Father Olivier passed by, receiving submissive obeisance from the
+renegade, but returning him a shake of the head.
+
+Girls slipped back and forth through the church gate. Now their laughing
+faces grouped three or four together in the bonfire light. In a moment,
+when their mothers turned to follow them with the eye, they were nowhere
+to be seen. Perhaps outside the beacon's glare hobgoblins and fairies
+danced. Midsummer Night tricks and the freemasonry of youth were at
+work.
+
+People watched one another across that pile with diverse aims. Rice
+Jones had his sister on his arm, wrapped in a Spanish mantilla. Her tiny
+face, with a rose above one ear, was startling against this black
+setting. They stood near Father Baby's booth; and while Peggy Morrison
+waited at the church gate to signal Maria, she resented Rice Jones's
+habitual indifference to her existence. He saw Angélique Saucier beside
+her mother, and the men gathering to her, among them an officer from
+Fort Chartres. They troubled him little; for he intended in due time to
+put these fellows all out of his way. There were other matters as vital
+to Rice Jones. Young Pierre Menard hovered vainly about him. The moment
+Maria left him a squad of country politicians surrounded their political
+leader, and he did some effectual work for his party by the light of the
+St. John fire.
+
+Darkness grew outside the irregular radiance of that pile, and the night
+concert of insects could be heard as an interlude between children's
+shouts and the hum of voices. Peggy Morrison's lifted finger caught
+Maria's glance. It was an imperative gesture, meaning haste and secrecy,
+and separation from her brother Rice. Maria laughed and shook her head
+wistfully. The girlish pastimes of Midsummer Night were all done for
+her. She thought of nights in her own wild county of Merionethshire,
+when she had run, palpitating like a hare, to try some spell or charm
+which might reveal the future to her; and now it was revealed.
+
+An apparition from the other hemisphere came upon her that instant. She
+saw a man standing by the friar's booth looking at her. What his eyes
+said she could not, through her shimmering and deadly faintness,
+perceive. How could he be here in Kaskaskia? The shock of seeing him
+annihilated physical weakness in her. She stood on limbs of stone. Her
+hand on her brother's arm did not tremble; but a pinched blueness spread
+about her nostrils and eye sockets, and dinted sudden hollows in her
+temples.
+
+Dr. Dunlap took a step toward her. At that, she looked around for some
+place to hide in, the animal instinct of flight arising first, and
+darted from her brother into the graveyard. Rice beheld this freak with
+quizzical surprise, but he had noted the disappearance of more than one
+maid through that gate, and was glad to have Maria with them.
+
+"Come on," whispered Peggy, seizing her. "Clarice Vigo has gone to fetch
+Angélique, and then we shall be ready."
+
+Behind the church, speaking all together like a chorus of blackbirds,
+the girls were clustered, out of the bonfire's light. French and English
+voices debated.
+
+"Oh, I wouldn't do such a thing."
+
+"Your mother did it when she was a girl."
+
+"But the young men may find it out and follow."
+
+"Then we'll run."
+
+"I'm afraid to go so far in the dark."
+
+"What, to the old Jesuit College?"
+
+"It isn't very dark, and our old Dinah will go with us; she's waiting
+outside the fence."
+
+"But my father says none of our Indians are to be trusted in the dark."
+
+"What a slander on our Indians!"
+
+"But some of them are here; they always come to the St. John bonfire."
+
+"All the men in Kaskaskia are here, too. We could easily give an
+alarm."
+
+"Anyhow, nothing will hurt us."
+
+"What are you going to do, girls?" inquired the voice of Angélique
+Saucier. The whole scheme took a foolish tinge as she spoke. They were
+ashamed to tell her what they were going to do.
+
+Peggy Morrison drew near and whispered, "We want to go to the old Jesuit
+College and sow hempseed."
+
+"Hempseed?"
+
+"Yes. You do it on Midsummer Night."
+
+"Will it grow the better for that?" asked the puzzled French girl.
+
+"We don't want it to grow, you goose. We want to try our fortunes."
+
+"It was Peggy Morrison's plan," spoke out Clarice Vigo.
+
+"It's an old English custom," declared Peggy, "as old as burning
+brushwood."
+
+"Would you like to observe this old English custom, Mademoiselle Zhone?"
+questioned Angélique.
+
+"Yes, let us hurry on."
+
+"I think myself it would be charming." The instant Angélique thought
+this, Peggy Morrison's plan lost foolishness, and gained in all eyes the
+dignity of adventure. "But we have no hempseed."
+
+"Yes, we have," responded Peggy. "Our Dinah is there outside the fence
+with her lap full of it."
+
+"And how do you sow it?"
+
+"You scatter it and say, 'Hempseed, I sow thee,--hempseed, I sow thee;
+let him who is to marry me come after me and mow thee.'"
+
+An abashed titter ran through girlish Kaskaskia.
+
+"And what happens then?"
+
+"Then you look back and see somebody following you with a scythe."
+
+A suppressed squeal ran through girlish Kaskaskia.
+
+"Now if we are going, we ought to go, or it will all be found out,"
+observed Peggy with decision.
+
+They had only to follow the nearest cross-street to reach the old Jesuit
+College; but some were for making a long detour into the common fields
+to avoid being seen, while others were for passing close by the bonfire
+in a solid squad. Neither Peggy nor Angélique could reconcile these
+factions, and Peggy finally crossed the fence and led the way in
+silence. The majority hung back until they were almost belated. Then,
+with a venturous rush, they scaled the fence and piled themselves upon
+Dinah, who was quietly trying to deal out a handful of hempseed to every
+passer; and some of them squalled in the fear of man at her uplifted
+paw. Then, shying away from the light, they entered a street which was
+like a canal of shadow. The houses bounding it were all dark, except the
+steep roof slopes of the southern row, which seemed to palpitate in the
+bonfire's flicker.
+
+Finding themselves away from their families in this deserted lane, the
+girls took to their heels, and left like sheep a perceptible little
+cloud of dust smoking in the gloom behind them.
+
+Beyond the last house and alongside the Okaw river stood the ruined
+building with gaping entrances. The girls stumbled among irregular
+hummocks which in earlier days had been garden beds and had supplied
+vegetables to the brethren. The last commandant of Kaskaskia, who
+occupied the Jesuits' house as a fortress, had complained to his
+superiors of a leaky and broken roof. There was now no roof to complain
+of, and the upper floors had given way in places, leaving the stone
+shell open to the sky. It had once been an imposing structure, costing
+the Jesuits forty thousand piasters. The uneven stone floor was also
+broken, showing gaps into vaults beneath; fearful spots to be avoided,
+which the custom of darkness soon revealed to all eyes. Partitions yet
+standing held stained and ghastly smears of rotted plaster.
+
+The river's gurgle and rush could be distinctly heard here, while the
+company around the bonfire were lost in distance.
+
+Angélique had given her arm to Maria Jones in the flight down the road;
+but when they entered the college Maria slipped away from her. A blacker
+spot in an angle of the walls and a smothered cough hinted to the
+care-taker where the invalid girl might be found, but where she also
+wished to be let alone.
+
+Now a sob rising to a scream, as if the old building had found voice and
+protested against invasion, caused a recoil of the invaders. Girls
+brought up in neighborly relations with the wilderness, however, could
+be only a moment terrified by the screech-owl. But at no previous time
+in its history, not even when it was captured as a fort, had the Jesuit
+College inclosed such a cluster of wildly beating hearts. Had light been
+turned on the group, it would have shown every girl shaking her hand at
+every other girl and hissing, "S--s--sh!"
+
+"Girls, be still."
+
+"Girls, do be still."
+
+"Girls, if you won't be still, somebody will come."
+
+"Clarice Vigo, why don't you stop your noise?"
+
+"Why do you not stop yours, mademoiselle?"
+
+"I haven't spoken a word but sh! I have been trying my best to quiet
+them all."
+
+"So have I."
+
+"Ellen Bond fell over me. She was scared to death by a screech-owl!"
+
+"It was you fell over me, Miss Betsey."
+
+"If we are going to try the charm," announced Peggy Morrison, "we must
+begin. You had better all get in a line behind me and do just as I do.
+You can't see me very well, but you can scatter the hempseed and say
+what I say. And it must be done soberly, or Satan may come mowing at our
+heels."
+
+From a distant perch to which he had removed himself, the screech-owl
+again remonstrated. Silence settled like the slow fluttering downward of
+feathers on every throbbing figure. The stir of a slipper on the
+pavement, or the catching of a breath, became the only tokens of human
+presence in the old college. These postulants of fortune in their
+half-visible state once more bore some resemblance to the young ladies
+who had stood in decorum answering compliments between the figures of
+the dance the night before.
+
+On cautious shoe leather the march began. One voice, two voices, and
+finally a low chorus intoned and repeated,--
+
+"Hempseed, I sow thee,--hempseed, I sow thee; let him who is to marry me
+come after me and mow thee."
+
+Peggy led her followers out of the east door towards the river; wheeling
+when she reached a little wind-row of rotted timbers. This chaos had
+once stood up in order, forming makeshift bastions for the fort, and
+supporting cannon. Such boards and posts as the negroes had not carried
+off lay now along the river brink, and the Okaw was steadily undermining
+that brink as it had already undermined and carried away the Jesuits'
+spacious landing.
+
+Glancing over their shoulders with secret laughter for that fearful
+gleam of scythes which was to come, the girls marched back; and their
+leader's abrupt halt jarred the entire line. A man stood in the opposite
+entrance. They could not see him in outline, but his unmistakable hat
+showed against a low-lying sky.
+
+"Who's there?" demanded Peggy Morrison.
+
+The intruder made no answer.
+
+They could not see a scythe about him, but to every girl he took a
+different form. He was Billy Edgar, or Jules Vigo, or Rice Jones, or any
+other gallant of Kaskaskia, according to the varying faith which beating
+hearts sent to the eyes that saw him.
+
+The spell of silence did not last. A populous roost invaded by a fox
+never resounded with more squalling than did the old Jesuit College. The
+girls swished around corners and tumbled over the vegetable beds.
+Angélique groped for Maria, not daring to call her name, and caught and
+ran with some one until they neared the light, when she found it was
+the dumpy little figure of her cousin Clarice.
+
+As soon as the girls were gone, the man who had broken up their hempseed
+sowing advanced a few steps on the pavement. He listened, and that
+darker shadow in the angle of the walls was perceptible to him.
+
+"Are you here?"
+
+"I am here," answered Maria.
+
+Rice Jones's sister could not sit many minutes in the damp old building
+without being missed by the girls and her family. His voice trembled.
+She could hear his heart beating with large strokes. His presence
+surrounded her like an atmosphere, and in the darkness she clutched her
+own breast to keep the rapture from physically hurting her.
+
+"Maria, did you know that my wife was dead?"
+
+"Oh, James, no!"
+
+Her whisper was more than a caress. It was surrender and peace and
+forgiveness. It was the snapping of a tension which had held her two
+years.
+
+"Oh, James, when I saw you to-night I did not know what to do. I have
+not been well. You have borne it so much better than I have."
+
+"I thought," said Dr. Dunlap, "it would be best for us to talk matters
+over."
+
+She caught her breath. What was the matter with this man? Once he had
+lain at her feet and kissed the hem of her garment. He was hers. She had
+never relinquished her ownership of him even when her honor had
+constrained her to live apart from him. Whose could he be but hers?
+
+Dr. Dunlap had thought twenty-four hours on what he would say at this
+unavoidable meeting, and he acknowledged in a business-like tone,--
+
+"I did not treat you right, Maria. My wretched entanglement when I was a
+boy ruined everything. But when I persuaded you into a secret marriage
+with me, I meant to make it right when the other one died. And you
+found it out and left me. If I treated you badly, you treated me badly,
+too."
+
+He knew the long chin of the Joneses. He could imagine Maria lifting her
+slim chin. She did not speak.
+
+"I came over here to begin life again. When you ran off to your friends,
+what was there for me to do but take to the navy again or sail for
+America? Kaskaskia was the largest post in the West; so I came here. And
+here I found your family, that I thought were in another Territory. And
+from the first your brother has been my enemy."
+
+His sulky complaint brought no response in words; but a strangling sob
+broke all restraint in the angle of the wall.
+
+"Maria," exclaimed the startled doctor, "don't do that. You excite
+yourself."
+
+In her paroxysm she rolled down on the stone floor, and he stooped in
+consternation and picked her up. He rested his foot on the ledge where
+she had sat, and held her upon his knee. She struggled for breath until
+he thought she would die, and the sweat of terror stood on his forehead.
+When he had watched her by the bonfire, his medical knowledge gave her
+barely two months of life; and within those two months, he had also told
+himself bitterly then, Rice Jones could marry Angélique Saucier; but to
+have her die alone with him in this old building was what he could not
+contemplate.
+
+Scarcely conscious of his own action, the doctor held her in positions
+which helped her, and finally had the relief of hearing her draw a free
+breath as she lapsed against his shoulder. Even a counterfeit tie of
+marriage has its power. He had lived with this woman, she believing
+herself his lawful wife. Their half-year together had been the loftiest
+period of his life. The old feeling, smothered as it was under
+resentment and a new passion, stirred in him. He strained her to his
+breast and called her the pet names he used to call her. The diminutive
+being upon his knee heard them without response. When she could speak
+she whispered,--
+
+"Set me down."
+
+Dr. Dunlap moved his foot and placed her again on the stone ledge. She
+leaned against the wall. There was a ringing in her ears. The
+unpardonable sin in man is not his ceasing to love you. That may be a
+mortal pain, but it has dignity. It is the fearful judgment of seeing in
+a flash that you have wasted your life on what was not worth the waste.
+
+"Now if you are composed, Maria," said Dr. Dunlap hurriedly, "I will say
+what I followed you here to say. The best thing for us to do, now that I
+am free to do it, is to have the marriage ceremony repeated over us and
+made valid. I am ready and willing. The only drawback is the prejudice
+of your family against me."
+
+A magnanimous tone in his voice betrayed eagerness to put the Joneses
+under obligations to him.
+
+"Dr. Dunlap,"--when Maria had spoken his name she panted awhile,--"when
+I found out I was not your wife, and left you, I began then to cough.
+But now--we can never be married."
+
+"Why, Maria?"
+
+She began those formidable sounds again, and he held his breath.
+
+Somebody in the distance began playing a violin. Its music mingled with
+the sounds which river-inclosed lands and the adjacent dwellings of men
+send up in a summer night.
+
+"You know," said Maria when she could speak, "how we deceived my people
+in Wales and in London. None of my family here know anything about that
+marriage."
+
+Another voice outside the walls, keen with anxiety, shouted her name.
+Dr. Dunlap hurried a few yards from her, then stopped and held his
+ground. A man rushed into the old building regardless of the broken
+floor.
+
+"Maria, are you here?"
+
+"Yes, brother Rice."
+
+She was leaving her corner to meet him. The doctor could see that she
+sunk to her hands and knees with weakness and helped herself up by the
+wall.
+
+"Where are you? Is any one with you?"
+
+As they met in the darkness the brother felt her hands and trembling
+figure.
+
+"What possessed you to sit down here in this damp old place? You are
+clammy as stone. Poor little thing, were you frightened? What have you
+been doing?"
+
+"I have been talking," replied Maria.
+
+The doctor's heart labored like a drum. Perhaps she would tell it all
+out to Rice Jones now.
+
+The same acrid restraint may be heard in a mother's voice when she
+inquires, as Rice did,--
+
+"Who was talking with you?"
+
+"Dr. Dunlap."
+
+"Dr. Dunlap? You don't know Dr. Dunlap."
+
+"We met in England," daringly broke out Dr. Dunlap himself.
+
+"He is here yet, is he?" said Rice Jones. "Doctors are supposed to be
+the natural protectors of ailing women; but here's one that is helping a
+sick girl to take her death cold."
+
+An attack on his professional side was what Dr. Dunlap was not prepared
+for. He had nothing to say, and Maria's brother carried her out of the
+old college and took the nearest way home.
+
+Noise was ceasing around the sinking bonfire, a clatter of wooden shoes
+setting homeward along the streets of Kaskaskia. Maria saw the stars
+stretching their great network downward enmeshing the Mississippi. That
+nightly vision is wonderful. But what are outward wonders compared to
+the unseen spiritual chemistry always at work within and around us,
+changing our loves and beliefs and needs?
+
+Rice stopped to rest as soon as they were out of Dr. Dunlap's hearing.
+Light as she was, he felt his sister's complete prostration in her
+weight.
+
+"For God's sake, Maria," he said to her in Welsh,--"is that fellow
+anything to you?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"But he says he met you in England."
+
+She said nothing, and Rice also remained in silence. When he spoke
+again, it was in the tone of dry statement which he used for presenting
+cases in court.
+
+"My pistols have hair triggers and go off at a touch. I had a political
+difference with a gentleman some time ago, and this Dr. Dunlap acted as
+his second. We were standing ready, but before the word was given, and
+while the pistol hung down in my hand, it went off, and the ball struck
+the ground at my feet. Then Dr. Dunlap insisted I had had my shot, and
+must stand still and be fired at without firing again. His anxiety to
+have me shot was so plain that my opponent refused to fire, and we made
+up our difference. That's the Dr. Dunlap we have here in the Territory,
+whatever he may have been in England."
+
+Rice hurried on with her, his motherless little sister, who had been
+left with kinspeople in Wales because she was too delicate to bear the
+hardships of the family transplanting. He blamed himself for her
+exposure and prostration, and held her tenderly, whispering,--
+
+"Mareea-bach!"
+
+She tried to answer the Welsh caressing name, but her throat gurgled and
+a warm stream ran out of her mouth, and he knew it was blood.
+
+
+
+
+PART SECOND.
+
+
+
+
+A FIELD DAY.
+
+
+The gallery pillars of the Sauciers' house hung full of fragrant vines.
+The double doors stood hospitably wide, but no one was visible through
+the extent of hall, though the sound of harp music filled it, coming
+from a large darkened room. Angélique was playing for her
+great-grand-aunt Angélique, the despot of the Saucier family.
+
+This survivor of a past century had her treasures displayed and her
+throne set up in the state apartment of the house. The Sauciers
+contented themselves with a smaller drawing-room across the hall. Her
+throne was a vast valanced, canopied, gilded bed, decorated with down
+sacks in chintz covers to keep her warm, high pillows set up as a
+background for her, and a little pillow for every bone which might make
+a dint in the feather bed. Another such piece of furniture was not to be
+found in the Territory. It and her ebony chairs, her claw-footed tables,
+her harp and dower chest, had come with her from France. The harp alone
+she had already given to Angélique, who was to inherit all she owned.
+
+From childhood the girl had been this aged woman's constant attendant.
+Some days the black servants took their orders at the door, and nobody
+but Angélique was allowed to enter that room. Then the tyrant would
+unbend, and receive family and neighborhood visits. Though she had lived
+a spinster's life, she herself taught Angélique to call her
+"tante-gra'mère," and this absurd mixture of names had been taken up by
+the entire family. So tight a grip did she hold on the growing child
+that Angélique was educated by half-days at the convent; she never had
+an entire day free from tante-gra'mère. Madame Saucier often rose
+against such absorption, and craved the privilege of taking the girl's
+place.
+
+"There is a fête of the children on the bluffs to-day," madame would
+plead; or, "There is a religious procession, and the mother superior has
+particularly sent for Angélique."
+
+But tante-gra'mère lifted her thin shout against every plea, and, if
+pushed, would throw the little pillows at her grand-nephew's wife. What
+were fêtes and processions to her claims?
+
+"I am the godmother of this child," she declared; "it is for me to say
+what she shall do."
+
+The patriarch of a French family was held in such veneration that it was
+little less than a crime to cross her. The thralldom did not ruin
+Angélique's health, though it grew heavier with her years; but it made
+her old in patient endurance and sympathetic insight while she was a
+child. She sat pitying and excusing her elder's whims when she should
+have been playing. The oldest story in humanity is the story of the
+house tyrant,--that usurper often so physically weak that we can carry
+him in our arms, yet so strong that he can tumble down the pillars of
+family peace many times a day.
+
+There was something monkey-like in the tempers of tante-gra'mère. To see
+her grasp her whip and beat her slaves with a good will, but poor
+execution, was to smile self-reproachfully as at the antics of a sick
+child. Though it is true, for a woman who had no use of her legs, she
+displayed astonishing reach in her arms. Her face was a mass of puckers
+burnt through by coal-black eyes. Her mouth was so tucked and folded
+inward that she appeared to have swallowed her lips. In the daytime she
+wore a black silk cap tied under the chin, and a dimity short gown over
+a quilted petticoat. Tante-gra'mère was rich in stored finery. She had
+inherited brocades, and dozen dozens of linen, including sheets and
+napkins. Her things were washed by themselves and bleached on their own
+green, where the family washing never dared intrude.
+
+Fortunately for Angélique, tante-gra'mère's hours were early, and she
+slept as aged people seldom do. At sunset, summer or winter, she had
+herself promptly done up in linen, the whip placed near her hand, and
+her black woman's bed made within reach on the floor. She then went into
+a shell of sleep which dancing-parties in the house had not broken, and
+required no further attention until the birds stirred in the morning.
+Angélique rushed out to evening freedom with a zest which became rapture
+when she danced. Perhaps this fresh delight made her the best dancer in
+Kaskaskia.
+
+The autocrat loved to compound her own dinners. She had a salver which
+Angélique placed before her on the bed; and the old child played in
+pastry or salads, or cut vegetable dice for her soup. The baking or
+boiling or roasting was done with rigor at her own fireplace by her
+blacks, the whiplash in her hand hovering over their bare spots. Silence
+was the law of the presence-chamber when she labored with her recipes,
+of which she had many, looking like spider tracks on very yellow paper.
+These she kept locked up with many of the ingredients for creating them.
+She pored over them with unspectacled eyes whenever she mixed a cunning
+dish; and even Angélique dared not meddle with them, though they were to
+be part of the girl's inheritance.
+
+Angélique now played on the harp to soothe tante-gra'mère's digestion
+after her midday dinner, while outdoors all Kaskaskia buzzed with
+excitement. It was a field day in territorial politics. All the girls
+were at Peggy Morrison's house, watching the processions march by, and
+making bouquets to send up to the speakers, of whom Rice Jones was
+chief. Tante-gra'mère had her heavy green shutters closed, to keep out
+disturbing sights and the noise of fife and drum. Her eyes snapped in
+the gloom. It was a warm day, and the large apartment looked like a
+linen bazaar, so many garments had tante-gra'mère discarded on account
+of the heat, and hung about her. The display made Angélique's face burn
+when Colonel Menard was announced; but it was one of tante-gra'mère's
+unshakable beliefs that her linen was so superior to other people's its
+exposure was a favor to the public. Any attempt to fold it away would
+put her into a fury.
+
+The colonel had his hat and riding-whip in his hand. He stood smiling at
+both the aged woman and the girl, with his comprehensive grasp of all
+individualities. The slave woman placed a chair for him between the bed
+and the harp. Angélique loved the harp; but she was glad to let her
+hands fall in her lap, and leave Colonel Menard to work good nature in
+her tante-gra'mère. The autocrat tolerated him with as much liking as
+she could give to any suitor of Angélique's. The intentions of the
+others were discovered only through slaves used as spies; but he came
+into her state apartment and showed her consideration. She sat up on her
+broad throne, against the background of pillows, and received his salute
+upon her hand. Afterwards he bowed over Angélique's fingers.
+
+"I hope the seven children of monsieur the colonel are well," said
+tante-gra'mère in her tiny scream.
+
+"Four, madame," corrected the visitor. "Thanks, they are very well."
+
+They spoke in French, for although she understood English she never
+condescended to use it. Their conference begun each time by her inquiry
+after his seven children.
+
+"And madame, I hope she is comfortable to-day?"
+
+"I neither sleep nor eat," declared tante-gra'mère. "And with the
+streets full of a shouting rabble, there is no comfort to be had in
+Kaskaskia."
+
+"We are rather noisy to-day. But we are very earnest in this matter. We
+want to be separated from the Indiana Territory and be made an
+independent State."
+
+Tante-gra'mère caught up her whip, and cracked it so suddenly on the
+back of her little page, who was prying into a wall closet, that he
+leaped like a frog, and fell on all fours at the opposite corner of the
+hearth. His grandmother, the black woman, put him behind her, and
+looked steadily at their tyrant. She sat on the floor like an Indian;
+and she was by no means a soft, full-blooded African. High cheek-bones
+and lank coarse hair betrayed the half-breed. Untamed and reticent,
+without the drollery of the black race, she had even a Pottawatomie
+name, Watch-e-kee, which French usage shortened to Wachique.
+
+Tante-gra'mère put this sullen slave in motion and made her bring a
+glass of wine for Colonel Menard. The colonel was too politic to talk to
+Angélique before her elder, though she had not yet answered his
+proposal. He had offered himself through her father, and granted her all
+the time she could require for making up her mind. The colonel knew of
+her sudden decisions against so many Kaskaskians that he particularly
+asked her to take time. Two dimpling grooves were cut in his cheeks by
+the smile which hovered there, as he rose to drink the godmother's
+health, and she said,--
+
+"Angélique, you may leave the room."
+
+Angélique left the room, and he drew his chair toward the autocrat for
+the conference she expected.
+
+"It is very kind of you, madame," said Colonel Menard, "to give me this
+chance of speaking to you alone."
+
+"I do so, monsieur the colonel, because I myself have something to say."
+The little elfin voice disregarded Wachique and the page. They were part
+of the furniture of the room, and did not count as listeners.
+
+"You understand that I wish to propose for mademoiselle?"
+
+Tante-gra'mère nodded. "I understand that you are a man who will make a
+contract and conduct his marriage properly; while these Welsh and
+English, they lean over a gallery rail and whisper, and I am told they
+even come fiddling under the windows after decent people are asleep."
+
+"I am glad to have you on my side, madame."
+
+"I am not on your side, monsieur. I am on nobody's side. And Angélique
+is on nobody's side. Angélique favors no suitor. She is like me: she
+would live a single life to the end of her days, as holy as a nun, with
+never a thought of courtship and weddings, but I have set my face
+against such a life for her. I have seen the folly of it. Here am I, a
+poor old helpless woman, living without respect or consideration, when I
+ought to be looked up to in the Territory."
+
+"You are mistaken, madame. Your name is always mentioned with
+veneration."
+
+"Ah, if I had sons crowding your peltry traffic and taking their share
+of these rich lands, then you would truly see me venerated. I have
+thought of these things many a day; and I am not going to let Angélique
+escape a husband, however such creatures may try a woman's religious
+nature."
+
+"I will make myself as light a trial as possible," suggested Colonel
+Menard.
+
+"You have had one wife."
+
+"Yes, madame."
+
+"But she died." The tiny high voice had the thrust of an insect's
+stinger.
+
+"If she were alive, madame, I could not now have the honor of asking for
+Mademoiselle Angélique's hand."
+
+The dimpling grooves in his cheeks did not escape tante-gra'mère's black
+eyes.
+
+"I do not like widowers," she mused.
+
+"Nor do I," responded the colonel.
+
+"Poor Thérèse might have been alive to-day, if she had not married you."
+
+"Possibly, madame."
+
+"And you have seven children?"
+
+"Four, madame."
+
+"On the whole, I like young men."
+
+"Then you reject my suit?" observed the unmoved wooer.
+
+"I do not reject it, and I do not accept it, monsieur the colonel. I
+consider it."
+
+This gracious promise of neutrality Colonel Menard carried away with him
+without again seeing Angélique; and he made his way through the streets
+of Kaskaskia, unconscious that his little son was following Rice Jones
+about with the invincible persistence of a Menard.
+
+Young Pierre had been allowed to ride into the capital this thronging
+day under charge of his father's body-servant and Jean Lozier. The
+body-servant he sent out of his way with the ponies. Jean Lozier tramped
+at his young seignior's heels, glad of some duty which would excuse him
+to his conscience.
+
+This was the peasant lad's first taste of Kaskaskia. He could hardly
+believe he was there. The rapture of it at first shook him like a palsy.
+He had risen while the whole peninsula was yet a network of dew, and the
+Mississippi's sheet, reflecting the dawn, threw silver in his eyes. All
+thoughts of his grandfather he put resolutely out of his mind; and such
+thoughts troubled him little, indeed, while that sea of humanity dashed
+around him. The crash of martial music stirred the man in him. And when
+he saw the governor's carriage and the magnates of the Territory,
+heading the long procession; the festooned galleries, on which sat
+girls dressed in white, like angels, sending their slaves out with
+baskets of flowers to strew in the way; when he saw floating tableaux of
+men and scenes in the early history of the Territory,--heroes whose
+exploits he knew by heart; and when he heard the shouting which seemed
+to fill the rivers from bluff to bluff, he was willing to wade through
+purgatory to pay for such a day.
+
+Traffic moved with unusual force. It was the custom for outdwelling men
+who had something to sell or to trade to reserve it until they came to a
+convention in Kasky, when they were certain to meet the best buyers. All
+the up-river towns sent lines of vehicles and fleets of boats to the
+capital. Kickapoo, Pottawatomie, and Kaskaskia Indians were there to see
+the white-man council, scattered immovably along the streets, their
+copper faces glistening in the sun, the buckskin fringes on their
+leggins scarcely stirring as the hours crept by. Squaws stood in the
+full heat, erect and silent, in yellow or dark red garments woven of
+silky buffalo wool, and seamed with roebuck sinews. Few of them had
+taken to civilized finery. Their barbaric and simple splendor was a
+rebuke to poor white women.
+
+Many ease-loving old Frenchmen denied themselves the pleasure of
+following the day's pageant from point to point, and chose the best of
+the vacant seats fronting the empty platform in the common meadow. There
+they waited for speech-making to begin, smoking New Orleans tobacco, and
+stretching their wooden-shod feet in front of them. No kind of covering
+intervened betwixt their gray heads and the sky's fierce light, which
+made the rivers seem to wrinkle with fire. An old Frenchman loved to
+feel heaven's hand laid on his hair. Sometimes they spoke to one
+another; but the most of each man's soul was given to basking. Their
+attitudes said: "This is as far as I have lived. I am not living
+to-morrow or next day. The past has reached this instant as high-water
+mark, and here I rest. Move me if you can. I have arrived."
+
+Booths were set up along the route to the common meadow, where the
+thirsty and hungry might find food and drink; and as the crowd surged
+toward its destination, a babel of cries rose from the venders of these
+wares. Father Baby was as great a huckster as any flatboat man of them
+all. He outscreamed and outsweated Spaniards from Ste. Genevieve; and a
+sorry spectacle was he to Father Olivier when a Protestant circuit-rider
+pointed him out. The itinerant had come to preach at early
+candle-lighting to the crowd of sinners which this occasion drew to
+Kaskaskia. There was a flourishing chapel where this good preacher was
+esteemed, and his infrequent messages were gladly accepted. He hated
+Romish practices, especially the Sunday dancing after mass, which Father
+Olivier allowed his humbler parishioners to indulge in. They were such
+children. When their week's work was over and their prayers were said,
+they could scarcely refrain from kicking up their heels to the sound of
+a fiddle.
+
+But when the preacher saw a friar peddling spirits, he determined to
+denounce Kaskaskia as Sodom and Gomorrah around his whole circuit in the
+American bottom lands. While the fire burned in him he encountered
+Father Olivier, who despised him as a heretic, and respected him as a
+man. Each revered the honest faith that was in the other, though they
+thought it their duty to quarrel.
+
+"My friend," exclaimed the preacher, "do you believe you are going in
+and out before this people in a God-fearing manner, when your colleague
+is yonder selling liquor?"
+
+"Oh, that's only poor half-crazy Father Baby. He has no right even to
+the capote he wears. Nobody minds him here."
+
+"He ought to be brought to his knees and soundly converted," declared
+the evangelist.
+
+"He is on his knees half the time now," said Father Olivier
+mischievously. "He's religious enough, but, like you heretics, he
+perverts the truth to suit himself."
+
+The preacher laughed. He was an unlearned man, but he had the great
+heart of an apostle, and was open to jokes.
+
+"Do you think I am riding the wilderness for the pleasure of perverting
+the truth?"
+
+"My friend," returned Father Olivier, "you have been in our sacristy,
+and seen our parish records kept here by the hands of priests for a
+hundred years. You want to make what you call revivals; I am content
+with survivals, with keeping alive the faith. Yet you think I am the
+devil. As for me, I do not say all heretics ought to be burned."
+
+The preacher laughed again with Father Olivier, but did not fail to
+add,--
+
+"You say what I think better than I could say it myself."
+
+The priest left his Protestant brother with a wave of the hand and a
+smiling shrug, and passed on his way along the array of booths. His
+presence was a check on many a rustic drinker. His glance, dropped here
+and there, saved more than one sheep from the shearer. But his own face
+fell, and he stopped in astonishment, when an awkward figure was pushed
+against him, and he recognized his upland lamb.
+
+"Jean Lozier, what are you doing here?" said Father Olivier.
+
+Jean had dodged him many times. The lad stood still, cap in hand,
+looking down. Nothing could make him sorry he had come to Kaskaskia; but
+he expected to do penance for it.
+
+"Where is your grandfather?"
+
+"He is at home, father."
+
+"Did you leave that blind old man alone, to wander out and fall over the
+bluff?"
+
+"I left him, father, but I tied him to a joist in the ceiling with a
+long rope."
+
+"To hang himself?"
+
+"No, father; it is a very long rope."
+
+"And what will the old man do when he grows hungry?"
+
+"His food for the day is on the table."
+
+"My son, my son!"
+
+"Father," exclaimed the boy with passion, "I was never in Kaskaskia
+before. And Colonel Menard lent me a pony to ride after my young master.
+I have no pleasure but watching the lights of the town at night." The
+great fellow began to sob. "If my grandfather would but come here, I
+could keep him well. I have been watching how they do things in
+Kaskaskia. But no, he will stay on the hills. And when I could stand it
+no more I tied him and came."
+
+Father Olivier had looked into the eyes of soldiers and seen the sick
+longing for some particular place which neither courage nor resolution
+seems able to control. He saw even more than this in Jean Lozier's eyes.
+He saw the anguish of a creature about to be driven back from its
+element to another in which it cannot develop. The priest had hitherto
+used Jean's fondness for the capital as means of moral discipline. But
+the sympathy which gave so many simple natures into his literal keeping
+enlightened him now.
+
+"My son," said Father Olivier, "I see how it is with you better than I
+ever did before. You shall come and live in Kaskaskia. I will myself
+forbid your grandfather to keep you longer on the hills."
+
+"But, father, he says he will die in a great town."
+
+"Then, my son, the crown of a little martyrdom is yours. Will you wear
+it until this old man ends his days, and then come to Kaskaskia as your
+reward? Or will you come trampling down your duty, and perhaps
+shortening the life of your father's father? I will not lay any penance
+on you for following this strong desire."
+
+Jean's spirit moved through his rough features, and responded to the
+priest's touch.
+
+"I will wait, father," he said.
+
+"You do right, my son. Now enjoy the remainder of this day, but do not
+make it too long a trial to the old man dependent on you."
+
+Jean Lozier knew very little about the fierce partisan war raging in
+the Territory over separation and non-separation, and all the
+consequences which lay beyond either. But he took his place in a sea of
+listeners, having a man's object in life to struggle for. He was going
+to live in Kaskaskia, and have a little house of his own, a cart and two
+oxen; and when he had made enough by hauling bales from the wharf, he
+could set up in trade. His breast lifted and fell freely as he looked
+into this large and possible future. The patience and frugality and
+self-confidence of the successful man of affairs were born in him.
+
+Rice Jones was on the speaker's platform, moulding the politics of the
+Territory. His voice reached over the great outdoor audience, compelling
+and convincing; now sinking to penetrating undertones, and now rising in
+thrilling music. His irony was so cutting, his humor so irrepressible.
+Laughter ran in waves across the sea of heads as wind runs across the
+grass. On many a homeward road and in many a cabin would these issues
+be fought over before election day, and Rice Jones's arguments quoted
+and propagated to the territorial limits. The serious long-jawed
+Virginia settler and the easy light-minded French boatman listened side
+by side. One had a homestead at stake, and the other had his possessions
+in the common fields where he labored as little as possible; but both
+were with Rice Jones in that political sympathy which bands unlike men
+together. He could say in bright words what they nebulously thought. He
+was the high development of themselves. They were proud of him, with
+that touching hero worship which is the tribute of unlettered men to
+those who represent their best.
+
+Dr. Dunlap stopped an instant at the edge of the crowd, carrying his
+saddle-bags on his arm. He was so well known to be Rice Jones's
+political and personal enemy that his momentary lingering there drew a
+joke or two from his observers. He was exhorted to notice how the
+speaker could wipe up Kasky with such as he, and he replied in kind.
+But his face was wearing thin in his deeper and silent struggle with
+Rice Jones.
+
+He knew that that judicial mind was fathoming and understanding his past
+relations with Maria upon the evidence he had himself furnished. Every
+day since their encounter in the college the doctor had armed himself.
+If he saw Rice Jones appear suddenly on the street, his hand sought his
+pocket. Sometimes he thought of leaving the Territory; which would be
+giving up the world and branding himself a coward. The sick girl was
+forgotten in this nightmare of a personal encounter. As a physician, he
+knew the danger of mania, and prescribed hard labor to counteract it.
+Dismounting under the bluff and tying his horse, he had many times
+toiled and sweated up the ascent, and let himself down again, bruised
+and scratched by stones and briers.
+
+Very trivial in Dr. Dunlap's eyes were the anxieties of some poor
+fellows whom he saw later in the day appealing to Colonel Menard. The
+doctor was returning to a patient. The speeches were over, and the
+common meadow had become a wide picnic ground under the slant of a low
+afternoon sun. Those outdwelling settlers, who had other business to
+transact besides storing political opinions, now began to stir
+themselves; and a dozen needy men drew together and encouraged one
+another to ask Colonel Menard for salt. They were obliged to have salt
+at once, and he was the only great trader who brought it in by the
+flatboat load and kept it stored. He had a covered box in his cellar as
+large as one of their cabins, and it was always kept filled with cured
+meats.
+
+They stood with hands in their pockets and coonskin caps slouching over
+their brows, stating the case to Colonel Menard. But poverty has many
+grades. The quizzical Frenchman detected in some of his clients a
+moneyed ability which raised them above their fellows.
+
+"I have salt," admitted the colonel, speaking English to men who did not
+understand French, "but I have not enough to make brine of de Okaw
+river. I bet you ten dollaire you have not money in your pockets to pay
+for it."
+
+More than half the pockets owned this fact. One man promised to pay when
+he killed his hogs. Another was sure he could settle by election day.
+But the colonel cut these promises short.
+
+"I will settle this matter. De goats that have no money will stand on
+this side, and de sheep that have money will stand on that."
+
+The hopeless majority budged to his right hand, and the confident ones
+to his left. He knew well what comfort or misery hung on his answer, and
+said with decision which no one could turn:--
+
+"Now, messieurs, I am going to lend all my salt to these poor men who
+cannot get it any other way. You fellows who have money in your pockets,
+you may go to Sa' Loui', by gar, and buy yourselves some."
+
+The peninsula of Kaskaskia was glorified by sunset, and even having its
+emerald stretches purpled by the evening shadows of the hills, before
+Rice Jones could go home to his sister. The hundreds thronging him all
+day and hurrahing at his merciless wit saw none of his trouble in his
+face.
+
+He had sat by Maria day after day, wiping the cold dampness from her
+forehead and watching her self-restraining pride. They did not talk
+much, and when they spoke it was to make amusement for each other. This
+young sister growing up over the sea had been a precious image to his
+early manhood. But it was easier to see her die now that the cause of
+Dr. Dunlap's enmity was growing distinct to him.
+
+"No wonder he wanted me shot," thought Rice. "No wonder he took all her
+family as his natural foes at sight."
+
+Sometimes the lawyer dropped his papers and walked his office,
+determining to go out and shoot Dr. Dunlap. The most judicial mind has
+its revolts against concise statement. In these boiling moods Rice did
+not want evidence; he knew enough. But cooler counsel checked him. There
+were plenty of grounds and plenty of days yet to come for a political
+duel, in which no names and no family honor need be mixed.
+
+Rice turned back from the gallery steps with a start at hearing a voice
+behind him. It was only young Pierre Menard at his father's gate. The
+veins on the child's temples were distended by their embarrassed
+throbbing, and his cheeks shone darkly red.
+
+"I want, in fact, to speak to you, Monsieur Zhone," stammered Pierre,
+looking anxiously down the street lest the slave or Jean Lozier should
+appear before he had his say.
+
+"What is it, colonel junior?" said Rice, returning to the gate.
+
+"I want, in fact, to have some talk about our family."
+
+"I hope you haven't any disagreement in your family that the law will
+have to settle?"
+
+"Oh, no, monsieur, we do not quarrel much. And we never should quarrel
+at all if we had a mother to teach us better," said young Pierre
+adroitly.
+
+Rice studied him with a sidelong glance of amusement, and let him
+struggle unhelped to his object.
+
+"Monsieur Zhone, do you intend to get married?"
+
+"Certainly," replied the prompt lawyer.
+
+"But why should you want to get married? You have no children."
+
+"I might have some, if I were married," argued Rice.
+
+"But unless you get some you don't need any mother for them. On the
+contrary, we have great need of a mother in our family."
+
+"I see. You came to take my advice about a stepmother. I have a
+stepmother myself, and I am the very man to advise you. But suppose you
+and I agree on the person for the place, and the colonel refuses her?"
+
+The boy looked at him sharply, but there was no trace of raillery on
+Rice's face.
+
+"You never can tell what the colonel intends to do until he does it,
+monsieur, but I think he will be glad to get her. The girls--all of us,
+in fact, think he ought to be satisfied with her."
+
+"You are quite right. I don't know of a finer young woman in Kaskaskia
+than Miss Peggy Morrison."
+
+"But she isn't the one, Monsieur Zhone. Oh, she wouldn't do at all."
+
+"She wouldn't? I have made a mistake. It's Mademoiselle Vigo."
+
+"Oh, no, she wouldn't do, either. There is only one that would do." The
+boy tried to swallow his tumult of palpitation. "It is Mademoiselle
+Angélique Saucier, monsieur."
+
+Rice looked reproachfully at him over folded arms.
+
+"That's why I came to you about it, monsieur. In the first place, Odile
+picked her out because she is handsome; Berenice and Alzira want her
+because she is good-natured; and I want her because I like to sit in the
+room where she is."
+
+"Young man, this cannot be," said Rice Jones.
+
+"Have you engaged her yourself, monsieur? If you haven't, please don't.
+Nobody else will suit us; and you can take Mademoiselle Peggy Morrison
+that you think is such a fine young woman."
+
+Rice laughed.
+
+"You and I are not the only men in Kaskaskia who admire Mademoiselle
+Saucier, my lad."
+
+"But you are the worst one," said Pierre eagerly. "Odile thinks if you
+let her alone we may get her."
+
+"But I can't let her alone. I see the force of your claims, but human
+nature is so perverse, Pierre, that I want her worse than ever."
+
+Pierre dug with his heel in the grass. His determined countenance
+delighted the rival.
+
+"Monsieur, if you do get her, you have our whole family to beat."
+
+"Yes, I see what odds there are against me," owned Rice.
+
+"We are going to marry her if we can--and my father is willing. He is
+nearly always willing to please us."
+
+"This is fair and open," pronounced Rice, "and the way for gentlemen to
+treat each other. You have done the right thing in coming to talk this
+matter over with me."
+
+"I'm not sure of that, m'sieur."
+
+"I am, for there is nothing better than fair and open rivalry. And after
+all, nobody can settle this but Mademoiselle Saucier herself. She may
+not be willing to take any of us. But, whatever the result, shake hands,
+Pierre."
+
+The boy transferred his riding-whip, and met the lawyer's palm with a
+hearty grasp. They shook hands, laughing, and Pierre felt surprised to
+find how well he liked Rice Jones.
+
+As the wide and capacious Kaskaskia houses were but a single story high,
+Maria's bedroom was almost in the garden. Sweet-brier stretched above
+the foundation and climbed her window; and there were rank flowers,
+such as marigolds and peppery bouncing-betties, which sent her pungent
+odors. Sometimes she could see her stepmother walking the graveled paths
+between the vegetable beds, or her father and Rice strolling back and
+forth together of an evening. Each one was certain to bring her
+something,--a long-stemmed pink, or phlox in a bunch, like a handful of
+honeycomb. The gardener pulled out dead vines and stalks and burned them
+behind a screen of bushes, the thin blue smoke trailing low.
+
+Her father would leave his office to sit beside her, holding the hand
+which grew thinner every day. He had looked forward to his daughter's
+coming as a blossoming-time in his life. Maria had not left her bed
+since the night of her hemorrhage. A mere fortnight in the Territory
+seemed to have wasted half her little body.
+
+When you have strained to bear your burden and keep up with the world's
+march, lightly commiserated by the strong, there is great peace in
+finally giving up and lying down by the roadside. The hour often
+fiercely wished for, and as often repelled with awe, is here. The
+visible is about to become invisible. It is your turn to pass into the
+unknown. You have seen other faces stiffen, and other people carried out
+and forgotten. Your face is now going to chill the touch. You are going
+to be carried out. But, most wonderful of all, you who have been so
+keenly alive are glad to creep close to Death and lay your head in his
+lap.
+
+There are natures to whom suffering is degradation. Sympathy would burn
+them like caustic. They are dumb on the side which seeks promiscuous
+fellowship. They love one person, and live or die by that love.
+
+"I have borne it by myself so far," Maria would think; "I can bear it by
+myself the rest of the way."
+
+Yet the sleepy nurse was often roused at dead of night by her sobbing:
+"Oh, James, that you should be in the same town with me, and never come
+near to see me die! And I love you,--I love you so in spite of
+everything."
+
+Sometimes she resolved to tell her brother the whole story. He would
+perhaps think better of Dr. Dunlap than he now did. Yet, on the
+contrary, his implacable pride and sense of justice might drive him
+directly out to kill the man she loved. And again she would burn with
+rage and shame at Dr. Dunlap's condescension to a legal marriage. He was
+willing.
+
+"You are not willing," she would whisper fiercely at the night candle.
+"You do not love me any more."
+
+The old glamour again covering her, she would lie in a waking dream for
+hours, living over their stolen life together. And she puzzled herself
+trying to fit the jagged pieces of her experience, and to understand why
+all these things should happen. The mystery to come is not greater than
+the mystery which has been, when one lies on a dying bed and counts the
+many diverse individuals that have lived in his skin and been called by
+his name.
+
+At other times, all she had lost of common good flashed through Maria in
+a spark: the deeds to other souls; the enjoyment of nature, which is a
+continual discovery of new worlds; the calm joy of daily life, that best
+prayer of thanks to Almighty God.
+
+Maria always thought of these wholesome things when Angélique came in at
+twilight, a little exhilarated by her escape from the tyrant at home.
+The nurse would give place, and go out to talk with the other negroes,
+while Angélique sat down and held Maria's hand. Perhaps invisible
+streams of health flowed from her, quieting the sick girl. She smiled
+with pure happiness, on account of general good and comfort; her oval
+face and dark hair and eyes having a certain freshness of creation.
+Maria looked at her and wondered what love and sorrow would do to her.
+
+Angélique had one exquisite characteristic which Maria did not at first
+notice, but it grew upon her during these quiet half-hours when she was
+spared the effort of talking or listening. It was a fixed look of
+penetrating sweetness, projecting the girl herself into your nature, and
+making her one with you. No intrusive quality of a stare spoiled it. She
+merely became you for the time being; and this unconscious pretty trick
+had brought down many a long Kaskaskian, for it drove directly through
+the hearts of men.
+
+The provincial girl sometimes puzzled herself about the method of
+education abroad which had produced such a repressed yet such an
+appealing creature as Maria Jones. When she talked to the triangular
+little face on the pillow, she talked about the outdoor world rather
+than its people; so that after Angélique went away Maria often fell
+asleep, fancying herself on the grass, or lying beside the rivers or
+under the cool shadows of rocks.
+
+As Rice Jones entered the house, after his talk about Angélique with
+young Pierre Menard, he met her coming out. It was the first time that
+her twilight visits to his sister had brought them face to face, and
+Rice directly turned off through the garden with her, inquiring how
+Maria had borne the noise of the day.
+
+"She is very quiet," said Angélique. "She was indeed falling asleep when
+I came out."
+
+"I sent my man at noon and at three o'clock to bring me word of her."
+
+There was still a great trampling of horses in the streets. Shouts of
+departing happy voters sounded from the Okaw bridge, mixing with the
+songs of river men. The primrose lights of many candles began to bloom
+all over Kaskaskia. Rice parted the double hedge of currant bushes which
+divided his father's garden from Saucier's, and followed Angélique upon
+her own gravel walk, holding her by his sauntering. They could smell the
+secluded mould in the shadow of the currant roots, which dew was just
+reaching. She went to a corner where a thicket of roses grew. She had
+taken a handful of them to Maria, and now gathered a fresh handful for
+herself, reaching in deftly with mitted arms, holding her gown between
+her knees to keep it back from the briers. Some of them were wild roses,
+with a thin layer of petals and effulgent yellow centres. There was a
+bouquet of garden-breaths from gray-green sage and rosemary leaves and
+the countless herbs and vegetables which every slaveholding Kaskaskian
+cultivated for his large household. Pink and red hollyhocks stood
+sentinel along the paths. The slave cabins, the loom-house, the kitchen,
+and a row of straw beehives were ranged at the back of the lawn, edging
+the garden.
+
+Angélique came back to the main walk, picking her way with slipper toes,
+and offered part of her spoil to Rice. He took some roses, and held the
+hand which gave them. She had come in his way too soon after his mocking
+little talk with young Pierre Menard. He was occupied with other things,
+but that had made him feel a sudden need.
+
+Angélique blushed in the dense twilight, her face taking childlike lines
+of apprehension. Her heart sank, and she suffered for him vicariously
+in advance. Her sensibility to other presences was so keen that she had
+once made it a subject of confession. "Father, I cannot feel any
+separateness from the people around me. Is this a sin?" "Believe that
+you have the saints and holy angels also in your company, and it will be
+no sin," answered Father Olivier.
+
+Though she was used to these queer demonstrations of men, her conscience
+always rebuked her for the number of offers she received. No sooner did
+she feel on terms of excellent friendliness with any man than he began
+to fondle her hand and announce himself her lover. It must be as her
+tante-gra'mère said, that girls had too much liberty in the Territory.
+Jules Vigo and Billy Edgar had both proposed in one day, and Angélique
+hid herself in the loom-house, feeling peculiarly humbled and ashamed to
+face the family, until her godmother had her almost forcibly brought
+back to the usual post.
+
+"I love you," said Rice Jones.
+
+"But please, no, Monsieur Zhone, no."
+
+"I love you," he repeated, compressing his lips. "Why 'no, Monsieur
+Zhone, no'?"
+
+"I do not know." Angélique drew her hand back and arranged her roses
+over and over, looking down at them in blind distress.
+
+"Is it Pierre Menard?"
+
+She glanced up at him reproachfully.
+
+"Oh, monsieur, it is only that I do not want"--She put silence in the
+place of words. "Monsieur," she then appealed, "why do men ask girls who
+do not want them to? If one appeared anxious, then it would be
+reasonable."
+
+"Not to men," said Rice, smiling. "We will have what is hard to be got.
+I shall have you, my Angélique. I will wait."
+
+"Monsieur," said Angélique, thinking of an obstacle which might block
+his way, "I am a Catholic, and you are not."
+
+"Priests don't frighten me. And Father Olivier is too sensible an old
+fellow to object to setting you in the car of my ambition."
+
+They stood in silence.
+
+"Good-night, Monsieur Zhone," said Angélique. "Don't wait."
+
+"But I shall wait," said Rice.
+
+He had bowed and turned away to the currant hedge, and Angélique was
+entering her father's lawn, when he came back impetuously. He framed her
+cheeks in his hands, and she could feel rather than see the power of
+possession in his eyes.
+
+"Angélique!" he said, and the word rushed through her like flame. She
+recoiled, but Rice Jones was again in his father's garden, moving like a
+shadow toward the house, before she stirred. Whether it was the trick of
+the orator or the irrepressible outburst of passion, that appeal
+continued to ring in her ears and to thrill.
+
+More disturbed than she had ever been before by the tactics of a lover,
+Angélique hurried up the back gallery steps, to find Peggy Morrison
+sitting in her chamber window, cross-legged, leaning over with one palm
+supporting a pointed chin. The swinging sashes were pushed outward, and
+Peggy's white gown hung down from the broad sill.
+
+"Is that you, Peggy?" said Angélique. "I thought you were dancing at
+Vigo's this evening."
+
+"I thought you were, too."
+
+"Mama felt obliged to send our excuses, on account of going to sister's
+baby."
+
+"How beautiful these large French families are!" observed Peggy; "some
+of them are always dying or teething, and the girls are slaves to their
+elders."
+
+"We must be beautiful," said Angélique, "since two of the Morrisons have
+picked wives from us; and I assure you the Morrison babies give us the
+most trouble."
+
+"You might expect that. I never saw any luck go with a red-headed
+Morrison."
+
+Angélique sat down on the sill, also, leaning against the side of the
+window. The garden was becoming a void of dimness, through which a few
+fireflies sowed themselves. Vapor blotted such stars as they might have
+seen from their perch, and the foliage of fruit trees stirred with a
+whisper of wind.
+
+"I am so glad you came to stay with me, Peggy. But you are dressed; why
+did you not go?"
+
+"I am hiding."
+
+"What are you hiding from?"
+
+"Jules Vigo, of course."
+
+"Poor Jules."
+
+"Yes, you are always saying poor this and that, after you set them on by
+rejecting them. They run about like blind, mad oxen till they bump their
+stupid heads against somebody that will have them. I shouldn't wonder if
+I got a second-hand husband one day, taking up with some cast-off of
+yours."
+
+"Peggy, these things do not flatter me; they distress me," said
+Angélique genuinely.
+
+"They wouldn't distress me. If I had your face, and your hands and arms,
+and the way you carry yourself, I'd love to kill men. They have no sense
+at all."
+
+Angélique heard her grind her teeth, and exclaimed,--
+
+"Why, Peggy, what has poor Jules done?"
+
+"Oh, Jules!--he is nothing. I have just engaged myself to him to get rid
+of him, and now I have some right to be let alone. He's only the fourth
+one of your victims that I've accepted, and doctored up, and set on foot
+again. I take them in rotation, and let them easily down to marrying
+some girl of capacity suitable to them. And until you are married off, I
+have no prospect of ever being anything but second choice."
+
+Angélique laughed.
+
+"Your clever tongue so fascinates men that this is all mockery, your
+being second choice. But indeed I like men, Peggy; if they had not the
+foolishness of falling in love."
+
+"Angélique Saucier, when do you intend to settle in life?"
+
+"I do not know," said the French girl slowly. "It is pleasant to be as
+we are."
+
+Peggy glanced at her through the dark.
+
+"Do you intend to be a nun?"
+
+"No, I have no vocation."
+
+"Well, if you don't marry, the time will come when you'll be called an
+old maid."
+
+"That is what mama says. It is a pity to make ugly names for good
+women."
+
+"I'll be drawn and quartered before I'll be called an old maid," said
+Peggy fiercely. "What difference does it make, after all, which of these
+simpletons one takes for a husband? Were you ever in love with one of
+them, Angélique?"
+
+Peggy had the kind of eyes which show a disk of light in the dark, and
+they revealed it as she asked this question.
+
+"No, I think not," answered Angélique.
+
+"You think not. You believe, to the best of your knowledge and
+recollection, that such a thing has never happened to you," mocked
+Peggy. And then she made a sudden pounce at Angélique's arm. "What was
+the matter with you when you ran up the gallery steps, a minute ago?"
+
+The startled girl drew in her breath with surprise, but laughed.
+
+"It was lighter then," hinted Peggy.
+
+"Did you see him?"
+
+"Yes, I saw him. And I saw you coaxing him along with a bunch of roses,
+for all the world like catching a pony with a bunch of grass. And I saw
+him careering back to neigh in your face."
+
+"Oh, Peggy, I wish Monsieur Reece Zhone could but hear what you say. Do
+teach me some of your clever ridicule. It must be that I take suitors
+too seriously."
+
+"Thank you," said Peggy dryly, "I need it all for my second-hand lot. He
+is the worst fool of any of them."
+
+"Take care, Peggy, you rouse me. Why is a man a fool for loving me?"
+
+"He said he loved you, then?"
+
+The Saucier negroes were gathering on doorsteps, excited by the day and
+the bustle of crowds which still hummed in the streets. Now a line of
+song was roared from the farthest cabin, and old and young voices all
+poured themselves into a chorus. A slender young moon showed itself
+under foliage, dipping almost as low as the horizon. Under all other
+sounds of life, but steadily and with sweet monotony, the world of
+little living things in grass and thicket made itself heard. The dewy
+darkness was a pleasure to Angélique, but Peggy moved restlessly, and
+finally clasped her hands behind her neck and leaned against the window
+side, watching as well as she could the queen of hearts opposite. She
+could herself feel Angélique's charm of beautiful health and outreaching
+sympathy. Peggy was a candid girl, and had no self-deceptions. But she
+did have that foreknowledge of herself which lives a germ in some
+unformed girls whose development surprises everybody. She knew she could
+become a woman of strength and influence, the best wife in the Territory
+for an ambitious man who had the wisdom to choose her. Her sharp
+fairness would round out, moreover, and her red head, melting the snows
+which fell in middle age on a Morrison, become a softly golden and
+glorious crown. At an age when Angélique would be faded, Peggy's richest
+bloom would appear. She was like the wild grapes under the bluffs; it
+required frost to ripen her. But women whom nature thus obliges to wait
+for beauty seldom do it graciously; transition is not repose.
+
+"Well, which is it to be, Rice Jones or Pierre Menard? Be candid with
+me, Angélique, as I would be with you. You know you will have to decide
+some time."
+
+"I do not think Monsieur Reece Zhone is for me," said Angélique, with
+intuitive avoidance of Colonel Menard's name; Peggy cared nothing for
+the fate of Colonel Menard. "Indeed, I believe his mind dwells more on
+his sister now than on any one else."
+
+"I hate people's relations!" cried Peggy brutally; "especially their
+sick relations. I couldn't run every evening to pet Maria Jones and feed
+her pap."
+
+"I do not pet her nor feed her pap," declared Angélique, put on the
+defensive. "Don't be a little beast, Peggy," she added in French.
+
+"I see how it is: you are going to take him. The man who needs a bug in
+his ear worse than any other man in the Territory will never be handed
+over to me to get it. But let me tell you, you will have your hands full
+with Rice Jones. This Welsh-English stock is not soft stuff to manage.
+When he makes that line with his lips that looks like a red-hot razor
+edge, his poor wife will wish to leave this earth and take to the
+bluffs."
+
+"You appear to think a great deal about Monsieur Reece Zhone and his
+future wife," said Angélique mischievously.
+
+"I know what you mean," said Peggy defiantly, "and we may as well have
+it out now as any time. If you throw him at me, I shall quarrel with
+you. I detest Rice Jones. He makes me crosser than any other person in
+the world."
+
+"How can you detest a man like that? I am almost afraid of him. He has
+a wonderful force. It is a great thing at his age to be elected to the
+National Assembly as the leader of his party in the Territory."
+
+"I am not afraid of him," said Peggy, with a note of pride.
+
+"No,--for I have sometimes thought, Peggy, that Monsieur Reece Zhone and
+you were made for each other."
+
+Peggy Morrison sneered. Her nervous laughter, however, had a sound of
+jubilation.
+
+The talk stopped there. They could see fog rising like a smoke from the
+earth, gradually making distant indistinct objects an obliterated
+memory, and filling the place where the garden had been.
+
+"We must go in and call for candles," said Angélique.
+
+"No," said Peggy, turning on the broad sill and stretching herself along
+it, "let me lay my head in your lap and watch that lovely mist come up
+like a dream. It makes me feel happy. You are a good girl, Angélique."
+
+
+
+
+PART THIRD.
+
+
+
+
+THE RISING.
+
+
+Father Baby's part in the common fields lay on the Mississippi side of
+the peninsula, quite three miles from town. The common fields as an
+entire tract belonged to the community of Kaskaskia; no individual held
+any purchased or transferable right in them. Each man who wished to
+could claim his proportion of acres and plant any crop he pleased, year
+after year. He paid no rent, but neither did he hold any fee in the
+land.
+
+Early on rainy summer mornings, the friar loved to hoist his capote on
+the cord, and tramp, bare-legged, out to his two-acre farm, leaving his
+slave, with a few small coins in the till, to keep shop should any
+customer forestall his return.
+
+"The fathers of all orders," explained Father Baby, "from their
+earliest foundations, have counted it a worthy mortification of the
+flesh to till the ground. And be ready to refresh me without grinning,
+when I come back muddy from performing the labor to which I might send
+you, if I were a man who loved sinful ease. Monastic habits are above
+the understanding of a black rascal like you.".
+
+The truth was, the friar loved to play in wet dirt. Civilized life and
+the confinement of a shop worked a kind of ferment in his wild spirit,
+which violent dancing somewhat relieved, but which intimate contact with
+the earth cooled and settled. Father Baby sometimes stripped off his
+capote and lay down in the hollow between furrows of corn, like a very
+lean but peaceful pig. He would not have been seen, on any account, and
+lifted an apprehensive head in the darkness of the morning if a bird
+rustled past. This performance he called a mortification of his frame;
+but when this sly churchman slipped up and put on his capote again, his
+thin visage bore the same gratified lines which may be seen on the face
+of a child making mud pies.
+
+It had rained steadily since the political field day which had drawn
+such crowds to Kaskaskia. The waters of the Okaw had risen, and Father
+Baby's way to his work had been across fields of puddles, through which
+he waded before dawn; knowing well that a week's growth of weeds was
+waiting for him in its rankness.
+
+The rain was not over. It barely yet restrained itself, and threatened
+without falling; blotting out distance as the light grew. A damp air
+blew from the northwest. Father Baby found the little avenues between
+his rows of maize and pea vines choked with the liberal growth which no
+man plants, and he fell furiously to work. His greatest pleasure was the
+order and thrift of his little farm, and until these were restored he
+could not even wallow comfortably. When he had hoed and pulled out
+stubborn roots until his back ached, he stood erect, letting his hands
+hang outspread, magnified by their mask of dirt, and rested himself,
+thinking of the winter dinners he would enjoy when this moist land
+should take on a silver coating of frost, and a frozen sward resist the
+tread of his wooden shoe.
+
+"O Lord," said Father Baby, "I confess I am a sinner; we all are. But I
+am a provident sinner who makes good use of the increase Thou dost send
+through the earth. I do Thee to wit that Antoine Lamarche's crop is
+pretty weedy. The lazy dog will have to buy of me, and if I do not skin
+him well--But hold on. My blessed Master, I had forgot that Antoine has
+a sick child in his house. I will set his garden in order for him.
+Perhaps Thou wilt count it to me for righteousness, and let it offset
+some of my iniquities."
+
+So when he had finished his own, the friar put his hoe into his
+neighbor's patch, and worked until the sweat rolled down his thin
+cheeks. Gusts of rain added their moisture. As much light as the world
+was to have that day filtered through sheets of vapor. The bluffs
+bordering the Okaw could not be seen except as a vague bank of forest;
+and as for the lowlands across the great river, they might as well have
+had no existence.
+
+It grew upon Father Baby's observation that the Mississippi had never
+looked so threatening. He stuck to his hoeing until he was nearly
+exhausted, and Antoine Lamarche's ground showed at least enough
+improvement to offset all the cheating he had done that week, and then
+made his way among bushes to the verge of the bank. The strong current
+always bearing down from the northwest against the peninsula had
+increased its velocity to a dizzy sweep. It bit out pieces of the shore
+as large as Father Baby's shop, and far and near these were seen falling
+in with splashes like the spouting of whales.
+
+"At this rate," said Father Baby aloud, "I shall have no part left in
+the common fields by next year."
+
+The river's tremendous rolling roar was also swollen to unusual
+magnitude. He looked afar over a tawny surface at undermined stumps and
+trees racing past one another. The June rise, which the melting of snows
+in those vague regions around its head-waters was called, had been
+considerable, but nothing to terrify the Kaskaskians. One week's rain
+and the drainage of the bottom lands could scarcely have raised the
+river to such a height. "Though Heaven alone can tell," grumbled the
+friar, "what the Mississippi will do for its own amusement. All the able
+slaves in Kaskaskia should be set to work on the levee before this day
+is an hour older."
+
+Carrying the hoe on his shoulder like any laborer, and drawing the hood
+of his garment over his bald crown as the mist of rain increased to a
+driving sheet, Father Baby tramped along the river edge toward an
+unfinished defense against the waters. It was a high dike, beginning on
+a shoulder of the peninsula above the town, but extending barely a mile
+across a marsh where the river had once continuously raveled the shore
+even in dry seasons. The friar was glad to discern a number of figures
+at work carting earth to the most exposed and sunken spots of this dike.
+
+The marsh inside the embankment was now a little lake, and some shouting
+black boys were paddling about there in a canoe which had probably been
+made during the leisure enforced by wet weather. It was a rough and
+clumsy thing, but very strongly put together.
+
+The tavern in Kaskaskia was a common meeting-place. Other guest houses,
+scattered through the town, fed and lodged the humble in an humble way;
+but none of them dared to take the name "tavern," or even to imitate its
+glories. In pleasant weather, its gallery was filled with men
+bargaining, or hiring the labor of other men. It was the gathering and
+distributing point of news, the headquarters of the Assembly when that
+body was in session,--a little hôtel de ville, in fact, where municipal
+business was transacted.
+
+The wainscoted dining-room, which had a ceiling traversed by oak beams,
+had been the scene of many a stately banquet. In front of this was the
+bar-room, thirty by forty feet in dimensions, with a great stone
+fireplace built at one end. There was a high carved mantel over this,
+displaying the solid silver candlesticks of the house, and the silver
+snuffers on their tray embossed with dragons. The bar was at the end of
+the room opposite the fireplace, and behind it shone the grandest of
+negro men in white linen, and behind him, tier on tier, an array of
+flasks and flat bottles nearly reaching the low ceiling. Poor
+Kaskaskians who entered there, entered society. They always pulled their
+cappos off their heads, and said "Good-evening, messieurs," to the
+company in general. It was often as good as a feast to smell the spicy
+odors stealing out from the dining-room. It was a gentle community, and
+the tavern bar-room was by no means a resort of noisy drinkers. If any
+indecorum threatened, the host was able to quell it. He sat in his own
+leather chair, at the hearth corner in winter, and on the gallery in
+summer; a gigantic Frenchman, full of accumulated happiness.
+
+It was barely dusk when candles were lighted in the sconces around the
+walls, and on the mantel and bar. The host had his chair by a crackling
+fire, for continual dampness made the July night raw; and the crane was
+swung over the blaze with a steaming tea-kettle on one of its hooks.
+Several Indians also sat by the stone flags, opposite the host, moving
+nothing but their small restless eyes; aboriginal America watching
+transplanted Europe, and detecting the incompatible qualities of French
+and English blood.
+
+The bar-room had its orchestra of three banjos, making it a hall of
+music every night in the year. And herein Africa added itself to the
+civilization of the New World. Three coal-black slaves of the host's sat
+on a bench sacred to them, and softly twanged their instruments,
+breaking out at intervals into the wild chants of their people;
+improvising, and stimulating each other by musical hints and
+exclamations. It was evident that they esteemed their office; and the
+male public of Kaskaskia showed them consideration. While the volume of
+talk was never lessened during their glees, the talkers all listened
+with at least one ear. There was no loud brawling, and the laughter
+raised by argument rarely drowned the banjos. Sometimes a Frenchman was
+inspired to cut a pigeon wing; and Father Baby had tripped it over every
+inch of this oak floor, when the frenzy for dancing seized him and the
+tunes were particularly irresistible. The bar-room gave him his only
+taste of Kaskaskia society, and he took it with zest. Little wizened
+black-eyed fellows clapped their hands, delighting, while their priest
+was not by, in the antics of a disreputable churchman; but the bigger
+and colder race paid little attention to him.
+
+Various as were the home backgrounds of the lives converging at the
+tavern, there were but two topics before that little public while the
+cosy fire roared and the banjos rattled. A rumor of coming high water
+was running down the Mississippi valley like the wind which is driven
+before a rush of rain; and the non-separation party had suffered some
+local defeat in the Indiana Territory. The first item of news took
+greatest hold on those serious Anglo-Americans who had come from the
+Atlantic coast to found estates in this valley. On the contrary, the
+peasant tenant gave his mind to politics. It was still an intoxicating
+privilege for him to have a say in the government.
+
+"Dese Indiana Territory fellers," piped a grasshopper of a Frenchman,
+springing from his chair in excitement, "dey want our slaves, dey want
+our Territory,--dey want de hide off our backs."
+
+"Tony Lamarche," drawled a Virginian, "you don't know what you're
+talking about. You haven't e'er a slave to your name; and you don't own
+a foot of the Territory. As for your hide, it wouldn't make a drumhead
+nohow. So what are you dancin' about?"
+
+"If I got no land, I got some of dose rights of a citizen, eh?" snorted
+Antoine, planting himself in front of the Virginian, and bending forward
+until they almost touched noses.
+
+"I reckon you have, and I reckon you better use them. You git your
+family over on to the bluff before your house is sucked into the Okaw."
+
+"And go and hoe the weeds out of your maize patch, Antoine," exhorted
+Father Baby, setting an empty glass back on the bar. "I cleaned part of
+them out for you myself, with the rain streaming down my back, thinking
+only of your breadless children. And what do I find when I come home to
+my shop but that Antoine Lamarche has been in and carried off six
+dog-leg twists of tobacco on credit! I say nothing about it. I am a
+childless old friar; but I have never seen children eat tobacco."
+
+The baited Frenchman turned on Father Baby; but, like a skittish girl,
+the friar hopped across the room, shook off his wooden shoes, picked up
+the skirt of his habit, and began to dance. The exhilarating drink, the
+ruddiness of the fire, the discomfort outside, the smoothness of the oak
+boards,--these were conditions of happiness for Father Baby. This was
+perhaps the crowning instant of his experience. He was a butterfly man.
+He saw his lodger, Dr. Dunlap, appear at the door as haggard as the
+dead. The friar's first thought was:--
+
+      "That fellow has proposed for Mademoiselle Saucier and been
+      rejected. I'm glad I'm a churchman, and not yoked up to draw a
+      family, like these fools, and like he wants to be. This bowing
+      down and worshiping another human being,--crazy if you don't get
+      her, and crazed by her if you do,--I'll have none of it."
+
+Dr. Dunlap raised his arms and shouted to the company in the bar-room.
+What he said no one could hear. Hissing and roaring filled the world,
+submerging the crackling of the fire, the banjo tunes, and human voices.
+Men looked at each other, stupefied, holding their pipes from their
+mouths. Then a wave struck the solid old tavern, hissed across its
+gallery, and sprawled through the hall upon the bar-room floor. Not a
+person in the house could understand what had happened to Kaskaskia
+peninsula; but Jean Lozier stood on the bluff and saw it.
+
+Jean was watching the lights of Kaskaskia while his sick grandfather
+slept. The moon was nearly full, but on such a night one forgot there
+was a moon. The bushes dripped on Jean, and the valley below him was a
+blur pierced by those rows of lights. A great darkness was coming out of
+the northwest, whistling as it came. He saw the sky and the turbid
+Mississippi meet and strangely become one. There were waters over the
+heavens, and waters under the heavens. A wall like a moving dam swept
+across the world and filled it. The boy found himself sitting on the
+ground holding to a sapling, drenched and half drowned by the spray
+which dashed up the bluffs. The darkness and hissing went over him, and
+he thought he was dying without absolution, at the end of the world. He
+lay down and gasped and shuddered until the great Thing was gone,--the
+incredible Thing, in which no one believes except him who has seen it,
+and which no name can name; that awful spirit of Deluge, which lives in
+the traditions of every race. Jean had never heard of waterspout or
+cloudburst or any modern name given to the Force whenever its leash is
+slipped for a few minutes. He felt himself as trivial a thing in chaos
+as the ant which clung on his hand and bit him because it was drowning.
+
+The blind downpour being gone, though rain still fell and the wind
+whistled in his ears, Jean climbed across bent or broken saplings nearer
+the bluff's edge to look at Kaskaskia. The rows of lights were partially
+blotted; and lightning, by its swift unrollings, showed him a town
+standing in a lake. The Mississippi and the Okaw had become one water,
+spreading as far as the eye could see. Now bells began to clamor from
+that valley of foam. The bell of the Immaculate Conception, cast in
+France a hundred years before, which had tolled for D'Artaguette, and
+made jubilee over weddings and christenings, and almost lived the life
+of the people, sent out the alarm cry of smitten metal; and a tinkling
+appeal from the convent supplemented it.
+
+There was no need of the bells to rouse Kaskaskia; they served rather as
+sounding buoys in a suddenly created waterway. Peggy Morrison had come
+to stay all night with Angélique Saucier. The two girls were shut in
+their bedroom, and Angélique's black maid was taking the pins from
+Peggy's hair, when the stone house received its shock, and shuddered
+like a ship. Screams were heard from the cabins. Angélique threw the
+sashes open, and looked into storm and darkness; yet the lightning
+showed her a driving current of water combed by pickets of the garden
+fence. It washed over the log steps, down which some of her father's
+slaves were plunging from their doors, to recoil and scramble and mix
+their despairing cries with the wakening clamor of bells.
+
+Their master shouted encouragement to them from the back gallery.
+Angélique's candles were blown out by the wind when she and Peggy tried
+to hold them for her father. The terrified maid crouched down in a
+helpless bunch on the hall floor, and Madame Saucier herself brought the
+lantern from the attic. The perforated tin beacon, spreading its bits of
+light like a circular shower of silver on the gallery floor, was held
+high for the struggling slaves. Heads as grotesque as the waterspouts on
+old cathedrals craned through the darkness and up to the gallery posts.
+The men breasted the deepening water first, and howling little blacks
+rode on their fathers' shoulders. Captain Saucier pulled the trembling
+creatures in, standing waist-deep at the foot of the steps. The
+shrieking women balanced light bundles of dry clothes on their heads,
+and the cook brought useless kettles and pans, not realizing that all
+the food of the house was lost in a water-filled cellar.
+
+The entire white-eyed colony were landed, but scarcely before it was
+time to close the doors of the ark. A far-off roar and a swell like that
+of the ocean came across the submerged country. No slave had a chance to
+stand whimpering and dripping in the hall. Captain Saucier put up the
+bars, and started a black line of men and women, with pieces of
+furniture, loads of clothing and linen, bedding and pewter and silver,
+and precious baskets of china, or tiers of books, upon their heads, up
+the attic stairs. Angélique's harp went up between two stout fellows,
+tingling with little sighs as they bumped it on the steps.
+Tante-gra'mère's room was invaded, and her treasures were transferred
+before she had a chance to prohibit it. The children were taken from
+their beds by the nurse, and carried to beds made for them in the
+attic, where they gazed awhile at their rude dark canopy of rafters, and
+fell asleep again in luxury, sure of protection, and expecting much of
+such novel times.
+
+The attic, like the house under it, had dignity of space, in which
+another large family might have found shelter. Over rawhide trunks and
+the disused cradle and still-crib was now piled the salvage of a wealthy
+household. Two dormer windows pierced the roof fronting the street, and
+there was also one in the west gable, extending like a hallway toward
+the treetops, but none in the roof at the back.
+
+The timbers of the house creaked, and at every blow of the water the
+inmates could hear it splashing to the chimneys on one side, and running
+down on the other.
+
+"Now," said Captain Saucier desperately, "tante-gra'mère must be roused
+and carried up."
+
+"Yes, the feather beds are all piled together for her, with fresh linen
+sheets and all her cushions; but," gasped madame his wife, "she has
+never before been waked in the night. Is it not better to send Angélique
+to bring her by degrees into a frame of mind for being removed?"
+
+"There is no time. I have left her till the last minute, hoping she
+might wake."
+
+They made a procession into her chamber, Angélique and Peggy carrying
+candles, the grand-nephew and grand-niece ready for a conflict. Waters
+booming against the house, and already making river coves of familiar
+rooms, were scarcely more to be dreaded than the obstinate will of a
+creature as small as a child.
+
+Angélique lifted a ruffle of tante-gra'mère's nightcap and whispered in
+her ear. She stirred, and struck out with one hand, encountering the
+candle flame. That brought her upright, staring with indignant black
+eyes at the conclave.
+
+"Dear tante-gra'mère, we are in danger. There is a great overflow of the
+rivers."
+
+The autocrat felt for her whip in its accustomed place, and armed
+herself with it.
+
+"Pardon us for disturbing you, tante-gra'mère," said her grand-nephew,
+"but I am obliged to carry you into the attic."
+
+"Is the sun up?" cried the little voice.
+
+"The water is, madame," answered Peggy.
+
+"If you wait for the sun, tante-gra'mère," urged her grand-nephew's
+wife, "you will drown here."
+
+"Do you tell me I will drown in my own bed? I will not drown. Where is
+Wachique?"
+
+"She is carrying your chairs into the attic, tante-gra'mère."
+
+"My chairs gone to the attic in my lifetime? And who has claimed my
+dower chest and my linen?"
+
+"All your things are safely removed except this bedstead, madame,"
+declared Angélique's mother. "They were set down more carefully than my
+china."
+
+"How long have I been asleep?"
+
+"Only a few hours, tante-gra'mère. It is early in the night."
+
+Her withered face was quite wrathful.
+
+"The water is all over the floor, madame. We are standing to our ankles.
+In a few minutes we shall be standing to our knees. Look at it. Do you
+hear the roaring and the wash outside? Kaskaskia is under water, and the
+people have to climb to the roofs."
+
+The aged woman always listened incredulously to Peggy. She now craned
+over the side of the bed, and examined for herself streams like
+quicksilver slipping along the dark boards.
+
+"Why did you not do something to prevent this, instead of coming in here
+to break my rest?" she inquired.
+
+Captain Saucier extended his hands to lift her, but she lay down again,
+holding the whip bolt upright.
+
+"If I go to the attic, Captain Saucier, my bed goes with me."
+
+"There is not time to move it."
+
+"And there is such a beautiful bed up there, quite ready, with all your
+cushions."
+
+"My bed goes with me," repeated tante-gra'mère.
+
+"There will soon be water enough to carry it," remarked Peggy, "if it
+will float."
+
+Waves crashing across the gallery broke against tante-gra'mère's closed
+shutters and spurted between the sashes. This freak of the storm
+devastating Kaskaskia she regarded with sidelong scrutiny, such as a
+crow gives to the dubious figure set to frighten it. The majesty of the
+terror which was abroad drove back into their littleness those sticks
+and pieces of cloth which she had valued so long. Again came the crash
+of water, and this time the shutters bowed themselves and a sash blew
+in, and the Mississippi burst into the room.
+
+The candles were out, but Captain Saucier had caught up his relative as
+the water struck. Angélique groped for her mother, and she and Peggy led
+that dazed woman through the hall, laughing at their own shudders and
+splashes, and Captain Saucier waded after them. So the last vestige of
+human life forsook this home, taking to the shelter of the attic; and
+ripples drove into the fireplaces and frothed at the wainscots.
+
+The jangling of the bells, to which the family had scarcely listened in
+their nearer tumult and frantic haste, became very distinct in the
+attic. So did the wind which was driving that foaming sea. All the
+windows were closed, but moisture was blown through the tiniest
+crevices. There were two rooms in the attic. In the first one the slaves
+huddled among piles of furniture. The west room held the children's
+pallets and tante-gra'mère's lowly substitute for her leviathan bed. She
+sat up among pillows, blinking resentfully. Angélique at once had a pair
+of bedroom screens brought in, and stretched a wall of privacy across
+the corner thus occupied; but tante-gra'mère as promptly had them
+rearranged to give her a tunnel for observation. In chaotic anger and
+terror she snapped her whip at intervals.
+
+"What is it, dear tante-gra'mère?" Angélique would inquire.
+
+"Send Wachique down to bring up my bedstead."
+
+"But, dear tante-gra'mère, Wachique would drown. The water is already
+half way up the attic stairs."
+
+"Am I to lie here on the floor like a slave?"
+
+"Dear, there are six feather beds under you."
+
+"How long is this to last?"
+
+"Not long, I hope."
+
+Peggy stood at the gable window and looked out at the seething night. To
+her the peninsula seemed sinking. She could not see anything distinctly.
+Foam specked the panes. The bells kept up their alarm. Father Olivier
+was probably standing on the belfry ladder cheering his black ringer,
+and the sisters took turns at their rope with that determined calmness
+which was the rule of their lives. Peggy tried to see even the roof of
+her home. She was a grateful daughter; but her most anxious thoughts
+were not of the father and mother whose most anxious thoughts would be
+of her.
+
+When the fury of the cloudburst had passed over, and the lightning no
+longer flickered in their faces, and the thunder growled away in the
+southeast, the risen water began to show its rolling surface. A little
+moonlight leaked abroad through cloudy crevices. Angélique was bathing
+her mother's face with camphor; for Madame Saucier sat down and fainted
+comfortably, when nothing else could be done. Something bumped against
+the side of the house, and crept crunching and bumping along, and a
+voice hailed them.
+
+"That is Colonel Menard!" cried Angélique.
+
+Her father opened one of the dormer windows and held the lantern out of
+it. Below the steep roof a boat was dashed by the swell, and Colonel
+Menard and his oarsman were trying to hold it off from the eaves. A
+lantern was fastened in the prow.
+
+"How do you make a landing at this port?"
+
+"The saints know, colonel. But we will land you. How dared you venture
+out in the trail of such a storm?"
+
+"I do not like to wait on weather, Captain Saucier. Besides, I am a good
+swimmer. Are you all safe?"
+
+"Safe, thank Heaven," called Madame Saucier, reviving at the hint of
+such early rescue, and pressing to the window beside her husband. "But
+here are twenty people, counting our slaves, driven to the roof almost
+without warning; and who can say where the water will stop?"
+
+"On that account, madame, I came out with the boat as soon as I could.
+But we shall be stove in here. Monsieur the captain, can you let the
+family down the roof to me?"
+
+Captain Saucier thought he could, and he saw it would have to be done
+quickly. By dim lantern light the Saucier children were hurried into
+their clothing, and Wachique brought a wrap of fur and wool for
+tante-gra'mère. Three of the slave men were called in, and they rigged a
+rope around their master's waist, by which they could hold and guide him
+in his attempt to carry living freight down the slippery roof.
+
+"How many can you carry?" he inquired.
+
+"Six at a time," answered Colonel Menard. "To try to do more would
+hardly be safe, in this rough water."
+
+"Were the boats at the wharf swept away?"
+
+"It is not now easy to tell where the wharf was. But some of the large
+craft seem wedged among trees along the bluff. By daylight we shall get
+some out. And I have sent to the governor for all the boats he can
+muster for us."
+
+Angélique came to the dormer window and touched her father's shoulder.
+
+"Are you all ready?" he asked.
+
+"Tante-gra'mère will not go into the boat."
+
+"But she must. There will be six of you, with Peggy; and Colonel Menard
+cannot much longer hang by the eaves."
+
+"Perhaps if you pick her up and run with her, papa, as you did from the
+danger below, she may allow it."
+
+"She must go into the boat directly," said Captain Saucier; and the
+negroes paid out the rope as he stalked to the screened corner.
+
+Angélique leaned over the sill and the chill wilderness of waters. The
+wind sung in her ears. She could not distinctly see Colonel Menard, and
+there was such a sound of waves that she was not sure it was best to try
+her voice against them. His man had an oar thrust into the broken window
+below, and was thereby able to hold the boat against the current.
+
+"Monsieur the colonel!" called Angélique; and she saw the swift removal
+of his hat.
+
+"Mademoiselle, have you been alarmed?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur. Even my father was unable to do anything for the family
+until you came. But it seems when we find one relief we get another
+anxiety with it."
+
+"What other anxiety have you now?"
+
+"I am afraid you will be drowned trying to carry us out."
+
+"My bel-o-ved, would you care?" said Pierre Menard, speaking English,
+which his slave could not understand, and accenting on the first
+syllable the name he gave her.
+
+"Yes; it would be a serious inconvenience to me," replied Angélique.
+
+"Now that is worth coming here for. De northwest wind, I do not feel it
+since you say that."
+
+"I was thinking before you came, monsieur, what if I should never see
+you again? And if I saw you plainly now I could not talk so much. But
+something may happen. It is so strange, and like another world, this
+water."
+
+Tante-gra'mère screamed, and Angélique disappeared from the window-sill.
+It was not the mere outcry of a frightened woman. The keen small shriek
+was so terrible in its helplessness and appeal to Heaven that Captain
+Saucier was made limp by it.
+
+"What shall I do?" he asked his family.
+
+"I cannot force her into the boat when she cries out like that."
+
+"Perhaps she will go at dawn," suggested Angélique. "The wind may sink.
+The howling and the darkness terrify her more than the water."
+
+"But Colonel Menard cannot wait until dawn. We shall all be drowned here
+before she will budge," lamented Madame Saucier.
+
+"Leave her with me," urged Peggy Morrison, "and the rest of you go with
+Colonel Menard. I'll manage her. She will be ready to jump out of the
+window into the next boat that comes along."
+
+"We cannot leave her, Peggy, and we cannot leave you. I am responsible
+to your father for your safety. I will put you and my family into the
+boat, and stay with her myself."
+
+"Angélique will not leave me!" cried the little voice among the screens.
+
+"Are you ready to lower them?" called Colonel Menard.
+
+Captain Saucier went again to the window, his wife and daughter and
+Peggy with him.
+
+"I could not leave her," said Angélique to Peggy. They stood behind the
+father and mother, who told their trouble across the sill.
+
+"That spoiled old woman needs a good shaking," declared Peggy.
+
+"Poor little tante-gra'mère. It is a dreadful thing, Peggy, to be a
+child when you are too old for discipline."
+
+"Give my compliments to madame, and coax her," urged Colonel Menard.
+"Tell her, if she will let herself be lowered to me, I will pledge my
+life for her safety."
+
+The two children stood huddled together, waiting, large-eyed and silent,
+while their elders kneeled around the immovable invalid. Peggy laughed
+at the expectant attitudes of the pleaders.
+
+"Tante-gra'mère has now quite made up her mind to go," Madame Saucier
+announced over and over to her family and to Peggy, and to the slaves at
+the partition door, all of whom were waiting for the rescue barred from
+them by one obstinate little mummy.
+
+But these hopeful assertions were wasted. Tante-gra'mère had made up her
+mind to stay. She held to her whip, and refused to be touched. Her fixed
+decree was announced to Colonel Menard. He asked for the women and
+children of the family in haste. He and his man were wasting time and
+strength holding the boat against the waves. It was in danger of being
+swamped.
+
+Angélique stood deferentially before her father and asked his permission
+to stay with his grand-aunt. In the same deferential manner she asked
+permission of her mother. Madame Saucier leaned on her husband's
+shoulder and wept. It was plain that the mother must go with her two
+young children only. Peggy said she would not leave Angélique.
+
+"Monsieur the colonel," spoke Angélique again into the windy darkness,
+"we are not worth half the trouble you are taking for us. I wonder you
+do not leave such ridiculous people to drown or get out as we can. But
+my tante-gra'mère is so old; please forgive her. My mother and the
+children are quite ready. I wish poor Mademoiselle Zhone were with you,
+too."
+
+"I will fetch Mademoiselle Zhone out of her house before madame and the
+children get in," said Pierre Menard promptly. "As for the delay, it is
+nothing, mademoiselle; we must get you all to land as we can."
+
+"Monsieur, will it not be dangerous? I thought of her because she is so
+sick. But there is foam everywhere; and the trees are in your way."
+
+"We can find a track," answered the colonel. "Push off, boy."
+
+The boat labored out, and the click of oars in rowlocks became presently
+a distant thumping, and then all sound was lost in the wash of water.
+
+Angélique went to the dormer window in the gable. As she threw the
+sashes wide she was partly drenched by a wave, and tante-gra'mère sent
+from the screens a shrill mandate against wind which cut to the bone.
+Captain Saucier fastened the sashes again. He was a crestfallen man. He
+had fought Indians with credit, but he was not equal to the weakest
+member of his household.
+
+Occasionally the rafters creaked from a blow, and a wave rushed up the
+roof.
+
+"It is rising higher," said Peggy.
+
+Angélique wished she had not mentioned Mademoiselle Zhone. Perhaps, when
+the colonel had risked his life to bring the sick girl out of a swamped
+house, her family might prefer to wait until morning to putting her in
+the boat now.
+
+The bells kept ringing, now filling the attic with their vibrations, and
+then receding to a faint and far-off clamor as the wind swept by. They
+called to all the bluff-dwellers within miles of Kaskaskia.
+
+The children sat down, and leaned their heads against their mother's
+knee. The others waited in drawing-room chairs; feeling the weariness of
+anxiety and broken domestic habits. Captain Saucier watched for the
+return of the boat; but before it seemed possible the little voyage
+could be made they felt a jar under the gable window, and Rice Jones's
+voice called.
+
+The gable of the house had a sloping roof, its window being on a level
+with the other windows. Captain Saucier leaned far out. The wind had
+extinguished the boat's lantern. The rowers were trying to hold the boat
+broadside to the house, but it rose and fell on waves which became
+breakers and threatened to capsize it. All Kaskaskia men were acquainted
+with water. Pierre Menard had made many a river journey. But the
+Mississippi in this wild aspect was new to them all.
+
+"Can you take her in?" shouted Rice. "My sister thinks she cannot be got
+ashore alive."
+
+"Can you lift her to me?"
+
+"When the next wave comes," said Rice.
+
+He steadied himself and lifted Maria. As the swell again tossed the boat
+upward, he rose on a bench and lifted her as high as he could. Captain
+Saucier caught the frail bundle and drew the sick girl into the attic.
+He laid her down on the children's bed, leaving her to Angélique, while
+he prepared to put them and their mother into the boat. Rice crept over
+the wet strip of gable roof, and entered the window after his sister. By
+lantern light he was a strong living figure. His austerely white face
+was full of amusement at the Kaskaskian situation. His hat had blown
+away. The water had sleeked down his hair to a satin skullcap on his
+full head.
+
+"This is a wet night, madame and mesdemoiselles," he observed.
+
+"Oh, Monsieur Zhone," lamented Madame Saucier, "how can you laugh? We
+are all ruined."
+
+"No, madame. There is no such word as 'ruin' in the Territory."
+
+"And I must take my two little children, and leave Angélique here in the
+midst of this water."
+
+Rice had directly knelt down by his sister and put his hand on her
+forehead. Maria was quite still, and evidently gathering her little
+strength together.
+
+"But why do you remain?" said Rice to Angélique. She was at Maria's
+opposite side, and she merely indicated the presence behind the screens;
+but Peggy explained aloud,--
+
+"She can't go because tante-gra'mère won't be moved."
+
+"Put that limb of a Morrison girl out of the house," came an unexpected
+mandate from amongst the screens.
+
+"I would gladly put her out," said Captain Saucier anxiously. "Peggy, my
+child, now that Mademoiselle Zhone is with Angélique, be persuaded to go
+with madame and the children."
+
+Peggy shook her head, laughing. A keen new delight in delay and danger
+made her sparkle.
+
+"Go yourself, Captain Saucier. One gentleman is enough to take care of
+us."
+
+"I think you ought to go, Captain Saucier," said Rice. "You will be
+needed. The boat may be swamped by some of those large waves. I am
+ashamed of leaving my stepmother behind; but she would not leave my
+father, and Maria clung to me. We dared not fill the boat too full."
+
+Angélique ran and kissed the children before her father put them into
+the boat, and offered her cheeks to her mother. Madame Saucier was a fat
+woman. She clung appalled to her husband, as he let her over the
+slippery roof. Two slave men braced themselves and held the ropes which
+steadied him, the whites of their eyes showing. Their mistress was
+landed with a plunge, but steadied on her seat by Colonel Menard.
+
+"Oh," she cried out, "I have left the house without saying adieu to
+tante-gra'mère. My mind is distracted. She will as long as she lives
+remember this discourtesy."
+
+"It could be easily remedied, madame," suggested Colonel Menard,
+panting as he braced his oar, "if she would step into the boat herself,
+as we all wish her to do."
+
+"Oh, monsieur the colonel, you are the best of men. If you had only had
+the training of her instead of my poor gentle Francis, she might not be
+so hard to manage now."
+
+"We must not flatter ourselves, madame. But Mademoiselle Angélique must
+not remain here much longer for anybody's whim."
+
+"Do you think the water is rising?"
+
+"It is certainly rising."
+
+Madame Saucier uttered a shriek as a great swell rolled the boat. The
+searching wind penetrated all her garments and blew back loose ends of
+her hair. There was now a partially clear sky, and the moon sent forth a
+little lustre as a hint of what she might do when she had entirely freed
+herself from clouds.
+
+The children were lowered, and after them their black nurse.
+
+"There is room for at least one more!" called Pierre Menard.
+
+Captain Saucier stood irresolute.
+
+"Can you not trust me with these fragments of our families?" said Rice.
+
+"Certainly, Monsieur Reece, certainly. It is not that. But you see the
+water is still rising."
+
+"I was testing the rise of the water when Colonel Menard reached us. The
+wind makes it seem higher than it really is. You can go and return,
+captain, while you are hesitating."
+
+"I am torn in two," declared the Indian fighter. "It makes a child of me
+to leave Angélique behind."
+
+"Francis Saucier," came in shrill French from the screens, "get into
+that boat, and leave my godchild alone."
+
+The captain laughed. He also kissed the cheeks of tante-gra'mère's
+godchild and let himself slide down the roof, and the boat was off
+directly.
+
+The slaves, before returning to their own room, again fastened the
+sashes of the dormer window. The clamor of bells which seemed to pour
+through the open window was thus partly silenced. The lantern made its
+dim illumination with specks of light, swinging from a nail over the
+window alcove. Maria had not yet unclosed her eyes. Her wasted hand made
+a network around one of Rice's fingers, and as the coughing spasm seized
+her she tightened it.
+
+"She wants air," he said hastily, and Angélique again spread wide the
+window in the gable, when the thin cry of her tante-gra'mère forbade it.
+
+"But, dear tante-gra'mère, Mademoiselle Zhone must have air."
+
+"And must she selfishly give me rheumatism in order to give herself
+air?"
+
+"But, dear tante-gra'mère"--
+
+"Shut that window."
+
+"I dare not, indeed."
+
+Rice seized two corners of the feather pallet, and made it travel in a
+swift swish across the attic boards to the window at the front, which he
+opened. Supporting Maria in his arms, he signaled Angélique, with an
+amused face, to obey her tyrant; and she did so. But Peggy stalked
+behind the screens, and put her face close to the black eyes in the
+great soft lair built up of so many beds.
+
+"You and I are nice people, madame," said Peggy through her teeth. "We
+don't care who suffers, if we are happy. We ought to have been twins;
+the same little beast lives in us both."
+
+Tante-gra'mère's eyes snapped.
+
+"You are a limb," she responded in shrill French.
+
+"Yes; we know each other," said Peggy.
+
+"When you are old, there will come a little wretch to revile you."
+
+"I don't revile you, madame. I dote on you."
+
+"Your mother should box your ears, mademoiselle."
+
+"It would do me no good, madame."
+
+"I should like to try it," said tante-gra'mère, without humor.
+
+Angélique did not hear this little quarrel. She was helping Rice with
+his sister. His pockets were full of Maria's medicines. He set the
+bottles out, and Angélique arranged them ready for use. They gave her a
+spoonful and raised her on pillows, and she rested drowsily again,
+grateful for the damp wind which made the others shiver. Angélique's
+sweet fixed gaze, with an unconscious focus of vital power, dwelt on the
+sick girl; she felt the yearning pity which mothers feel. And this, or
+the glamour of dim light, made her oval face and dark hair so beautiful
+that Rice looked at her; and Peggy, coming from the screens, resented
+that look.
+
+Peggy sat down in the window, facing them, the dormer alcove making a
+tunnel through which she could watch like a spider; though she lounged
+indifferently against the frame, and turned toward the water streets and
+storm-drenched half houses which the moon now plainly revealed. The
+northwest wind set her teeth with its chill, and ripples of froth chased
+each other up the roof at her.
+
+"The water is still rising," remarked Peggy.
+
+"Look, Peggy," begged Angélique, "and see if Colonel Menard and my
+father are coming back with the boat."
+
+"It is too soon," said Rice.
+
+"Perhaps Colonel Menard will never come back," suggested Peggy. "It was
+a bad sign when the screech-owl screeched in the old Jesuit College."
+
+"But the storm is over now. The water is not washing over the house."
+
+"The moon shows plenty of whitecaps. It is rough."
+
+"As long as this wind lasts the water will be boisterous," said Rice.
+"But Colonel Menard no more minds rough weather than a priest carrying
+the sacrament. He is used to the rivers."
+
+"Hear a Protestant catering to a papist," observed Peggy. "But it is
+lost on Angélique. She is as good as engaged to Colonel Menard. She
+accepted him through the window before all of us, when he came to the
+rescue."
+
+"Must I congratulate him?" Rice inquired of Angélique. "He certainly
+deserves his good luck."
+
+"Peggy has no right to announce it so!" exclaimed Angélique, feeling
+invaded and despoiled of family privacy. "It is not yet called an
+engagement."
+
+Peggy glanced at Rice Jones, and felt grateful to Heaven for the flood.
+She admired him with keen appreciation. He took his disappointment as he
+would have taken an offered flower, considered it without changing a
+muscle, and complimented the giver.
+
+Guns began to be heard from the bluffs in answer to the bells. Peggy
+leaned out to look across the tossing waste at a dim ridge of shadow
+which she knew to be the bluffs. The sound bounded over the water. From
+this front window of the attic some arches of the bridge were always
+visible. She could not now guess where it crossed, or feel sure that any
+of its masonry withstood the enormous pressure.
+
+The negroes were leaning out of their dormer window, also, and watching
+the nightmare world into which the sunny peninsula was changed. When a
+particularly high swell threw foam in their faces they started back, but
+others as anxious took their places.
+
+"Boats will be putting out from the bluffs plentifully, soon," said
+Rice. "Before to-morrow sunset all Kaskaskia and its goods and chattels
+will be moved to the uplands."
+
+"I wonder what became of the poor cows," mused Angélique. "They were
+turned out to the common pasture before the storm."
+
+"Some of them were carried down by the rivers, and some swam out to the
+uplands. It is a strange predicament for the capital of a great
+Territory. But these rich lowlands were made by water, and if they can
+survive overflow they must be profited by it."
+
+"What effect will this have on the election?" inquired Peggy, and Rice
+laughed.
+
+"You can't put us back on our ordinary level, Miss Peggy. We are lifted
+above elections for the present."
+
+"Here is a boat!" she exclaimed, and the slaves at the other window
+hailed Father Olivier as he tried to steady himself at the angle formed
+by the roofs.
+
+Angélique looked out, but Rice sat still beside his sister.
+
+"Are you all quite safe?" shouted the priest.
+
+"Quite, father. The slaves were brought in, and we are all in the
+attic."
+
+"Keep up your courage and your prayers. As soon as this strong wind dies
+away they will put out from shore for you."
+
+"Colonel Menard has already been here and taken part of the family."
+
+"Has he?"
+
+"Yes, father; though tante-gra'mère is afraid to venture yet, so we
+remain with her."
+
+They could see the priest, indistinctly, sitting in a small skiff, which
+he tried to keep off the roof with a rough paddle.
+
+"Where did you find a boat, father?"
+
+"I think it is one the negroes had on the marsh by the levee. It lodged
+in my gallery, and by the help of the saints I am trying to voyage from
+house to house, as far as I can, and carry a little encouragement. I
+have the parish records here with me; and if this vessel capsizes, their
+loss would be worse for this parish than the loss of me."
+
+"But, father, you are not trying to reach the land in that frail canoe?"
+
+"Not yet, my daughter; not until some of the people are taken out. I did
+intend to venture for help, but the ringing of the bells has been of
+service to us. The sexton will stay in the belfry all night. I was able
+to get him there by means of this boat."
+
+"Come up here until the wind dies down, Monsieur Olivier," urged Peggy.
+"That little tub is not strong enough to carry you. I have seen it. The
+slaves made it, with scarcely any tools, of some boards from the old
+Jesuit College."
+
+"The little tub has done good service to-night, mademoiselle; and I must
+get as far as the tavern, at least, to carry news of their families to
+men there. Antoine Lamarche's child is dead, and his family are on the
+roof. I was able to minister to its parting soul; and I set the others,
+for safety, astride the roof-pole, promising them heavy penance if they
+moved before help came. He ought now to take this boat and go to them,
+if I can put him in heart to do it."
+
+"A Protestant hardly caters to a papist when he puts some faith in the
+courage of a man like Father Olivier," said Rice to Peggy.
+
+"Did I hint that you would cater to any one?" she responded, with a lift
+of her slender chin. The wind had blown out a long tress of Peggy's
+hair, which trailed to the floor. Rice seldom looked at her; but he
+noticed this sweep of living redness with something like approval; in
+shadow it shone softened to bronze.
+
+"I think my father and Colonel Menard are coming back," said Angélique.
+"I see a light moving out from the bluffs."
+
+"Oh, no; they are only picking their way among trees to a landing."
+
+"They have gone with the current and the wind," said Rice. "It will take
+a longer time to make their way back against the current and the wind."
+
+"Let us begin to bind and gag madame now, anyhow," Peggy suggested
+recklessly. "It's what the colonel will do, if he is forced to it. She
+will never of her own will go into the boat."
+
+"Poor tante-gra'mère. I should have asked Father Olivier to urge her.
+But this is such a time of confusion one thinks of nothing."
+
+Angélique bent to watch Maria's stupor. Rice had put the skeleton hand
+under a coverlet which was drawn to the sick girl's chin. He sat beside
+her on one of the brocaded drawing-room chairs, his head resting against
+the high back and his crossed feet stretched toward the window, in an
+attitude of his own which expressed quiescent power. Peggy went directly
+behind the screens, determined to pounce upon the woman who prolonged
+their stay in a flooded house, and deal with her as there would not be
+opportunity to do later. Tante-gra'mère was asleep.
+
+Angélique sat down with Peggy on the floor, a little way from the pile
+of feather beds. They were very weary. The tonic of excitement, and even
+of Rice Jones's presence, failed in their effect on Peggy. It was past
+midnight. The girls heard cocks crowing along the bluffs. Angélique took
+the red head upon her shoulder, saying,--
+
+"It would be better if we slept until they call, since there is nothing
+else to do."
+
+"You might coquette over Maria Jones. I won't tell."
+
+"What a thorn you are, Peggy! If I did not know the rose that goes with
+it"--Angélique did not state her alternative.
+
+"A red rose," scoffed Peggy; and she felt herself drowsing in the mother
+arms.
+
+Rice was keenly awake, and when the girls went into the privacy of the
+screens he sat looking out of the window at the oblong of darkly blue
+night sky which it shaped for him. His temples throbbed. Though the
+strange conditions around him were not able to vary his usual habits of
+thought, something exhilarated him; and he wondered at that, when Peggy
+had told him Angélique's decision against him. He felt at peace with the
+world, and for the first time even with Dr. Dunlap.
+
+"We are here such a little time," thought Rice, "and are all such poor
+wretches. What does it matter, the damage we do one another in our
+groping about? God forgive me! I would have killed that man, and maybe
+added another pang to the suffering of this dying girl."
+
+Maria stirred. The snoring of the sleeping negroes penetrated the
+dividing wall. He thought he heard a rasping on the shingles outside
+which could not be accounted for by wind or water, and rose to his feet,
+that instant facing Dr. Dunlap in the window.
+
+Dr. Dunlap had one leg across the low sill. The two men stood
+breathless. Maria saw the intruder. She sat up, articulating his name.
+At that piteous sound, betraying him to her brother, the cowardly
+impulse of many days' growth carried Dr. Dunlap's hand like a flash to
+his pocket. He fired his pistol directly into Rice's breast, and dropped
+back through the window to the boat he had taken from the priest.
+
+The screams of women and the terrified outcry of slaves filled the
+attic. Rice threw his arms above his head, and sunk downward. In the
+midst of the smoke Peggy knelt by him, and lifted his head and
+shoulders. The night wind blew upon them, and she could discern his
+dilated eyes and piteous amazement.
+
+"Dr. Dunlap has shot me," he said to her. "I don't know why he did it."
+And his face fell against her bosom as he died.
+
+
+
+
+PART FOURTH.
+
+
+
+
+THE FLOOD.
+
+
+The moonlight shone in through both windows and the lantern glimmered.
+The choking smell of gunpowder spread from room to room. Two of the
+slave men sprung across the sill to pursue Dr. Dunlap, but they could do
+nothing. They could see him paddling away from the house, and giving
+himself up to the current; a desperate man, whose fate was from that
+hour unknown. Night and the paralysis which the flood laid upon human
+action favored him. Did a still pitying soul bend above his wild-eyed
+and reckless plunging through whirls of water, comprehending that he had
+been startled into assassination; that the deed was, like the result of
+his marriage, a tragedy he did not foresee? Some men are made for
+strong domestic ties, yet run with brutal precipitation into the
+loneliness of evil.
+
+A desire to get out of the flood-bound tavern, an unreasonable impulse
+to see Angélique Saucier and perhaps be of use to her, a mistakenly
+silent entering of the house which he hardly knew how to
+approach,--these were the conditions which put him in the way of his
+crime. The old journey of Cain was already begun while Angélique was
+robbing her great-grand-aunt's bed of pillows to put under Rice Jones.
+The aged woman had gone into her shell of sleep, and the muffled shot,
+the confusion and wailing, did not wake her. Wachique and another slave
+lifted the body and laid it on the quickly spread couch of pillows.
+
+Nobody thought of Maria. She lay quite still, and made no sound in that
+flurry of terror.
+
+"He is badly hurt," said Angélique. "Lizette, bring linen, the first
+your hand touches; and you, Achille, open his vest and find the wound
+quickly."
+
+"But it's no use, ma'amselle," whispered Wachique, lifting her eyes.
+
+"Do not be afraid, poor Achille. I will show you how myself. We cannot
+wait for any one to help us. What would my father and Colonel Menard
+say, if they found Monsieur Reece Zhone killed in our house?"
+
+In her panic Angélique tore the vest wide, and found the great stain
+over the place where the heart should be. She was kneeling, and she
+turned back to Peggy, who stood behind her.
+
+Death is great or it is a piteous change, like the slaughter of brutes,
+according as we bear ourselves in its presence. How mighty an experience
+it is to wait where world overlaps the edge of world, and feel the
+vastness of eternity around us! A moment ago--or was it many ages?--he
+spoke. Now he is gone, leaving a strange visible image lying there to
+awe us. The dead take sudden majesty. They become as gods. We think they
+hear us when we speak of them, and their good becomes sacred. A dead
+face has all human faults wiped from it; and that Shape, that Presence,
+whose passiveness seems infinite, how it fills the house, the town, the
+whole world, while it stays!
+
+The hardest problem we have to face here is the waste of our best
+things,--of hopes, of patience, of love, of days, of agonizing labor, of
+lives which promise most. Rice's astonishment at the brutal waste of
+himself had already passed off his countenance. The open eyes saw
+nothing, but the lips were closed in sublime peace.
+
+"And his sister," wept Angélique. "Look at Mademoiselle Zhone, also."
+
+The dozen negroes, old and young, led by Achille, began to sob in music
+one of those sweet undertone chants for the dead which no race but
+theirs can master. They sung the power of the man and the tenderness of
+the young sister whose soul followed her brother's, and they called from
+that ark on the waters for saints and angels to come down and bless the
+beds of the two. The bells intoned with them, and a sinking wind
+carried a lighter ripple against the house.
+
+"Send them out," spoke Peggy Morrison, with an imperious sweep of the
+arm; and the half-breed authoritatively hurried the other slaves back to
+their doorway. The submissive race understood and obeyed, anxiously
+watching Peggy as she wavered in her erectness and groped with the
+fingers of both hands.
+
+"Put camphor under Ma'amselle Peggy's nose, Wachique," whispered
+Achille.
+
+Peggy found Rice's chair, and sat down; but as soon as she returned to a
+consciousness of the bottle under her nose and an arm around her, she
+said,--
+
+"Go away. A Morrison never faints."
+
+Angélique was kneeling like a nun. She felt the push of a foot.
+
+"Stop that crying," said Peggy fiercely. "I hate to hear it. What right
+have you to cry?"
+
+"No right at all. But the whole Territory will weep over this."
+
+"What right has the Territory in him now? The Territory will soon find
+another brilliant man."
+
+"And this poor tiny girl, Peggy, so near her death, what had she done to
+deserve that it should come in this form? Are men gone mad in this
+flood, that Dr. Dunlap, for a mere political feud, should seek out
+Monsieur Reece Zhone in my father's house, and shoot him down before our
+eyes? I am dazed. It is like a nightmare."
+
+Peggy set her mouth and looked abroad into the brightening night.
+
+Angélique dropped her face in her hands and shook with sobbing. The
+three girlish figures, one rigid on the bed, another rigid in the chair,
+and the third bending in vicarious suffering between them, were made
+suddenly clear by an illumination of the moon as it began to find the
+western window. Wachique had busied herself seeking among piles of
+furniture for candles, which she considered a necessity for the dead.
+The house supply of wax tapers was in the submerged cellar. So she took
+the lantern from its nail and set it on the floor at the head of the two
+pallets, and it threw scattered spots of lustre on Rice's white forehead
+and Maria's hair. This humble shrouded torch, impertinent as it looked
+when the lily-white moonlight lay across it, yet reminded beholders of a
+stable, and a Child born in a stable who had taught the race to turn
+every sorrow into glory.
+
+The night sent its quiet through the attic, though the bells which had
+clamored so over the destruction of verdure and homes appeared now to
+clamor louder over the destruction of youth.
+
+"Do you understand this, Peggy? They died heretic and unblessed, yet I
+want to know what they now know until it seems to me I cannot wait. When
+I have been playing the harp to tante-gra'mère, and thinking so much,
+long, long afternoons, such a strange homesickness has grown in me. I
+could not make anybody believe it if I told it. These two have found out
+what is beyond. They have found out the great secret. Oh, Peggy, I do
+want to know it, also. There will be an awful mourning over them; and
+when they go into their little earthen cellars, people will pity that,
+and say, 'Poor things.' But they know the mystery of the ages now, and
+we know nothing. Do you think they are yet very far away? Monsieur
+Reece? Mademoiselle?"
+
+Angélique's low interrogating call, made while she keenly listened with
+lifted face, had its only response in a mutter from Wachique, who feared
+any invocation of spirits. Peggy sat looking straight ahead of her
+without a word. She could not wash her face soft with tears, and she
+felt no reaching out towards disembodiment. What she wanted was love in
+this world, and pride in her love; long years of glad living on the
+verdure of earth in the light of the sun. One presence could make the
+common old world celestial enough for her. She had missed her desire.
+But Rice had turned his face to her as he died.
+
+Two boats moved to the eaves and rested there, shaken only by a ripple
+of the quieting water. The overflowed rivers would lie calm when the
+wind allowed it, excepting where a boiling current drove. The dazed
+girls yet seemed to dream through the strong indignation and the inquiry
+and fruitless plans of arriving men. It was a dream when Captain Saucier
+sat down and stared haggardly at the two who had perished under his
+roof, and Colonel Menard stood with his hat over his face. It was a
+dream when the brother and sister were lowered and placed on one pallet
+in a boat. The hollow of the rafters, the walls on which one might mark
+with his nail, the waiting black faces, the figures toiling down the
+roof with those loads,--were any of these sights real?
+
+"Wrap yourselves," said Captain Saucier to Peggy and Angélique. "The
+other boat is quite ready for you."
+
+"But, papa, are Monsieur Reece and his sister going alone with the
+rowers?"
+
+"I am myself going with them."
+
+"Papa," urged Angélique, "Mademoiselle Zhone was a young girl. If I
+were in her place, would you not like to have some young girl sit by my
+head?"
+
+"But you cannot go."
+
+"No, but Peggy can."
+
+"Peggy would rather go with you."
+
+"I am sure she will do it."
+
+"Will you, Peggy?"
+
+"Yes, I will."
+
+So Angélique wrapped Peggy first, and went with her as far as the
+window. It was the window through which Dr. Dunlap had stepped.
+
+"Good-by, dear Peggy," whispered Angélique; for the other seemed
+starting on the main journey of her life.
+
+"Good-by, dear Angélique."
+
+Peggy's eyes were tearless still, but she looked and looked at
+Angélique, and looked back mutely again when she sat at Rice's head in
+the boat. She had him to herself. Between the water and the sky, and
+within the dim horizon band, she could be alone with him. He was her own
+while the boat felt its way across the waste. The rowers sat on a bench
+over the foot of the pallet. Captain Saucier was obliged to steer. Peggy
+sat in the prow, and while they struggled against the rivers, she looked
+with the proud courage of a Morrison at her dead whom she must never
+claim again.
+
+The colonel put Angélique first into the waiting boat. Wachique was set
+in front of her, to receive tante-gra'mère when the potentate's
+chrysalid should be lowered. For the first time in her life Angélique
+leaned back, letting slip from herself all responsibility. Colonel
+Menard could bring her great-grand-aunt out. The sense of moving in a
+picture, of not feeling what she handled, and of being cut off from the
+realities of life followed Angélique into the boat. She was worn to
+exhaustion. Her torpid pulses owned the chill upon the waters.
+
+There was room in which a few of the little blacks might be stowed
+without annoying tante-gra'mère, but their mothers begged to keep them
+until all could go together.
+
+"Now, my children," said Colonel Menard, "have patience for another hour
+or two, when the boats shall return and bring you all off. The house is
+safe; there is no longer a strong wind driving waves over it. A few
+people in Kaskaskia have had to sit on their roofs since the water
+rose."
+
+Achille promised to take charge of his master's household. But one of
+the women pointed to the stain on the floor. The lantern yet burned at
+the head of Rice's deserted pillows. Superstition began to rise from
+that spot. They no longer had Angélique among them, with her atmosphere
+of invisible angels.
+
+"That is the blood of the best man in the Territory," said Colonel
+Menard. "I would give much more of my own to bring back the man who
+spilled it. Are you afraid of a mere blood-spot in the gray of the
+morning? Go into the other room and fasten the door, then. Achille will
+show you that he can stay here alone."
+
+"If mo'sieu' the colonel would let me go into that room, too"--
+
+"Go in, Achille," said the colonel indulgently.
+
+Colonel Menard made short work of embarking tante-gra'mère. In
+emergencies, he was deft and delicate with his hands. She never knew who
+caught her in coverlets and did her up like a papoose, with a pillow
+under her head.
+
+"Pull westward to the next street," he gave orders to his oarsmen. "We
+found it easy going with the current that way. It will double the
+distance, but give us less trouble to get into dead water the other side
+of the Okaw."
+
+Early summer dawn was breaking over that deluged world, a whiter light
+than moonshine giving increasing distinctness to every object. This hint
+of day gave rest to the tired ringers in church tower and convent
+belfry. The bells died away, and stillness brooded on the water plain.
+Hoarse roaring of the yellow current became a mere monotonous background
+for other sounds. A breath stole from the east, bringing the scent of
+rain-washed earth and foliage and sweet mints. There was no other wind;
+and the boat shot easily on its course alongside a thicket made by
+orchard treetops. Some birds, maybe proprietors of drowned nests, were
+already complaining over these, or toppling experimentally down on
+branch tips.
+
+Kaskaskia had become a strange half-town, cut off around its middle. It
+affected one like a man standing on his armpits. The capital of the
+Territory was composed chiefly of roofs and dormer windows, of squatty
+wooden islands in a boundless sea. The Church of the Immaculate
+Conception was a laughable tent of masonry, top-heavy with its square
+tower. As for cultivated fields and the pastures where the cattle
+grazed, such vanished realities were forgotten. And what was washing
+over the marble tombs and slate crosses in the churchyard?
+
+The flood strangely lifted and forced skyward the plane of life, yet
+lowered all life's functions. An open and liberal sky, dappling with a
+promise from the east, bent over and mocked paralyzed humanity.
+
+The noble bluffs had become a sunken ridge, water meeting the forests a
+little below their waists. From their coverts boats could now be seen
+putting out in every direction, and, though the morning star was paling,
+each carried a light. They were like a party of belated fireflies
+escaping from daylight. Faces in dormer windows waited for them. Down by
+the Jesuit College weak hurrahs arose from people on roofs.
+
+"The governor has come with help for us," said Pierre Menard.
+
+In this dead world of Kaskaskia not a dog barked; not one of the
+shortened chimney-stacks smoked. Some of the houses had their casements
+closed in terrible silence; but out of others neighbors looked and
+greeted Angélique in the abashed way peculiar to people who have not got
+used to an amputation, and are sensitive about their new appearance in
+the world. Heads leaned out, also, firing jokes after the boat, and
+offering the colonel large shares in the common fields and entire crops
+for a seat in his conveyance.
+
+Drift of rotten wood stuck to the house sides, and broken trees or
+stumps, jammed under gallery roofs, resented the current, and broke the
+surface as they rose and dipped. Strange craft, large and small, rode
+down the turgid sweep. Straw beehives rolled along like gigantic pine
+cones, and rustic hencoops of bottom-land settlers kept their balance as
+they moved. Far off, a cart could be outlined making a hopeless ford.
+The current was so broad that its sweep extended beyond the reach of
+sight; and perhaps the strangest object carried by this tremendous force
+was a small clapboarded house. Its back and front doors stood open, and
+in the middle of the floor stood a solitary chair. One expected to see a
+figure emerge from a hidden corner and sit down forlornly in the chair.
+
+The slender voice of a violin stole across the water,--an exorcism of
+the spell that had fallen on Kaskaskia. As the boat reached the tavern
+corner, this thread of melody was easily followed to the ballroom on the
+second floor of the tavern, where the Assembly balls were danced. A
+slave, who had nothing but his daily bread to lose, and who would be
+assured of that by the hand of charity when his master could no longer
+maintain him, might take up the bow and touch the fiddle gayly in such a
+time of general calamity. But there was also dancing in the ballroom.
+The boat turned south and shot down a canal bordered by trunkless shade
+trees, which had been one of the principal streets of Kaskaskia. At the
+instant of turning, however, Father Baby could be seen as he whirled,
+though his skinny head and gray capote need not have added their
+evidence to the exact sound of his foot which came so distinctly across
+the water. His little shop, his goods, his secret stocking-leg of
+coin,--for Father Baby was his own banker,--were buried out of sight.
+His crop in the common fields and provision for winter lay also under
+the Mississippi. His late lodger had taken to the river, and was
+probably drowned. He had no warrant except in the nimbleness of his
+slave's legs that he even had a slave left. Yet he had never in his life
+felt so full of dance. The flood mounted to his head like wine. Father
+Olivier was in the tavern without forbidding it. Doubtless he thought
+the example an exhilarating one, when a grown-up child could dance over
+material loss, remembering only the joy of life.
+
+Wachique had felt her bundle squirm from the moment it was given to her.
+She enlarged on the hint Colonel Menard had given, and held the drapery
+bound tightly around the prisoner. The boat shot past the church, and
+over the spot where St. John's bonfire had so recently burnt out, and
+across that street through which the girls had scampered on their
+Midsummer Night errand.
+
+"But stop," said Colonel Menard; and he pointed out to the rowers an
+obstruction which none of them had seen in the night. From the Jesuit
+College across the true bed of the Okaw a dam had formed, probably
+having for its base part of the bridge masonry. Whole trees were swept
+into the barricade. "We cannot now cross diagonally and come back
+through the dead water at our leisure, for there is that dam to be
+passed. Pull for the old college."
+
+The boat was therefore turned, and thus took the same course that the
+girls had taken. The current was at right angles with its advance,
+though the houses on the north somewhat broke that force. The roofless
+building, ridiculously shortened in its height, had more the look of a
+fortress than when it was used as one. The walls had been washed out
+above both great entrances, making spacious jagged arches through which
+larger craft than theirs could pass. Colonel Menard was quick to see
+this; he steered and directed his men accordingly. The Jesuit College
+was too well built to crumble on the heads of chance passers, though
+the wind and the flood had battered it; to row through it would shorten
+their course.
+
+Angélique did not say a word about the changed aspect of her world. A
+warmth in the pearly light over the bluffs promised a clear day: and how
+Kaskaskia would look with the sun shining on her predicament! The boat
+cut through braiding and twisting water, and shot into the college. Part
+of the building's upper floor remained; everything else was gone.
+
+The walls threw a shadow upon them, and the green flicker, dancing up
+and down as they disturbed the inclosure, played curiously on their
+faces. The stones suddenly echoed a slap. Tante-gra'mère's struggling
+wrath, which Wachique had tried to keep bound in the coverlet, having
+found an outlet, was swift as lightning in its reprisal. The stings of
+the whiplash had exhilaration and dignity compared to this attack. It
+was the climax of her midget rages. She forgot the breeding of a
+gentlewoman, and furiously struck her slave in the face.
+
+Wachique started up, her Pottawatomie blood painting her cheek bones.
+That instant she was an Indian, not a slave. She remembered everything
+this petted despot had done to her, and, lifting her bundle, threw it as
+far as her arms could send it across the water floor of the college. The
+pitiful little weight sunk with a gurgling sound.
+
+"Sit down, woman!" shouted Colonel Menard.
+
+Wachique cowered, and tried to obey. But the motion she had given the
+boat was not to be overcome. It careened, and the water rushed over
+their knees, filled it full, and became a whirlpool of grasping hands
+and choking heads.
+
+The overturned boat, wedged partially under the flooring, lodged against
+the eastern wall. Both negro rowers came up from their plunge and
+climbed like cats upon this platform, smearing a mire of sodden
+plastering over their homespun trousers as they crawled. One of them
+reached down and caught the half-breed by the hair, as she rose at the
+edge of the flooring. Between them they were able to draw her up.
+
+The shock of a cold flood around Angélique's ears sent life as vivid as
+fire through her brain. The exhaustion and stupor of the night were
+gone. She felt her body swallowed. It went down to the floor where the
+girls had walked when they chanted, "Hempseed, I sow thee." It rose, and
+all the rapturous advantage which there was in continuing to inhabit it
+took mighty possession of her. She was so healthily, so happily lodged.
+It was a sin to say she was longing for the mystery hereafter, when all
+the beautiful mysteries here were unknown to her. Then Colonel Menard
+was holding her up, and she was dragged to sight and breathing once
+more, and to a solid support under her melting life. She lay on the
+floor, seeing the open sky above her, conscious that streams of water
+poured from her clothes and her hair, ran down her face, and dripped
+from her ears. A slow terror which had underlain all these physical
+perceptions now burst from her thoughts like flame. Her
+great-grand-aunt, the infant of the house, was all this time lying at
+the bottom of the old college. It was really not a minute, but minutes
+are long to the drowning. Angélique caught her breath, saying,
+"Tante-gra'mère!" She heard a plunge, and knew that Colonel Menard had
+stood on the platform only long enough to cast aside his coat and shoes
+before he dived.
+
+The slaves, supporting themselves on their palms, stretched forward,
+open-mouthed. There was the rippling surface, carrying the shadow of the
+walls. Nothing came up. A cow could be heard lowing on the bluffs to her
+lost calf. The morning twitter of birds became an aggressive and
+sickening sound.
+
+"Where is he?" demanded Angélique, creeping also to her trembling knees.
+"Where is monsieur the colonel?"
+
+Both men gave her the silent, frightened testimony of their rolling
+eyes, but Wachique lay along the floor with hidden face. Not a bubble
+broke the yellow sheet smothering and keeping him down.
+
+As the driving of steel it went through Angélique that the aching and
+passion and ferocity which rose in her were love. She loved that man
+under the water; she so loved him that she must go down after him; for
+what was life, with him there? She must have loved him when she was a
+child, and he used to take off his hat to her, saying, "Good-day,
+mademoiselle." She must have felt a childish jealousy of the woman
+called Madame Menard, who had once owned him,--had owned the very
+coloring of his face, the laugh in his eye, the mastery of his presence
+among men. She loved Colonel Menard--and he was gone.
+
+"Turn over the boat!" screamed Angélique. "He is caught in the cellars
+of this old house,--the floors are broken. We must find him. He will
+never come up."
+
+The men, ready to do anything which was suggested to their slow minds,
+made haste to creep along the weakened flooring, which shook as they
+moved, and to push the boat from its lodgment. The oars were fast in the
+rowlocks, and stuck against beams or stones, and made hard work of
+getting the boat righted.
+
+"Why does he not come up? Does any one stay under water as long as this?
+Oh, be quick! Turn it,--turn it over!" Angélique reached down with the
+men to grasp the slippery boat, her vivid will giving their clumsiness
+direction and force. They got it free and turned it, dipping a little
+water as they did so; but she let herself into its wet hollow and bailed
+that out with her hands. The two dropped directly after her, and with
+one push of the oars sent the boat over the spot where Colonel Menard
+had gone down.
+
+"Which of you will go in?"
+
+"Ma'amselle, I can't swim," piteously declared the older negro.
+
+"Neither can I, ma'amselle," pleaded the other.
+
+"Then I shall have to go in myself. I cannot swim, either, and I shall
+die, but I cannot help it."
+
+The desperate and useless impulse which so often perishes in words
+returned upon her with its absurdity as she stared down, trying to part
+the muddy atoms of the Mississippi. The men held the boat in a scarcely
+visible stream moving from west to east through the gaps in the
+building. They eyed her, waiting the motions of the Caucasian mind, but
+dumbly certain it was their duty to seize her if she tried to throw
+herself in.
+
+They waited until Angélique hid her face upon a bench, shivering in her
+clinging garments with a chill which was colder than any the river gave.
+A ghostly shadow of themselves and the boat and the collapsed figure of
+the girl began to grow upon the water. More stones in the moist walls
+showed glistening surfaces as the light mounted. The fact that they had
+lost their master, that his household was without a head, that the
+calamity of Kaskaskia involved their future, then took possession of
+both poor fellows, and the great heart of Africa shook the boat with
+sobs and groans and useless cries for help.
+
+"Come out here, you black rascals!" called a voice from the log dam.
+
+Angélique lifted her head. Colonel Menard was in plain sight, resting
+his arms across a tree, and propping a sodden bundle on branches.
+Neither Angélique nor his men had turned a glance through the eastern
+gap, or thought of the stream sweeping to the dam. The spot where he
+sank, the broken floor, the inclosing walls, were their absorbing
+boundaries as to his fate. As the slaves saw him, a droll and sheepish
+look came on their faces at having wailed his death in his living ears.
+They shot through the door vigorously, and brought the boat with care
+alongside the trunk supporting him.
+
+The colonel let them take tante-gra'mère in. He was exhausted. One arm
+and his cheek sunk on the side of the boat, and they drew him across it,
+steadying themselves by the foliage upreared by the tree.
+
+He opened his eyes, and saw rose and pearl streaks in the sky. The sun
+was mounting behind the bluffs. Then a canopy of leaves intervened, and
+a whir of bird wings came to his ears. The boat had reached dead water,
+and was moving over the submerged roadbed, and groping betwixt the stems
+of great pecan-trees,--the great pecan-trees which stood sentinel on the
+river borders of his estate. He noticed how the broken limbs flourished
+in the water, every leaf satisfied with the moisture it drew.
+
+The colonel realized that he was lying flat in a boat which had not been
+bailed dry, and that his head rested on wet homespun, by its odor
+belonging to Louis or Jacques; and he saw their black naked arms
+paddling with the oars. Beyond them he saw Wachique holding her mistress
+carefully and unrestrained; and the negro in her quailed before him at
+the deed the Indian had done, scarcely comforted by the twinkle in the
+colonel's eye. Tante-gra'mère was sitting up meekly, less affected by
+dampness than anybody else in the boat. She had a fresh and toughened
+look. Her baptism in the rivers had perhaps renewed her for another
+century.
+
+"Madame, you are certainly the most remarkable woman in this Territory.
+You have borne this night marvelously well, and the accident of the boat
+even better."
+
+"Not at all, monsieur the colonel."
+
+She spoke as children do when effectually punished for ill temper.
+
+"Are you cold?"
+
+"I am wet, monsieur. We are all wet. It is indeed a time of flood."
+
+"We shall soon see a blazing fire and a hot breakfast, and all the
+garments in the country will be ours without asking."
+
+The colonel raised himself on his elbow and looked around. Angélique sat
+beside his head; so close that they both blushed.
+
+They were not wet nor chilled nor hungry. They had not looked on death
+nor felt the shadow of eternity. The sweet mystery of continued life was
+before them. The flood, like a sea of glass, spread itself to the
+thousand footsteps of the sun.
+
+Tante-gra'mère kept her eyes upon them. But it is not easy to hear what
+people say when you are riding among treetops and bird's-nests in the
+early morning.
+
+"Mademoiselle, we are nearly home."
+
+"Yes, monsieur."
+
+"It has been to me a great night."
+
+"I can understand that, monsieur."
+
+"The children will be dancing when they see you. Odile and Pierre were
+awake, and they both cried when the first boat came home last night
+without you."
+
+"Monsieur the colonel, you are too good to us."
+
+"Angélique, do you love me?"
+
+"It is true, monsieur."
+
+"But it must be owned I am a dozen years older than you, and I have
+loved before."
+
+"I never have."
+
+"Does it not seem a pity, then, that you who have had the pick of the
+Territory should become the second wife of Pierre Menard?"
+
+"I should rather be the second choice with you, monsieur, than the first
+choice of any other man in the Territory."
+
+"Mademoiselle, I adore you."
+
+"That remains to be seen, monsieur."
+
+"What did you think when I was under water?"
+
+"I did not think, monsieur. I perished. It was then you conquered me."
+
+"Good. I will take to the water whenever any little difference arises
+between us. It is a lucky thing for me that I am a practiced river man."
+
+"I do not say it could be done again. Never will there be such another
+night and morning."
+
+"Now see how it is with nature, Angélique. Life is always rising out of
+death. This affair of ours,--I call it a lily growing out of the water.
+Does it trouble you that your old home is out there standing almost to
+its eaves in the Mississippi?"
+
+"Papa cannot now give me so good a dower." The girl's lowered eyes
+laughed into his.
+
+"We will not have any settlements or any dower. We will be married in
+this new American way. Everything I have left from this flood will be
+yours and the children's, anyhow. But while there is game in the woods,
+or bacon in the cellar, or flour in the bin, or wine to be tapped, or a
+cup of milk left, not a child or woman or man shall go hungry. I was not
+unprepared for this. My fur storehouse there on the bank of the Okaw is
+empty. At the first rumor of high water I had the skins carried to the
+strong-house on the hill."
+
+Angélique's wet hair still clung to her forehead, but her warmth had
+returned with a glow. The colonel was a compact man, who had passed
+through water as his own element. To be dripping was no hindrance to his
+courtship.
+
+"When may we celebrate the marriage?"
+
+"Is it a time to speak of marriage when two are lying dead in the
+house?"
+
+His countenance changed at the rebuke, and, as all fortunate people do
+when they have passed the selfish fury of youth, he apologized for
+success.
+
+"It is true. And Reece Zhone was the only man in the Territory whom I
+feared as a rival. As soon as he is laid low I forget him. He would not
+so soon forget me. Yet I do not forget him. The whole Illinois Territory
+will remember him. But Reece Zhone himself would not blame me, when I am
+bringing you home to my house, for hinting that I hope to keep you
+there."
+
+"To keep me there, monsieur the colonel! No, I am not to be married in a
+hurry."
+
+"But I made my proposals months ago, Angélique. The children and I have
+long had our secrets about bringing you home. Two of them sit on my knee
+and two of them climb my back, and we talk it over. They will not let
+you leave the house alive, mademoiselle. Father Olivier will still
+celebrate the sacraments among us. Kaskaskia will have the consolations
+of religion for this flood; but I may not have the consolation of
+knowing my own wedding-day."
+
+"The church is now half full of water."
+
+"Must I first bail out the church?"
+
+"I draw the line there, monsieur the colonel. You are a prevailing man.
+You will doubtless wind me around your thumb as you do the Indians. But
+when I am married, I will be married in church, and sign the register in
+the old way. What, monsieur, do you think the water will never go down?"
+
+"It will go down, yes, and the common fields will be the better for it.
+But it is hard a man should have to watch a rivergauge to find out the
+date of his own wedding."
+
+"Yet one would rather do that than never have a wedding at all."
+
+"I kiss your hand on that, mademoiselle."
+
+"What are those little rings around the base of the trees, monsieur the
+colonel?"
+
+"They are marks which show that the water is already falling. It must be
+two inches lower than last night on the Church of the Immaculate
+Conception. I am one sixth of a foot on my way toward matrimony."
+
+A tent like a white blossom showed through the woods; then many more.
+The bluffs all about Pierre Menard's house were dotted with them. Boats
+could be seen coming back from the town, full of people. Two or three
+sails were tacking northward on that smooth and glistening fresh-water
+sea. Music came across it, meeting the rising sun; the nuns sang their
+matin service as they were rowed.
+
+Angélique closed her eyes over tears. It seemed to her like floating
+into the next world,--in music, in soft shadow, in keen rapture,--seeing
+the light on the hills beyond while her beloved held her by the hand.
+
+All day boats passed back and forth between the tented bluffs and the
+roofs of Kaskaskia, carrying the goods of a temporarily houseless
+people. At dusk, some jaded men came back--among them Captain Saucier
+and Colonel Menard--from searching overflow and uplands for Dr. Dunlap.
+
+At dusk, also, the fireflies again scattered over the lake, without
+waiting for a belated moon. Jean Lozier stood at the top of the bluff,
+on his old mount of vision, and watched these boats finishing the work
+of the day. They carried the only lights now to be seen in Kaskaskia.
+
+He was not excited by the swarming life just below him. His idea of
+Kaskaskia was not a buzzing encampment around a glittering seigniory
+house, with the governor's presence giving it grandeur, and Rice Jones
+and his sister, waiting their temporary burial on the uplands, giving it
+awe. Old Kaskaskia had been over yonder, the place of his desires, his
+love. The glamour and beauty and story were on the smothered valley, and
+for him they could never be anywhere else.
+
+Father Olivier came out on the bluff, and Jean at once pulled his cap
+off, and looked at the ground instead of at the pale green and
+wild-rose tints at the farther side of the world. They heard the soft
+wash of the flood. The priest bared his head to the evening air.
+
+"My son, I am sorry your grandfather died last night, while I was unable
+to reach him."
+
+"Yes, father."
+
+"You have been a good son. Your conscience acquits you. And now the time
+has come when you are free to go anywhere you please."
+
+Jean looked over the flood.
+
+"But there's no place to go to now, father. I was waiting for Kaskaskia,
+and Kaskaskia is gone."
+
+"Not gone, my son. The water will soon recede. The people will return to
+their homes. Kaskaskia will be the capital of the new State yet."
+
+"Yes, father," said Jean dejectedly. He waited until the priest
+sauntered away. It was not for him to contradict a priest. But watching
+humid darkness grow over the place where Kaskaskia had been, he told
+himself in repeated whispers,--
+
+"It'll never be the same again. Old Kaskaskia is gone. Just when I am
+ready to go there, there is no Kaskaskia to go to."
+
+Jean sat down, and propped his elbows on his knees and his face in his
+hands, as tender a spirit as ever brooded over ruin. He thought he could
+bear the bereavement better if battle and fire had swept it away; but to
+see it lying drowned before him made his heart a clod.
+
+Singly and in bunches the lantern-bearing boats came home to their
+shelter in the pecan-trees, leaving the engulfed plain to starlight. No
+lamp was seen, no music tinkled there; in the water streets the evening
+wind made tiny tracks, and then it also deserted the town, leaving the
+liquid sheet drawn and fitted smoothly to place. Nothing but water,
+north, west, and south; a vast plain reflecting stars, and here and
+there showing spots like burnished shields. The grotesque halves of
+buildings in its foreground became as insignificant as flecks of shadow.
+The sky was a clear blue dome, the vaporous folds of the Milky Way
+seeming to drift across it in indistinct light.
+
+Now, above the flowing whisper of the inland sea, Jean Lozier could hear
+other sounds. Thunder began in the north, and rolled with its cloud
+toward the point where Okaw and Mississippi met; shaggy lowered heads
+and flying tails and a thousand hoofs swept past him; and after them
+fleet naked men, who made themselves one with the horses they rode. The
+buffalo herds were flying before their hunters. He heard bowstrings
+twang, and saw great creatures stagger and fall headlong, and lie
+panting in the long grass.
+
+Then pale blue wood smoke unfolded itself upward, and the lodges were
+spread, and there was Cascasquia of the Illinois. Black gowns came down
+the northern trail, and a cross was set up.
+
+The lodges passed into wide dormered homesteads, and bowers of foliage
+promised the fruits of Europe among old forest trees. Jean heard the
+drum, and saw white uniforms moving back and forth, and gun barrels
+glistening, and the lilies of France floating over expeditions which put
+out to the south. This was Kaskaskia. The traffic of the West gathered
+to it. Men and women crossed the wilderness to find the charm of life
+there; the waterways and a north trail as firm as a Roman road bringing
+them easily in. Neyon de Villiers lifted the hat from his fine gray head
+and saluted society there; and the sulky figure of Pontiac stalked
+abroad. Fort Gage, and the scarlet uniform of Great Britain, and a new
+flag bearing thirteen stripes swam past Jean's eyes. The old French days
+were gone, but the new American days, blending the gathered races into
+one, were better still. Kaskaskia was a seat of government, a Western
+republic, rich and merry and generous and eloquent, with the great river
+and the world at her feet. The hum of traffic came up to Jean. He saw
+the beautiful children of gently nurtured mothers; he saw the men who
+moulded public opinion; he saw brawny white-clothed slaves; he saw the
+crowded wharf, the bridge with long rays of motes stretching across it
+from the low-lying sun.
+
+Now it disappeared. The weird, lonesome flood spread where that city of
+his desires had been.
+
+"Kaskaskia is gone. 'But the glory remains when the light fades away.'"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Old Kaskaskia, by Mary Hartwell Catherwood
+
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+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Old Kaskaskia, by Mary Hartwell Catherwood
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+/*<![CDATA[  XML blockout */
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+    body{margin-left: 10%;
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+    .pagenum  { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Old Kaskaskia, by Mary Hartwell Catherwood
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Old Kaskaskia
+
+Author: Mary Hartwell Catherwood
+
+Release Date: May 19, 2006 [EBook #18423]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD KASKASKIA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Stacy Brown, Robert Cicconetti and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions
+(www.canadiana.org))
+
+
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+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<h1>OLD KASKASKIA</h1>
+
+<h3 class="padtop">BY</h3>
+
+<h2>MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD</h2>
+
+<h4>AUTHOR OF "THE LADY OF FORT ST. JOHN," "THE ROMANCE OF DOLLARD," ETC.</h4>
+
+<div class="figcenter padtop" style="width: 120px;">
+<img src="images/col.png" width="120" height="154" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">
+BOSTON AND NEW YORK<br />
+HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY<br />
+The Riverside Press, Cambridge<br />
+1893<br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="center padtop">Copyright, 1893,<br />
+<span class="smcap">By</span> HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN &amp; CO., <span class="smcap">and</span><br />
+MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD.</p>
+
+<p class="center padtop"><i>All rights reserved.</i></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.</i><br />
+Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton &amp; Company.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2 class="padtop"><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2' class="u">PART FIRST:</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap"><a href="#Page_1">The Bonfire of St. John</a></span></td><td class='tr'><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2' class="u">PART SECOND:</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap"><a href="#Page_55">A Field Day</a></span></td><td class='tr'><a href="#Page_55">55</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2' class="u">PART THIRD:</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap"><a href="#Page_106">The Rising</a></span></td><td class='tr'><a href="#Page_106">106</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2' class="u">PART FOURTH:</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap"><a href="#Page_160">The Flood</a></span></td><td class='tr'><a href="#Page_160">160</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="OLD_KASKASKIA" id="OLD_KASKASKIA"></a>OLD KASKASKIA.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PART_FIRST" id="PART_FIRST"></a>PART FIRST.</h2>
+
+<p class="em">THE BONFIRE OF ST. JOHN.</p>
+
+
+<p>Early in the century, on a summer evening, Jean Lozier stood on the
+bluff looking at Kaskaskia. He loved it with the homesick longing of one
+who is born for towns and condemned to the fields. Moses looking into
+the promised land had such visions and ideals as this old lad cherished.
+Jean was old in feeling, though not yet out of his teens. The
+training-masters of life had got him early, and found under his red
+sunburn and knobby joints, his black eyes and bushy eyebrows, the nature
+that passionately aspires. The town of Kaskaskia was his sweetheart. It
+tantalized him with advantage and growth while he had to turn the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> clods
+of the upland. The long peninsula on which Kaskaskia stood, between the
+Okaw and the Mississippi rivers, lay below him in the glory of sunset.
+Southward to the point spread lands owned by the parish, and known as
+the common pasture. Jean could see the church of the Immaculate
+Conception and the tower built for its ancient bell, the convent
+northward, and all the pleasant streets bowered in trees. The wharf was
+crowded with vessels from New Orleans and Cahokia, and the arched stone
+bridge across the Okaw was a thoroughfare of hurrying carriages.</p>
+
+<p>The road at the foot of the bluff, more than a hundred feet below Jean,
+showed its white flint belt in distant laps and stretches through
+northern foliage. It led to the territorial governor's country-seat of
+Elvirade; thence to Fort Chartres and Prairie du Rocher; so on to
+Cahokia, where it met the great trails of the far north. The road also
+swarmed with carriages and riders on horses, all moving toward Colonel
+Pierre Menard's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> house. Jean could not see his seignior's chimneys for
+the trees and the dismantled and deserted earthworks of Fort Gage. The
+fort had once protected Kaskaskia, but in these early peaceful times of
+the Illinois Territory it no longer maintained a garrison.</p>
+
+<p>The lad guessed what was going on; those happy Kaskaskians, the fine
+world, were having a ball at Colonel Menard's. Summer and winter they
+danced, they made f&ecirc;tes, they enjoyed life. When the territorial
+Assembly met in this capital of the West, he had often frosted himself
+late into the winter night, watching the lights and listening to the
+music in Kaskaskia. Jean Lozier knew every bit of its history. The
+parish priest, Father Olivier, who came to hear him confess because he
+could not leave his grandfather, had told it to him. There was a record
+book transmitted from priest to priest from the earliest settlement of
+Cascasquia of the Illinois. Jean loved the story of young D'Artaguette,
+whom the boatmen yet celebrated in song. On moonlight nights,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> when the
+Mississippi showed its broad sheet four miles away across the level
+plain, he sometimes fooled himself with thinking he could see the fleet
+of young soldiers passing down the river, bearing the French flag;
+phantoms proceeding again to their tragedy and the Indian stake.</p>
+
+<p>He admired the seat where his seignior lived in comfort and great
+hospitality, but all the crowds pressing to Pierre Menard's house seemed
+to him to have less wisdom than the single man who met and passed them
+and crossed the bridge into Kaskaskia. The vesper bell rung, breaking
+its music in echoes against the sandstone bosom of the bluff. Red
+splendors faded from the sky, leaving a pearl-gray bank heaped over the
+farther river. Still Jean watched Kaskaskia.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"But the glory remains when the light fades away,"</p></div>
+
+<p>he sung to himself. He had caught the line from some English boatmen.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye dog, ye dog, where are you, ye dog?" called a voice from the woods
+behind him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Here, grandfather," answered Jean, starting like a whipped dog. He took
+his red cap from under his arm, sighing, and slouched away from the
+bluff edge, the coarse homespun which he wore revealing knots and joints
+in his work-hardened frame.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye dog, am I to have my supper to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, grandfather."</p>
+
+<p>But Jean took one more look at the capital of his love, which he had
+never entered, and for which he was unceasingly homesick. The governor's
+carriage dashed along the road beneath him, with a military escort from
+Fort Chartres. He felt no envy of such state. He would have used the
+carriage to cross the bridge.</p>
+
+<p>"If I but lived in Kaskaskia!" whispered Jean.</p>
+
+<p>The man on horseback, who met and passed the ball-goers, rode through
+Kaskaskia's twinkling streets in the pleasant glow of twilight. Trade
+had not reached its day's end. The crack of long whips could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> be heard,
+flourished over oxen yoked by the horns, or three or four ponies hitched
+tandem, all driven without reins, and drawing huge bales of merchandise.
+Few of the houses were more than one story high, but they had a
+sumptuous spread, each in its own square of lawn, orchard, and garden.
+They were built of stone, or of timbers filled in with stone and mortar.</p>
+
+<p>The rider turned several corners, and stopped in front of a small house
+which displayed the wares of a penny-trader in its window.</p>
+
+<p>From the open one of the two front doors a black boy came directly out
+to take the bridle; and behind him skipped a wiry shaven person, whose
+sleek crown was partly covered by a Madras handkerchief, the common
+headgear of humble Kaskaskians. His feet clogged their lightness with a
+pair of the wooden shoes manufactured for slaves. A sleeved blanket,
+made with a hood which lay back on his shoulders, almost covered him,
+and was girdled at the waist by a knotted cord.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Here I am again, Father Baby," hailed the rider, alighting.</p>
+
+<p>"Welcome home, doctor. What news from Fort Chartres?"</p>
+
+<p>"No news. My friend the surgeon is doing well. He need not have sent for
+me; but your carving doctor is a great coward when it comes to
+physicking himself."</p>
+
+<p>They entered the shop, while the slave led the horse away; and no
+customers demanding the trading friar's attention, he followed his
+lodger to an inner room, having first lighted candles in his wooden
+sconces. Their yellow lustre showed the tidiness of the shop, and the
+penny merchandise arranged on shelves with that exactness which has been
+thought peculiar to unmarried women. Father Baby was a scandal to the
+established confessor of the parish, and the joke of the ungodly. Some
+said he had been a dancing-master before he entered the cloister, and it
+was no wonder he turned out a renegade and took to trading. Others
+declared that he had no right to the gray<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> capote, and his tonsure was a
+natural loss of hair; in fact, that he never had been a friar at all.
+But in Kaskaskia nobody took him seriously, and Father Olivier was not
+severe upon him. Custom made his harlequin antics a matter of course;
+though Indians still paused opposite his shop and grinned at sight of a
+long-gown peddling. His religious practices were regular and severe, and
+he laid penance on himself for all the cheating he was able to
+accomplish.</p>
+
+<p>"I rode down from Elvirade with Governor Edwards," said the doctor. "He
+and all Kaskaskia appear to be going to Colonel Menard's to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I stood and counted the carriages: the Bonds, the Morrisons, the
+Vigos, the Sauciers, the Edgars, the Joneses"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Has anything happened these three days past?" inquired the doctor,
+breaking off this list of notable Kaskaskians.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, many things have happened. But first here is your billet."</p>
+
+<p>The young man broke the wafer of his invitation and unfolded the paper.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It is a dancing-party," he remarked. His nose took an aquiline curve
+peculiar to him. The open sheet, as he held it, showed the name of "Dr.
+Dunlap" written on the outside. He leaned against a high black mantel.</p>
+
+<p>"You will want hot shaving-water and your best ruffled shirt," urged the
+friar.</p>
+
+<p>"I never dance," said the other indifferently.</p>
+
+<p>"And you do well not to," declared Father Baby, with some contemptuous
+impatience. "A man who shakes like a load of hay should never dance. If
+I had carried your weight, I could have been a holier man."</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Dunlap laughed, and struck his boot with his riding-whip.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't deceive yourself, worthy father. The making of an abbot was not
+in you. You old rascal, I am scarcely in the house, and there you stand
+all of a tremble for your jig."</p>
+
+<p>Father Baby's death's-head face wrinkled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> itself with expectant smiles.
+He shook off his wooden shoes and whirled upon one toe.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor went into another room, his own apartment in the friar's
+small house. His office fronted this, and gave him a door to the street.
+Its bottles and jars and iron mortar and the vitreous slab on which he
+rolled pills were all lost in twilight now. There were many other
+doctors' offices in Kaskaskia, but this was the best equipped one, and
+was the lair of a man who had not only been trained in Europe, but had
+sailed around the entire world. Dr. Dunlap's books, some of them in
+board covers, made a show on his shelves. He had an articulated
+skeleton, and ignorant Kaskaskians would declare that they had seen it
+whirl past his windows many a night to the music of his violin.</p>
+
+<p>"What did you say had happened since I went away?" he inquired,
+sauntering back and tuning his fiddle as he came.</p>
+
+<p>"There's plenty of news," responded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> Father Baby. "Antoine Lamarche's
+cow fell into the Mississippi."</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Dunlap uttered a note of contempt.</p>
+
+<p>"It would go wandering off where the land crumbles daily with that
+current setting down from the northwest against us; and Antoine was far
+from sneering in your cold-blooded English manner when he got the news."</p>
+
+<p>"He tore his hair and screamed in your warm-blooded French manner?"</p>
+
+<p>"That he did."</p>
+
+<p>The doctor stood in the bar of candle-light which one of the shop
+sconces extended across the room, and lifted the violin to his neck. He
+was so large that all his gestures had a ponderous quality. His dress
+was disarranged by riding, and his blond skin was pricked through by the
+untidy growth of a three-days' beard, yet he looked very handsome.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Dunlap stood in the light, but Father Baby chose the dark for those
+ecstatic antics into which the fiddle threw him. He leaped<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> high from
+the floor at the first note, and came down into a jig of the most
+perfect execution. The pat of his bare soles was exquisitely true. He
+raised the gown above his ankles, and would have seemed to float but for
+his response in sound. Yet through his most rapturous action he never
+ceased to be conscious of the shop. A step on the sill would break the
+violin's charm in the centre of a measure.</p>
+
+<p>But this time no step broke it, and the doctor kept his puppet friar
+going until his own arm began to weary. The tune ended, and Father Baby
+paused, deprived of the ether in which he had been floating.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Dunlap sat down, nursing the instrument on his crossed knees while
+he altered its pitch.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you not going to Colonel Menard's at all?" inquired the friar.</p>
+
+<p>"It would be a great waste of good dancing not to," said the doctor
+lazily. "But you haven't told me who else has lost a cow or had an
+increase of goats while I was away."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The death of even a beast excites pity in me."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you are a holy man. You would rather skin a live Indian than a
+dead sheep."</p>
+
+<p>The doctor tried his violin, and was lifting it again to position when
+Father Baby remarked:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"They doubtless told you on the road that a party has come through from
+Post Vincennes."</p>
+
+<p>"Now who would doubtless tell me that?"</p>
+
+<p>"The governor's suite, since they must have known it. The party was in
+almost as soon as you left. Perhaps," suggested the friar, taking a
+crafty revenge for much insolence, "nobody would mention it to you on
+account of Monsieur Zhone's sister."</p>
+
+<p>The violin bow sunk on the strings with a squeak.</p>
+
+<p>"What sister?"</p>
+
+<p>"The only sister of Monsieur Reece Zhone, Mademoiselle Zhone, from
+Wales. She came to Kaskaskia with the party from Post Vincennes."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>On Dr. Dunlap's face the unshorn beard developed like thorns on a mask
+of wax. The spirit of manly beauty no longer infused it.</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you tell me this at first?" he asked roughly.</p>
+
+<p>"Is the name of Zhone so pleasant to you?" hinted the shrugging friar.
+"But take an old churchman's advice now, my son, and make up your
+quarrel with the lawyer. There will be occasion. That pretty young thing
+has crossed the sea to die. I heard her cough."</p>
+
+<p>The doctor's voice was husky as he attempted to inquire,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Did you hear what she was called?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mademoiselle Mareea Zhone."</p>
+
+<p>The young man sagged forward over his violin. Father Baby began to
+realize that his revel was over, and reluctantly stuck his toes again
+into his wooden shoes.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you have something to eat and drink before you start?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want anything to eat, and I am not going to Colonel Menard's
+to-night."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But, my son," reasoned the staring friar, "are you going to quit your
+victuals and all good company because one more Zhone has come to town,
+and that one such a small, helpless creature? Mademoiselle Saucier will
+be at Menard's."</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Dunlap wiped his forehead. He, and not the cool friar, appeared to
+have been the dancer. A chorus of slaves singing on some neighboring
+gallery could be heard in the pause of the violin. Beetles, lured by the
+shop candles, began to explore the room where the two men were, bumping
+themselves against the walls and buzzing their complaints.</p>
+
+<p>"A man is nothing but a young beast until he is past twenty-five years
+old," said Dr. Dunlap.</p>
+
+<p>Father Baby added his own opinion to this general remark.&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Very often he is nothing but an old beast when you catch him past
+seventy. But it all depends on what kind of a man he is."</p>
+
+<p>"Friar, do you believe in marriage?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"How could I believe in marriage?"</p>
+
+<p>"But do you believe in it for other people?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Church has always held it to be a sacred institution."</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Dunlap muttered a combination of explosive words which he had
+probably picked up from sailors, making the churchman cross himself. He
+spoke out, with a reckless laugh:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I married as soon as I came of age, and here I am, ruined for my prime
+by that act."</p>
+
+<p>"What!" exclaimed Father Baby, setting his hands on his hips, "you a man
+of family, and playing bachelor among the women of Kaskaskia?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I have no wife now. She finally died, thank Heaven. If she had only
+died a year sooner! But nothing matters now."</p>
+
+<p>"My son," observed Father Baby severely, "Satan has you in his net. You
+utter profane words, you rail against institutions sanctioned by the
+Church, and you have de<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>sired the death of a human being. Repent and do
+penance"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"You have a customer, friar," sneered the young man, lifting his head to
+glance aside at a figure entering the shop. "Vigo's idiot slave boy is
+waiting to be cheated."</p>
+
+<p>"By my cappo!" whispered Father Baby, a cunning look netting wrinkles
+over his lean face, "you remind me of the bad shilling I have laid by me
+to pass on that nigger. O Lamb of mercy,"&mdash;he turned and hastily plumped
+on his knees before a sacred picture on the wall,&mdash;"I will, in expiation
+for passing that shilling, say twelve paters and twelve aves at the foot
+of the altar of thy Virgin Mother, or I will abstain from food a whole
+day in thy honor."</p>
+
+<p>Having offered this compromise, Father Baby sprung with a cheerful
+eagerness to deal with Vigo's slave boy.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor sat still, his ears closed to the chatter in the shop. His
+bitter thoughts centred on the new arrival in Kaskaskia, on her brother,
+on all her family.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She herself, unconscious that he inhabited the same hemisphere with her,
+was standing up for the reel in Pierre Menard's house. The last carriage
+had driven to the tall flight of entrance steps, discharged its load,
+and parted with its horses to the huge stone stable under the house. The
+mingling languages of an English and French society sounded all around
+her. The girl felt bewildered, as if she had crossed ocean and forest to
+find, instead of savage wilderness, an enchanted English county full of
+French country estates. Names and dignitaries crowded her memory.</p>
+
+<p>A great clear glass, gilt-framed and divided into three panels, stood
+over the drawing-room mantel. It reflected crowds of animated faces, as
+the dance began, crossing and recrossing or running the reel in a vista
+of rooms, the fan-lights around the hall door and its open leaves
+disclosing the broad gallery and the dusky world of trees outside; it
+reflected cluster on cluster of wax-lights. To this day the great glass<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>
+stands there, and, spotless as a clear conscience, waits upon the
+future. It has held the image of Lafayette and many an historic
+companion of his.</p>
+
+<p>On the other side of the hall, in the dining-room, stood a carved
+mahogany sideboard holding decanters and glasses. In this quiet retreat
+elderly people amused themselves at card-tables. Apart from them, but
+benignantly ready to chat with everybody, sat the parish priest; for
+every gathering of his flock was to him a call for social ministration.</p>
+
+<p>A delicious odor of supper escaped across a stone causeway from the
+kitchen, and all the Menard negroes, in their best clothes, were
+collected on the causeway to serve it. Through open doors they watched
+the flying figures, and the rocking of many a dusky heel kept time to
+the music.</p>
+
+<p>The first dance ended in some slight confusion. A little cry went
+through the rooms: "Rice Jones's sister has fainted!" "Mademoiselle
+Zhone has fainted!" But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> a few minutes later she was sitting on a
+gallery chair, leaning against her brother and trying to laugh through
+her coughing, and around her stood all girlish Kaskaskia, and the
+matrons also, as well as the black maid Colonel Menard had sent with
+hartshorn.</p>
+
+<p>Father Olivier brought her a glass of wine; Mrs. Edwards fanned her; the
+stars shone through the pecan-trees, and all the loveliness of this new
+hemisphere and home and the kindness of the people made her close her
+eyes to keep the tears from running out. The separation of the sick from
+all healthy mankind had never so hurt her. Something was expected of
+her, and she was not equal to it. She felt death's mark branding in, and
+her family spoke of her recovery! What folly it was to come into this
+gay little world where she had no rights at all! Maria Jones wondered
+why she had not died at sea. To be floating in that infinity of blue
+water would be better than this. She pictured herself in the weighted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>
+sack,&mdash;for we never separate ourselves from our bodies,&mdash;and tender
+forgiveness covering all her mistakes as the multitude of waters covered
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"I will not dance again," laughed Maria. Her brother Rice could feel her
+little figure tremble against him. "It is ridiculous to try."</p>
+
+<p>"We must have you at Elvirade," said the governor's wife soothingly. "I
+will not let the young people excite you to too much dancing there."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mrs. Edwards!" exclaimed Peggy Morrison. "I never do dance quite as
+much anywhere else, or have quite as good a time, as I do at Elvirade."</p>
+
+<p>"Hear these children slander me when I try to set an example of sobriety
+in the Territory!"</p>
+
+<p>"You shall not want a champion, Mrs. Edwards," said Rice Jones. "When I
+want to be in grave good company, I always make a pilgrimage to
+Elvirade."</p>
+
+<p>"One ought to be grave good company<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> enough for himself," retorted
+Peggy, looking at Rice Jones with jealous aggressiveness. She was a
+lean, sandy girl, at whom he seldom glanced, and her acrid girlhood
+fought him. Rice Jones was called the handsomest man in Kaskaskia, but
+his personal beauty was nothing to the ambitious force of his presence.
+The parted hair fitted his broad, high head like a glove. His straight
+nose extended its tip below the nostrils and shadowed the long upper
+lip. He had a long chin, beautifully shaped and shaven clean as marble,
+a mouth like a scarlet line, and a very round, smooth throat, shown by
+his flaring collar. His complexion kept a cool whiteness which no
+exposure tanned, and this made striking the blackness of his eyes and
+hair.</p>
+
+<p>"Please will you all go back into the drawing-room?" begged Maria. "My
+brother will bring me a shawl, and then I shall need nothing else."</p>
+
+<p>"But may I sit by you, mademoiselle?"</p>
+
+<p>It was Ang&eacute;lique Saucier leaning down to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> make this request, but Peggy
+Morrison laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"I warn you against Ang&eacute;lique, Miss Jones. She is the man-slayer of
+Kaskaskia. They all catch her like measles. If she stays out here, they
+will sit in a row along the gallery edge, and there will be no more
+dancing."</p>
+
+<p>"Do not observe what Peggy says, mademoiselle. We are relations, and so
+we take liberties."</p>
+
+<p>"But no one must give up dancing," urged Maria.</p>
+
+<p>They arranged for her in spite of protest, however. Rice muffled her in
+a shawl, Mademoiselle Saucier sat down at her right side and Peggy
+Morrison at her left, and the next dance began.</p>
+
+<p>Maria Jones had repressed and nestling habits. She curled herself into a
+very small compass in the easy gallery chair, and looked off into the
+humid mysteries of the June night. Colonel Menard's substantial slave
+cabins of logs and stone were in sight, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> up the bluff near the house
+was a sort of donjon of stone, having only one door letting into its
+base.</p>
+
+<p>"That's where Colonel Menard puts his bad Indians," said Peggy Morrison,
+following Maria's glance.</p>
+
+<p>"It is simply a little fortress for times of danger," said Mademoiselle
+Saucier, laughing. "It is also the colonel's bureau for valuable papers,
+and the dairy is underneath."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you French understand one another's housekeeping better than we
+English do; and may be the colonel has been explaining these things to
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"But are there any savage men about here now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, plenty of them," declared Peggy. "We have some Pottawatomies and
+Kickapoos and Kaskaskias always with us,&mdash;like the poor. Nobody is
+afraid of them, though. Colonel Menard has them all under his thumb, and
+if nobody else could manage them he could. My father says they will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>
+give their furs to him for nothing rather than sell them to other
+people. You must see that Colonel Menard is very fascinating, but I
+don't think he charms Ang&eacute;lique as he does the Indians."</p>
+
+<p>Mademoiselle Saucier's smile excused anything Peggy might say. Maria
+thought this French girl the most beautiful woman she had ever seen. The
+waist of her clinging white gown ended under the curve of her girlish
+breasts, and face, neck, and arms blossomed out with the polish of
+flower-petals. Around her throat she wore gold beads suspending a cross.
+Her dark hair, which had an elusive bluish mist, like grapes, was pinned
+high with a gold comb. Her oval face was full of a mature sympathy
+unusual in girls. Maria had thought at first she would rather be alone
+on the gallery, but this reposeful and tender French girl at once became
+a necessity to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Peggy," said Ang&eacute;lique, "I hear Jules Vigo inquiring for you in the
+hall."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I shall take to the roof," responded Peggy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Have some regard for Jules."</p>
+
+<p>"You may have, but I shan't. I will not dance with a kangaroo."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you not promise dances ahead?" inquired Maria.</p>
+
+<p>"No, our mothers do not permit that," answered Ang&eacute;lique. "It is
+sometimes best to sit still and look on."</p>
+
+<p>"That means, Miss Jones," explained Peggy, "that she has set a fashion
+to give the rest of the girls a chance. I wouldn't be so mealy-mouthed
+about cutting them out. But Ang&eacute;lique has been ruined by waiting so much
+on her tante-gra'm&egrave;re. When you bear an old woman's temper from dawn
+till dusk, you soon forget you're a girl in your teens."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't abuse the little tante-gra'm&egrave;re."</p>
+
+<p>"She gets praise enough at our house. Mother says she's a discipline
+that keeps Ang&eacute;lique from growing vain. Thank Heaven, we don't need such
+discipline in our family."</p>
+
+<p>"It is my father's grand-aunt," explained<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> Ang&eacute;lique to Maria, "and when
+you see her, mademoiselle, you will be surprised to find how well she
+bears her hundred years, though she has not been out of her bed since I
+can remember. Mademoiselle, I hope I never shall be very old."</p>
+
+<p>Maria gave Ang&eacute;lique the piercing stare which unconsciously belongs to
+large black eyes set in a hectic, nervous face.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you die now?"</p>
+
+<p>"I feel always," said the French girl, "that we stand facing the mystery
+every minute, and sometimes I should like to know it."</p>
+
+<p>"Now hear that," said Peggy. "I'm no Catholic, but I will say for the
+mother superior that she never put that in your head at the convent. It
+is wicked to say you want to die."</p>
+
+<p>"But I did not say it. The mystery of being without any body,&mdash;that is
+what I want to know. It is good to meditate on death."</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't comfortable," said Peggy. "It makes me have chills down my
+back."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She glanced behind her through the many-paned open window into the
+dining-room. Three little girls and a boy were standing there, so close
+to the sill that their breath had touched Peggy's neck. They were
+Colonel Menard's motherless children. A black maid was with them,
+holding the youngest by the hand. They were whispering in French under
+cover of the music. French was the second mother tongue of every
+Kaskaskia girl, and Peggy heard what they said by merely taking her
+attention from her companions.</p>
+
+<p>"I will get Jean Lozier to beat Monsieur Reece Zhone. Jean Lozier is
+such an obliging creature he will do anything I ask him."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Odile," argued the boy, with some sense of equity, "she is not yet
+engaged to our family."</p>
+
+<p>"And how shall we get her engaged to us if Monsieur Reece Zhone must
+hang around her? Papa says he is the most promising young man in the
+Territory. If I were a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> boy, Pierre Menard, I would do something with
+him."</p>
+
+<p>"What would you do?"</p>
+
+<p>"I would shoot him. He has duels."</p>
+
+<p>"But my father might punish me for that."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, chicken-heart. Let Mademoiselle Saucier go, then. But I will
+tell you this: there is no one else in Kaskaskia that I will have for a
+second mother."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we have all chosen her," owned Pierre, "but it seems to me papa
+ought to make the marriage."</p>
+
+<p>"But she would not know we children were willing to have her. If you did
+something to stop Monsieur Zhone's courtship, she would then know."</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you not go out on the gallery now and tell her we want her?"
+exclaimed Pierre. "The colonel says it is best to be straightforward in
+any matter of business."</p>
+
+<p>"Pierre, it is plain to be seen that you do not know how to deal with
+young ladies. They like best to be fought over. It is not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> proper to
+<i>tell</i> her we are willing to have her. The way to do is to drive off the
+other suitors."</p>
+
+<p>"But there are so many. Tante Isidore says all the young men in
+Kaskaskia and the officers left at Fort Chartres are her suitors.
+Monsieur Reece Zhone is the worst one, though. I might ask him to go out
+to papa's office with me to-night, but we shall be sent to bed directly
+after supper. Besides, here sits his sister who was carried out
+fainting."</p>
+
+<p>"While he is in our house we are obliged to be polite to him," said
+Odile. "But if I were a boy, I would, some time, get on my pony and ride
+into Kaskaskia"&mdash;The conspiring went on in whispers. The children's
+heads bobbed nearer each other, so Peggy overheard no more.</p>
+
+<p>It was the very next evening, the evening of St. John's Day, that young
+Pierre rode into Kaskaskia beside his father to see the yearly bonfire
+lighted. Though many of the old French customs had perished in a mix<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>ing
+of nationalities, St. John's Day was yet observed; the Latin race
+drawing the Saxon out to participate in the festival, as so often
+happens wherever they dwell.</p>
+
+<p>The bonfire stood in the middle of the street fronting the church. It
+was an octagonal pyramid, seven or eight feet high, built of dry oak and
+pecan limbs and logs, with straw at all the corners.</p>
+
+<p>The earth yet held a red horizon rim around its dusky surface. Some
+half-distinct swallows were swarming into the church belfry, as silent
+as bats; but people swarming on the ground below made a cheerful noise,
+like a fair. The St. John bonfire was not a religious ceremony, but its
+character lifted it above the ordinary burning of brushwood at night.
+The most dignified Kaskaskians, heretics as well as papists, came out to
+see it lighted; the pagan spell of Midsummer Night more or less
+affecting them all.</p>
+
+<p>Red points appeared at the pile's eight corners and sprung up flame,
+showing the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> eight lads who were bent down blowing them; showing the
+church front, and the steps covered with little negroes good-naturedly
+fighting and crowding one another off; showing the crosses of slate and
+wood and square marble tombs in the graveyard, and a crowd of honest
+faces, red kerchiefs, gray cappos, and wooden shoes pressing close
+around it. Children raced, shouting in the light, perpetuating
+unconsciously the fire-worship of Asia by leaping across outer edges of
+the blaze. It rose and showed the bowered homes of Kaskaskia, the tavern
+at an angle of the streets, with two Indians, in leggins and
+hunting-shirts, standing on the gallery as emotionless spectators. It
+illuminated fields and woods stretching southward, and little weeds
+beside the road whitened with dust. The roaring and crackling heat drove
+venturesome urchins back.</p>
+
+<p>Father Baby could be seen established behind a temporary counter,
+conveniently near the pile, yet discreetly removed from the church
+front. Thirsty rustics and flat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>boat men crowded to his kegs and clinked
+his glasses. The firelight shone on his crown which was bare to the sky.
+Father Olivier passed by, receiving submissive obeisance from the
+renegade, but returning him a shake of the head.</p>
+
+<p>Girls slipped back and forth through the church gate. Now their laughing
+faces grouped three or four together in the bonfire light. In a moment,
+when their mothers turned to follow them with the eye, they were nowhere
+to be seen. Perhaps outside the beacon's glare hobgoblins and fairies
+danced. Midsummer Night tricks and the freemasonry of youth were at
+work.</p>
+
+<p>People watched one another across that pile with diverse aims. Rice
+Jones had his sister on his arm, wrapped in a Spanish mantilla. Her tiny
+face, with a rose above one ear, was startling against this black
+setting. They stood near Father Baby's booth; and while Peggy Morrison
+waited at the church gate to signal Maria, she resented Rice Jones's
+habitual indifference to her ex<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>istence. He saw Ang&eacute;lique Saucier beside
+her mother, and the men gathering to her, among them an officer from
+Fort Chartres. They troubled him little; for he intended in due time to
+put these fellows all out of his way. There were other matters as vital
+to Rice Jones. Young Pierre Menard hovered vainly about him. The moment
+Maria left him a squad of country politicians surrounded their political
+leader, and he did some effectual work for his party by the light of the
+St. John fire.</p>
+
+<p>Darkness grew outside the irregular radiance of that pile, and the night
+concert of insects could be heard as an interlude between children's
+shouts and the hum of voices. Peggy Morrison's lifted finger caught
+Maria's glance. It was an imperative gesture, meaning haste and secrecy,
+and separation from her brother Rice. Maria laughed and shook her head
+wistfully. The girlish pastimes of Midsummer Night were all done for
+her. She thought of nights in her own wild county of Merionethshire,
+when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> she had run, palpitating like a hare, to try some spell or charm
+which might reveal the future to her; and now it was revealed.</p>
+
+<p>An apparition from the other hemisphere came upon her that instant. She
+saw a man standing by the friar's booth looking at her. What his eyes
+said she could not, through her shimmering and deadly faintness,
+perceive. How could he be here in Kaskaskia? The shock of seeing him
+annihilated physical weakness in her. She stood on limbs of stone. Her
+hand on her brother's arm did not tremble; but a pinched blueness spread
+about her nostrils and eye sockets, and dinted sudden hollows in her
+temples.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Dunlap took a step toward her. At that, she looked around for some
+place to hide in, the animal instinct of flight arising first, and
+darted from her brother into the graveyard. Rice beheld this freak with
+quizzical surprise, but he had noted the disappearance of more than one
+maid through that gate, and was glad to have Maria with them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Come on," whispered Peggy, seizing her. "Clarice Vigo has gone to fetch
+Ang&eacute;lique, and then we shall be ready."</p>
+
+<p>Behind the church, speaking all together like a chorus of blackbirds,
+the girls were clustered, out of the bonfire's light. French and English
+voices debated.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I wouldn't do such a thing."</p>
+
+<p>"Your mother did it when she was a girl."</p>
+
+<p>"But the young men may find it out and follow."</p>
+
+<p>"Then we'll run."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid to go so far in the dark."</p>
+
+<p>"What, to the old Jesuit College?"</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't very dark, and our old Dinah will go with us; she's waiting
+outside the fence."</p>
+
+<p>"But my father says none of our Indians are to be trusted in the dark."</p>
+
+<p>"What a slander on our Indians!"</p>
+
+<p>"But some of them are here; they always come to the St. John bonfire."</p>
+
+<p>"All the men in Kaskaskia are here, too. We could easily give an
+alarm."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Anyhow, nothing will hurt us."</p>
+
+<p>"What are you going to do, girls?" inquired the voice of Ang&eacute;lique
+Saucier. The whole scheme took a foolish tinge as she spoke. They were
+ashamed to tell her what they were going to do.</p>
+
+<p>Peggy Morrison drew near and whispered, "We want to go to the old Jesuit
+College and sow hempseed."</p>
+
+<p>"Hempseed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. You do it on Midsummer Night."</p>
+
+<p>"Will it grow the better for that?" asked the puzzled French girl.</p>
+
+<p>"We don't want it to grow, you goose. We want to try our fortunes."</p>
+
+<p>"It was Peggy Morrison's plan," spoke out Clarice Vigo.</p>
+
+<p>"It's an old English custom," declared Peggy, "as old as burning
+brushwood."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you like to observe this old English custom, Mademoiselle Zhone?"
+questioned Ang&eacute;lique.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, let us hurry on."</p>
+
+<p>"I think myself it would be charming."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> The instant Ang&eacute;lique thought
+this, Peggy Morrison's plan lost foolishness, and gained in all eyes the
+dignity of adventure. "But we have no hempseed."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we have," responded Peggy. "Our Dinah is there outside the fence
+with her lap full of it."</p>
+
+<p>"And how do you sow it?"</p>
+
+<p>"You scatter it and say, 'Hempseed, I sow thee,&mdash;hempseed, I sow thee;
+let him who is to marry me come after me and mow thee.'"</p>
+
+<p>An abashed titter ran through girlish Kaskaskia.</p>
+
+<p>"And what happens then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then you look back and see somebody following you with a scythe."</p>
+
+<p>A suppressed squeal ran through girlish Kaskaskia.</p>
+
+<p>"Now if we are going, we ought to go, or it will all be found out,"
+observed Peggy with decision.</p>
+
+<p>They had only to follow the nearest cross-street to reach the old Jesuit
+College; but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> some were for making a long detour into the common fields
+to avoid being seen, while others were for passing close by the bonfire
+in a solid squad. Neither Peggy nor Ang&eacute;lique could reconcile these
+factions, and Peggy finally crossed the fence and led the way in
+silence. The majority hung back until they were almost belated. Then,
+with a venturous rush, they scaled the fence and piled themselves upon
+Dinah, who was quietly trying to deal out a handful of hempseed to every
+passer; and some of them squalled in the fear of man at her uplifted
+paw. Then, shying away from the light, they entered a street which was
+like a canal of shadow. The houses bounding it were all dark, except the
+steep roof slopes of the southern row, which seemed to palpitate in the
+bonfire's flicker.</p>
+
+<p>Finding themselves away from their families in this deserted lane, the
+girls took to their heels, and left like sheep a perceptible little
+cloud of dust smoking in the gloom behind them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Beyond the last house and alongside the Okaw river stood the ruined
+building with gaping entrances. The girls stumbled among irregular
+hummocks which in earlier days had been garden beds and had supplied
+vegetables to the brethren. The last commandant of Kaskaskia, who
+occupied the Jesuits' house as a fortress, had complained to his
+superiors of a leaky and broken roof. There was now no roof to complain
+of, and the upper floors had given way in places, leaving the stone
+shell open to the sky. It had once been an imposing structure, costing
+the Jesuits forty thousand piasters. The uneven stone floor was also
+broken, showing gaps into vaults beneath; fearful spots to be avoided,
+which the custom of darkness soon revealed to all eyes. Partitions yet
+standing held stained and ghastly smears of rotted plaster.</p>
+
+<p>The river's gurgle and rush could be distinctly heard here, while the
+company around the bonfire were lost in distance.</p>
+
+<p>Ang&eacute;lique had given her arm to Maria<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> Jones in the flight down the road;
+but when they entered the college Maria slipped away from her. A blacker
+spot in an angle of the walls and a smothered cough hinted to the
+care-taker where the invalid girl might be found, but where she also
+wished to be let alone.</p>
+
+<p>Now a sob rising to a scream, as if the old building had found voice and
+protested against invasion, caused a recoil of the invaders. Girls
+brought up in neighborly relations with the wilderness, however, could
+be only a moment terrified by the screech-owl. But at no previous time
+in its history, not even when it was captured as a fort, had the Jesuit
+College inclosed such a cluster of wildly beating hearts. Had light been
+turned on the group, it would have shown every girl shaking her hand at
+every other girl and hissing, "S&mdash;s&mdash;sh!"</p>
+
+<p>"Girls, be still."</p>
+
+<p>"Girls, do be still."</p>
+
+<p>"Girls, if you won't be still, somebody will come."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Clarice Vigo, why don't you stop your noise?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you not stop yours, mademoiselle?"</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't spoken a word but sh! I have been trying my best to quiet
+them all."</p>
+
+<p>"So have I."</p>
+
+<p>"Ellen Bond fell over me. She was scared to death by a screech-owl!"</p>
+
+<p>"It was you fell over me, Miss Betsey."</p>
+
+<p>"If we are going to try the charm," announced Peggy Morrison, "we must
+begin. You had better all get in a line behind me and do just as I do.
+You can't see me very well, but you can scatter the hempseed and say
+what I say. And it must be done soberly, or Satan may come mowing at our
+heels."</p>
+
+<p>From a distant perch to which he had removed himself, the screech-owl
+again remonstrated. Silence settled like the slow fluttering downward of
+feathers on every throbbing figure. The stir of a slipper on the
+pavement, or the catching of a breath,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> became the only tokens of human
+presence in the old college. These postulants of fortune in their
+half-visible state once more bore some resemblance to the young ladies
+who had stood in decorum answering compliments between the figures of
+the dance the night before.</p>
+
+<p>On cautious shoe leather the march began. One voice, two voices, and
+finally a low chorus intoned and repeated,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Hempseed, I sow thee,&mdash;hempseed, I sow thee; let him who is to marry me
+come after me and mow thee."</p>
+
+<p>Peggy led her followers out of the east door towards the river; wheeling
+when she reached a little wind-row of rotted timbers. This chaos had
+once stood up in order, forming makeshift bastions for the fort, and
+supporting cannon. Such boards and posts as the negroes had not carried
+off lay now along the river brink, and the Okaw was steadily undermining
+that brink as it had already undermined and carried away the Jesuits'
+spacious landing.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Glancing over their shoulders with secret laughter for that fearful
+gleam of scythes which was to come, the girls marched back; and their
+leader's abrupt halt jarred the entire line. A man stood in the opposite
+entrance. They could not see him in outline, but his unmistakable hat
+showed against a low-lying sky.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's there?" demanded Peggy Morrison.</p>
+
+<p>The intruder made no answer.</p>
+
+<p>They could not see a scythe about him, but to every girl he took a
+different form. He was Billy Edgar, or Jules Vigo, or Rice Jones, or any
+other gallant of Kaskaskia, according to the varying faith which beating
+hearts sent to the eyes that saw him.</p>
+
+<p>The spell of silence did not last. A populous roost invaded by a fox
+never resounded with more squalling than did the old Jesuit College. The
+girls swished around corners and tumbled over the vegetable beds.
+Ang&eacute;lique groped for Maria, not daring to call her name, and caught and
+ran with some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> one until they neared the light, when she found it was
+the dumpy little figure of her cousin Clarice.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as the girls were gone, the man who had broken up their hempseed
+sowing advanced a few steps on the pavement. He listened, and that
+darker shadow in the angle of the walls was perceptible to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you here?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am here," answered Maria.</p>
+
+<p>Rice Jones's sister could not sit many minutes in the damp old building
+without being missed by the girls and her family. His voice trembled.
+She could hear his heart beating with large strokes. His presence
+surrounded her like an atmosphere, and in the darkness she clutched her
+own breast to keep the rapture from physically hurting her.</p>
+
+<p>"Maria, did you know that my wife was dead?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, James, no!"</p>
+
+<p>Her whisper was more than a caress. It was surrender and peace and
+forgiveness. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> was the snapping of a tension which had held her two
+years.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, James, when I saw you to-night I did not know what to do. I have
+not been well. You have borne it so much better than I have."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought," said Dr. Dunlap, "it would be best for us to talk matters
+over."</p>
+
+<p>She caught her breath. What was the matter with this man? Once he had
+lain at her feet and kissed the hem of her garment. He was hers. She had
+never relinquished her ownership of him even when her honor had
+constrained her to live apart from him. Whose could he be but hers?</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Dunlap had thought twenty-four hours on what he would say at this
+unavoidable meeting, and he acknowledged in a business-like tone,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I did not treat you right, Maria. My wretched entanglement when I was a
+boy ruined everything. But when I persuaded you into a secret marriage
+with me, I meant to make it right when the other one died.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> And you
+found it out and left me. If I treated you badly, you treated me badly,
+too."</p>
+
+<p>He knew the long chin of the Joneses. He could imagine Maria lifting her
+slim chin. She did not speak.</p>
+
+<p>"I came over here to begin life again. When you ran off to your friends,
+what was there for me to do but take to the navy again or sail for
+America? Kaskaskia was the largest post in the West; so I came here. And
+here I found your family, that I thought were in another Territory. And
+from the first your brother has been my enemy."</p>
+
+<p>His sulky complaint brought no response in words; but a strangling sob
+broke all restraint in the angle of the wall.</p>
+
+<p>"Maria," exclaimed the startled doctor, "don't do that. You excite
+yourself."</p>
+
+<p>In her paroxysm she rolled down on the stone floor, and he stooped in
+consternation and picked her up. He rested his foot on the ledge where
+she had sat, and held her upon his knee. She struggled for breath<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> until
+he thought she would die, and the sweat of terror stood on his forehead.
+When he had watched her by the bonfire, his medical knowledge gave her
+barely two months of life; and within those two months, he had also told
+himself bitterly then, Rice Jones could marry Ang&eacute;lique Saucier; but to
+have her die alone with him in this old building was what he could not
+contemplate.</p>
+
+<p>Scarcely conscious of his own action, the doctor held her in positions
+which helped her, and finally had the relief of hearing her draw a free
+breath as she lapsed against his shoulder. Even a counterfeit tie of
+marriage has its power. He had lived with this woman, she believing
+herself his lawful wife. Their half-year together had been the loftiest
+period of his life. The old feeling, smothered as it was under
+resentment and a new passion, stirred in him. He strained her to his
+breast and called her the pet names he used to call her. The diminutive
+being upon his knee heard them without response. When she could speak
+she whispered,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Set me down."</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Dunlap moved his foot and placed her again on the stone ledge. She
+leaned against the wall. There was a ringing in her ears. The
+unpardonable sin in man is not his ceasing to love you. That may be a
+mortal pain, but it has dignity. It is the fearful judgment of seeing in
+a flash that you have wasted your life on what was not worth the waste.</p>
+
+<p>"Now if you are composed, Maria," said Dr. Dunlap hurriedly, "I will say
+what I followed you here to say. The best thing for us to do, now that I
+am free to do it, is to have the marriage ceremony repeated over us and
+made valid. I am ready and willing. The only drawback is the prejudice
+of your family against me."</p>
+
+<p>A magnanimous tone in his voice betrayed eagerness to put the Joneses
+under obligations to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Dunlap,"&mdash;when Maria had spoken his name she panted awhile,&mdash;"when
+I found out I was not your wife, and left you,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> I began then to cough.
+But now&mdash;we can never be married."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Maria?"</p>
+
+<p>She began those formidable sounds again, and he held his breath.</p>
+
+<p>Somebody in the distance began playing a violin. Its music mingled with
+the sounds which river-inclosed lands and the adjacent dwellings of men
+send up in a summer night.</p>
+
+<p>"You know," said Maria when she could speak, "how we deceived my people
+in Wales and in London. None of my family here know anything about that
+marriage."</p>
+
+<p>Another voice outside the walls, keen with anxiety, shouted her name.
+Dr. Dunlap hurried a few yards from her, then stopped and held his
+ground. A man rushed into the old building regardless of the broken
+floor.</p>
+
+<p>"Maria, are you here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, brother Rice."</p>
+
+<p>She was leaving her corner to meet him. The doctor could see that she
+sunk to her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> hands and knees with weakness and helped herself up by the
+wall.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you? Is any one with you?"</p>
+
+<p>As they met in the darkness the brother felt her hands and trembling
+figure.</p>
+
+<p>"What possessed you to sit down here in this damp old place? You are
+clammy as stone. Poor little thing, were you frightened? What have you
+been doing?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have been talking," replied Maria.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor's heart labored like a drum. Perhaps she would tell it all
+out to Rice Jones now.</p>
+
+<p>The same acrid restraint may be heard in a mother's voice when she
+inquires, as Rice did,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Who was talking with you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Dunlap."</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Dunlap? You don't know Dr. Dunlap."</p>
+
+<p>"We met in England," daringly broke out Dr. Dunlap himself.</p>
+
+<p>"He is here yet, is he?" said Rice Jones.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> "Doctors are supposed to be
+the natural protectors of ailing women; but here's one that is helping a
+sick girl to take her death cold."</p>
+
+<p>An attack on his professional side was what Dr. Dunlap was not prepared
+for. He had nothing to say, and Maria's brother carried her out of the
+old college and took the nearest way home.</p>
+
+<p>Noise was ceasing around the sinking bonfire, a clatter of wooden shoes
+setting homeward along the streets of Kaskaskia. Maria saw the stars
+stretching their great network downward enmeshing the Mississippi. That
+nightly vision is wonderful. But what are outward wonders compared to
+the unseen spiritual chemistry always at work within and around us,
+changing our loves and beliefs and needs?</p>
+
+<p>Rice stopped to rest as soon as they were out of Dr. Dunlap's hearing.
+Light as she was, he felt his sister's complete prostration in her
+weight.</p>
+
+<p>"For God's sake, Maria," he said to her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> in Welsh,&mdash;"is that fellow
+anything to you?"</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"But he says he met you in England."</p>
+
+<p>She said nothing, and Rice also remained in silence. When he spoke
+again, it was in the tone of dry statement which he used for presenting
+cases in court.</p>
+
+<p>"My pistols have hair triggers and go off at a touch. I had a political
+difference with a gentleman some time ago, and this Dr. Dunlap acted as
+his second. We were standing ready, but before the word was given, and
+while the pistol hung down in my hand, it went off, and the ball struck
+the ground at my feet. Then Dr. Dunlap insisted I had had my shot, and
+must stand still and be fired at without firing again. His anxiety to
+have me shot was so plain that my opponent refused to fire, and we made
+up our difference. That's the Dr. Dunlap we have here in the Territory,
+whatever he may have been in England."</p>
+
+<p>Rice hurried on with her, his motherless<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> little sister, who had been
+left with kinspeople in Wales because she was too delicate to bear the
+hardships of the family transplanting. He blamed himself for her
+exposure and prostration, and held her tenderly, whispering,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Mareea-bach!"</p>
+
+<p>She tried to answer the Welsh caressing name, but her throat gurgled and
+a warm stream ran out of her mouth, and he knew it was blood.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PART_SECOND" id="PART_SECOND"></a>PART SECOND.</h2>
+
+
+
+<p class="em">A FIELD DAY.</p>
+
+
+<p>The gallery pillars of the Sauciers' house hung full of fragrant vines.
+The double doors stood hospitably wide, but no one was visible through
+the extent of hall, though the sound of harp music filled it, coming
+from a large darkened room. Ang&eacute;lique was playing for her
+great-grand-aunt Ang&eacute;lique, the despot of the Saucier family.</p>
+
+<p>This survivor of a past century had her treasures displayed and her
+throne set up in the state apartment of the house. The Sauciers
+contented themselves with a smaller drawing-room across the hall. Her
+throne was a vast valanced, canopied, gilded bed, decorated with down
+sacks in chintz covers to keep her warm, high pillows set up as a
+background for her, and a little pillow for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> every bone which might make
+a dint in the feather bed. Another such piece of furniture was not to be
+found in the Territory. It and her ebony chairs, her claw-footed tables,
+her harp and dower chest, had come with her from France. The harp alone
+she had already given to Ang&eacute;lique, who was to inherit all she owned.</p>
+
+<p>From childhood the girl had been this aged woman's constant attendant.
+Some days the black servants took their orders at the door, and nobody
+but Ang&eacute;lique was allowed to enter that room. Then the tyrant would
+unbend, and receive family and neighborhood visits. Though she had lived
+a spinster's life, she herself taught Ang&eacute;lique to call her
+"tante-gra'm&egrave;re," and this absurd mixture of names had been taken up by
+the entire family. So tight a grip did she hold on the growing child
+that Ang&eacute;lique was educated by half-days at the convent; she never had
+an entire day free from tante-gra'm&egrave;re. Madame Saucier often rose
+against such absorption, and craved the privilege of taking the girl's
+place.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There is a f&ecirc;te of the children on the bluffs to-day," madame would
+plead; or, "There is a religious procession, and the mother superior has
+particularly sent for Ang&eacute;lique."</p>
+
+<p>But tante-gra'm&egrave;re lifted her thin shout against every plea, and, if
+pushed, would throw the little pillows at her grand-nephew's wife. What
+were f&ecirc;tes and processions to her claims?</p>
+
+<p>"I am the godmother of this child," she declared; "it is for me to say
+what she shall do."</p>
+
+<p>The patriarch of a French family was held in such veneration that it was
+little less than a crime to cross her. The thralldom did not ruin
+Ang&eacute;lique's health, though it grew heavier with her years; but it made
+her old in patient endurance and sympathetic insight while she was a
+child. She sat pitying and excusing her elder's whims when she should
+have been playing. The oldest story in humanity is the story of the
+house tyrant,&mdash;that usurper often so physically<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> weak that we can carry
+him in our arms, yet so strong that he can tumble down the pillars of
+family peace many times a day.</p>
+
+<p>There was something monkey-like in the tempers of tante-gra'm&egrave;re. To see
+her grasp her whip and beat her slaves with a good will, but poor
+execution, was to smile self-reproachfully as at the antics of a sick
+child. Though it is true, for a woman who had no use of her legs, she
+displayed astonishing reach in her arms. Her face was a mass of puckers
+burnt through by coal-black eyes. Her mouth was so tucked and folded
+inward that she appeared to have swallowed her lips. In the daytime she
+wore a black silk cap tied under the chin, and a dimity short gown over
+a quilted petticoat. Tante-gra'm&egrave;re was rich in stored finery. She had
+inherited brocades, and dozen dozens of linen, including sheets and
+napkins. Her things were washed by themselves and bleached on their own
+green, where the family washing never dared intrude.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately for Ang&eacute;lique, tante-gra'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>m&egrave;re's hours were early, and she
+slept as aged people seldom do. At sunset, summer or winter, she had
+herself promptly done up in linen, the whip placed near her hand, and
+her black woman's bed made within reach on the floor. She then went into
+a shell of sleep which dancing-parties in the house had not broken, and
+required no further attention until the birds stirred in the morning.
+Ang&eacute;lique rushed out to evening freedom with a zest which became rapture
+when she danced. Perhaps this fresh delight made her the best dancer in
+Kaskaskia.</p>
+
+<p>The autocrat loved to compound her own dinners. She had a salver which
+Ang&eacute;lique placed before her on the bed; and the old child played in
+pastry or salads, or cut vegetable dice for her soup. The baking or
+boiling or roasting was done with rigor at her own fireplace by her
+blacks, the whiplash in her hand hovering over their bare spots. Silence
+was the law of the presence-chamber when she labored with her recipes,
+of which she had many, looking like spider<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> tracks on very yellow paper.
+These she kept locked up with many of the ingredients for creating them.
+She pored over them with unspectacled eyes whenever she mixed a cunning
+dish; and even Ang&eacute;lique dared not meddle with them, though they were to
+be part of the girl's inheritance.</p>
+
+<p>Ang&eacute;lique now played on the harp to soothe tante-gra'm&egrave;re's digestion
+after her midday dinner, while outdoors all Kaskaskia buzzed with
+excitement. It was a field day in territorial politics. All the girls
+were at Peggy Morrison's house, watching the processions march by, and
+making bouquets to send up to the speakers, of whom Rice Jones was
+chief. Tante-gra'm&egrave;re had her heavy green shutters closed, to keep out
+disturbing sights and the noise of fife and drum. Her eyes snapped in
+the gloom. It was a warm day, and the large apartment looked like a
+linen bazaar, so many garments had tante-gra'm&egrave;re discarded on account
+of the heat, and hung about her. The display made Ang&eacute;lique's face burn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>
+when Colonel Menard was announced; but it was one of tante-gra'm&egrave;re's
+unshakable beliefs that her linen was so superior to other people's its
+exposure was a favor to the public. Any attempt to fold it away would
+put her into a fury.</p>
+
+<p>The colonel had his hat and riding-whip in his hand. He stood smiling at
+both the aged woman and the girl, with his comprehensive grasp of all
+individualities. The slave woman placed a chair for him between the bed
+and the harp. Ang&eacute;lique loved the harp; but she was glad to let her
+hands fall in her lap, and leave Colonel Menard to work good nature in
+her tante-gra'm&egrave;re. The autocrat tolerated him with as much liking as
+she could give to any suitor of Ang&eacute;lique's. The intentions of the
+others were discovered only through slaves used as spies; but he came
+into her state apartment and showed her consideration. She sat up on her
+broad throne, against the background of pillows, and received his salute
+upon her hand. Afterwards he bowed over Ang&eacute;lique's fingers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I hope the seven children of monsieur the colonel are well," said
+tante-gra'm&egrave;re in her tiny scream.</p>
+
+<p>"Four, madame," corrected the visitor. "Thanks, they are very well."</p>
+
+<p>They spoke in French, for although she understood English she never
+condescended to use it. Their conference begun each time by her inquiry
+after his seven children.</p>
+
+<p>"And madame, I hope she is comfortable to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>"I neither sleep nor eat," declared tante-gra'm&egrave;re. "And with the
+streets full of a shouting rabble, there is no comfort to be had in
+Kaskaskia."</p>
+
+<p>"We are rather noisy to-day. But we are very earnest in this matter. We
+want to be separated from the Indiana Territory and be made an
+independent State."</p>
+
+<p>Tante-gra'm&egrave;re caught up her whip, and cracked it so suddenly on the
+back of her little page, who was prying into a wall closet, that he
+leaped like a frog, and fell on all fours at the opposite corner of the
+hearth.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> His grandmother, the black woman, put him behind her, and
+looked steadily at their tyrant. She sat on the floor like an Indian;
+and she was by no means a soft, full-blooded African. High cheek-bones
+and lank coarse hair betrayed the half-breed. Untamed and reticent,
+without the drollery of the black race, she had even a Pottawatomie
+name, Watch-e-kee, which French usage shortened to Wachique.</p>
+
+<p>Tante-gra'm&egrave;re put this sullen slave in motion and made her bring a
+glass of wine for Colonel Menard. The colonel was too politic to talk to
+Ang&eacute;lique before her elder, though she had not yet answered his
+proposal. He had offered himself through her father, and granted her all
+the time she could require for making up her mind. The colonel knew of
+her sudden decisions against so many Kaskaskians that he particularly
+asked her to take time. Two dimpling grooves were cut in his cheeks by
+the smile which hovered there, as he rose to drink the godmother's
+health, and she said,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Ang&eacute;lique, you may leave the room."</p>
+
+<p>Ang&eacute;lique left the room, and he drew his chair toward the autocrat for
+the conference she expected.</p>
+
+<p>"It is very kind of you, madame," said Colonel Menard, "to give me this
+chance of speaking to you alone."</p>
+
+<p>"I do so, monsieur the colonel, because I myself have something to say."
+The little elfin voice disregarded Wachique and the page. They were part
+of the furniture of the room, and did not count as listeners.</p>
+
+<p>"You understand that I wish to propose for mademoiselle?"</p>
+
+<p>Tante-gra'm&egrave;re nodded. "I understand that you are a man who will make a
+contract and conduct his marriage properly; while these Welsh and
+English, they lean over a gallery rail and whisper, and I am told they
+even come fiddling under the windows after decent people are asleep."</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad to have you on my side, madame."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not on your side, monsieur. I am<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> on nobody's side. And Ang&eacute;lique
+is on nobody's side. Ang&eacute;lique favors no suitor. She is like me: she
+would live a single life to the end of her days, as holy as a nun, with
+never a thought of courtship and weddings, but I have set my face
+against such a life for her. I have seen the folly of it. Here am I, a
+poor old helpless woman, living without respect or consideration, when I
+ought to be looked up to in the Territory."</p>
+
+<p>"You are mistaken, madame. Your name is always mentioned with
+veneration."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, if I had sons crowding your peltry traffic and taking their share
+of these rich lands, then you would truly see me venerated. I have
+thought of these things many a day; and I am not going to let Ang&eacute;lique
+escape a husband, however such creatures may try a woman's religious
+nature."</p>
+
+<p>"I will make myself as light a trial as possible," suggested Colonel
+Menard.</p>
+
+<p>"You have had one wife."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, madame."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But she died." The tiny high voice had the thrust of an insect's
+stinger.</p>
+
+<p>"If she were alive, madame, I could not now have the honor of asking for
+Mademoiselle Ang&eacute;lique's hand."</p>
+
+<p>The dimpling grooves in his cheeks did not escape tante-gra'm&egrave;re's black
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not like widowers," she mused.</p>
+
+<p>"Nor do I," responded the colonel.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Th&eacute;r&egrave;se might have been alive to-day, if she had not married you."</p>
+
+<p>"Possibly, madame."</p>
+
+<p>"And you have seven children?"</p>
+
+<p>"Four, madame."</p>
+
+<p>"On the whole, I like young men."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you reject my suit?" observed the unmoved wooer.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not reject it, and I do not accept it, monsieur the colonel. I
+consider it."</p>
+
+<p>This gracious promise of neutrality Colonel Menard carried away with him
+without again seeing Ang&eacute;lique; and he made his way through the streets
+of Kaskaskia, unconscious that his little son was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> following Rice Jones
+about with the invincible persistence of a Menard.</p>
+
+<p>Young Pierre had been allowed to ride into the capital this thronging
+day under charge of his father's body-servant and Jean Lozier. The
+body-servant he sent out of his way with the ponies. Jean Lozier tramped
+at his young seignior's heels, glad of some duty which would excuse him
+to his conscience.</p>
+
+<p>This was the peasant lad's first taste of Kaskaskia. He could hardly
+believe he was there. The rapture of it at first shook him like a palsy.
+He had risen while the whole peninsula was yet a network of dew, and the
+Mississippi's sheet, reflecting the dawn, threw silver in his eyes. All
+thoughts of his grandfather he put resolutely out of his mind; and such
+thoughts troubled him little, indeed, while that sea of humanity dashed
+around him. The crash of martial music stirred the man in him. And when
+he saw the governor's carriage and the magnates of the Territory,
+heading the long procession;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> the festooned galleries, on which sat
+girls dressed in white, like angels, sending their slaves out with
+baskets of flowers to strew in the way; when he saw floating tableaux of
+men and scenes in the early history of the Territory,&mdash;heroes whose
+exploits he knew by heart; and when he heard the shouting which seemed
+to fill the rivers from bluff to bluff, he was willing to wade through
+purgatory to pay for such a day.</p>
+
+<p>Traffic moved with unusual force. It was the custom for outdwelling men
+who had something to sell or to trade to reserve it until they came to a
+convention in Kasky, when they were certain to meet the best buyers. All
+the up-river towns sent lines of vehicles and fleets of boats to the
+capital. Kickapoo, Pottawatomie, and Kaskaskia Indians were there to see
+the white-man council, scattered immovably along the streets, their
+copper faces glistening in the sun, the buckskin fringes on their
+leggins scarcely stirring as the hours crept by. Squaws stood in the
+full heat, erect and silent, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> yellow or dark red garments woven of
+silky buffalo wool, and seamed with roebuck sinews. Few of them had
+taken to civilized finery. Their barbaric and simple splendor was a
+rebuke to poor white women.</p>
+
+<p>Many ease-loving old Frenchmen denied themselves the pleasure of
+following the day's pageant from point to point, and chose the best of
+the vacant seats fronting the empty platform in the common meadow. There
+they waited for speech-making to begin, smoking New Orleans tobacco, and
+stretching their wooden-shod feet in front of them. No kind of covering
+intervened betwixt their gray heads and the sky's fierce light, which
+made the rivers seem to wrinkle with fire. An old Frenchman loved to
+feel heaven's hand laid on his hair. Sometimes they spoke to one
+another; but the most of each man's soul was given to basking. Their
+attitudes said: "This is as far as I have lived. I am not living
+to-morrow or next day. The past has reached this instant as high-water
+mark, and here<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> I rest. Move me if you can. I have arrived."</p>
+
+<p>Booths were set up along the route to the common meadow, where the
+thirsty and hungry might find food and drink; and as the crowd surged
+toward its destination, a babel of cries rose from the venders of these
+wares. Father Baby was as great a huckster as any flatboat man of them
+all. He outscreamed and outsweated Spaniards from Ste. Genevieve; and a
+sorry spectacle was he to Father Olivier when a Protestant circuit-rider
+pointed him out. The itinerant had come to preach at early
+candle-lighting to the crowd of sinners which this occasion drew to
+Kaskaskia. There was a flourishing chapel where this good preacher was
+esteemed, and his infrequent messages were gladly accepted. He hated
+Romish practices, especially the Sunday dancing after mass, which Father
+Olivier allowed his humbler parishioners to indulge in. They were such
+children. When their week's work was over and their prayers were said,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
+they could scarcely refrain from kicking up their heels to the sound of
+a fiddle.</p>
+
+<p>But when the preacher saw a friar peddling spirits, he determined to
+denounce Kaskaskia as Sodom and Gomorrah around his whole circuit in the
+American bottom lands. While the fire burned in him he encountered
+Father Olivier, who despised him as a heretic, and respected him as a
+man. Each revered the honest faith that was in the other, though they
+thought it their duty to quarrel.</p>
+
+<p>"My friend," exclaimed the preacher, "do you believe you are going in
+and out before this people in a God-fearing manner, when your colleague
+is yonder selling liquor?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's only poor half-crazy Father Baby. He has no right even to
+the capote he wears. Nobody minds him here."</p>
+
+<p>"He ought to be brought to his knees and soundly converted," declared
+the evangelist.</p>
+
+<p>"He is on his knees half the time now," said Father Olivier
+mischievously. "He's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> religious enough, but, like you heretics, he
+perverts the truth to suit himself."</p>
+
+<p>The preacher laughed. He was an unlearned man, but he had the great
+heart of an apostle, and was open to jokes.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think I am riding the wilderness for the pleasure of perverting
+the truth?"</p>
+
+<p>"My friend," returned Father Olivier, "you have been in our sacristy,
+and seen our parish records kept here by the hands of priests for a
+hundred years. You want to make what you call revivals; I am content
+with survivals, with keeping alive the faith. Yet you think I am the
+devil. As for me, I do not say all heretics ought to be burned."</p>
+
+<p>The preacher laughed again with Father Olivier, but did not fail to
+add,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"You say what I think better than I could say it myself."</p>
+
+<p>The priest left his Protestant brother with a wave of the hand and a
+smiling shrug, and passed on his way along the array of booths. His
+presence was a check on many a rustic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> drinker. His glance, dropped here
+and there, saved more than one sheep from the shearer. But his own face
+fell, and he stopped in astonishment, when an awkward figure was pushed
+against him, and he recognized his upland lamb.</p>
+
+<p>"Jean Lozier, what are you doing here?" said Father Olivier.</p>
+
+<p>Jean had dodged him many times. The lad stood still, cap in hand,
+looking down. Nothing could make him sorry he had come to Kaskaskia; but
+he expected to do penance for it.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is your grandfather?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is at home, father."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you leave that blind old man alone, to wander out and fall over the
+bluff?"</p>
+
+<p>"I left him, father, but I tied him to a joist in the ceiling with a
+long rope."</p>
+
+<p>"To hang himself?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, father; it is a very long rope."</p>
+
+<p>"And what will the old man do when he grows hungry?"</p>
+
+<p>"His food for the day is on the table."</p>
+
+<p>"My son, my son!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Father," exclaimed the boy with passion, "I was never in Kaskaskia
+before. And Colonel Menard lent me a pony to ride after my young master.
+I have no pleasure but watching the lights of the town at night." The
+great fellow began to sob. "If my grandfather would but come here, I
+could keep him well. I have been watching how they do things in
+Kaskaskia. But no, he will stay on the hills. And when I could stand it
+no more I tied him and came."</p>
+
+<p>Father Olivier had looked into the eyes of soldiers and seen the sick
+longing for some particular place which neither courage nor resolution
+seems able to control. He saw even more than this in Jean Lozier's eyes.
+He saw the anguish of a creature about to be driven back from its
+element to another in which it cannot develop. The priest had hitherto
+used Jean's fondness for the capital as means of moral discipline. But
+the sympathy which gave so many simple natures into his literal keeping
+enlightened him now.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"My son," said Father Olivier, "I see how it is with you better than I
+ever did before. You shall come and live in Kaskaskia. I will myself
+forbid your grandfather to keep you longer on the hills."</p>
+
+<p>"But, father, he says he will die in a great town."</p>
+
+<p>"Then, my son, the crown of a little martyrdom is yours. Will you wear
+it until this old man ends his days, and then come to Kaskaskia as your
+reward? Or will you come trampling down your duty, and perhaps
+shortening the life of your father's father? I will not lay any penance
+on you for following this strong desire."</p>
+
+<p>Jean's spirit moved through his rough features, and responded to the
+priest's touch.</p>
+
+<p>"I will wait, father," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"You do right, my son. Now enjoy the remainder of this day, but do not
+make it too long a trial to the old man dependent on you."</p>
+
+<p>Jean Lozier knew very little about the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> fierce partisan war raging in
+the Territory over separation and non-separation, and all the
+consequences which lay beyond either. But he took his place in a sea of
+listeners, having a man's object in life to struggle for. He was going
+to live in Kaskaskia, and have a little house of his own, a cart and two
+oxen; and when he had made enough by hauling bales from the wharf, he
+could set up in trade. His breast lifted and fell freely as he looked
+into this large and possible future. The patience and frugality and
+self-confidence of the successful man of affairs were born in him.</p>
+
+<p>Rice Jones was on the speaker's platform, moulding the politics of the
+Territory. His voice reached over the great outdoor audience, compelling
+and convincing; now sinking to penetrating undertones, and now rising in
+thrilling music. His irony was so cutting, his humor so irrepressible.
+Laughter ran in waves across the sea of heads as wind runs across the
+grass. On many a homeward road and in many a cabin would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> these issues
+be fought over before election day, and Rice Jones's arguments quoted
+and propagated to the territorial limits. The serious long-jawed
+Virginia settler and the easy light-minded French boatman listened side
+by side. One had a homestead at stake, and the other had his possessions
+in the common fields where he labored as little as possible; but both
+were with Rice Jones in that political sympathy which bands unlike men
+together. He could say in bright words what they nebulously thought. He
+was the high development of themselves. They were proud of him, with
+that touching hero worship which is the tribute of unlettered men to
+those who represent their best.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Dunlap stopped an instant at the edge of the crowd, carrying his
+saddle-bags on his arm. He was so well known to be Rice Jones's
+political and personal enemy that his momentary lingering there drew a
+joke or two from his observers. He was exhorted to notice how the
+speaker could wipe up Kasky with such as he, and he replied in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> kind.
+But his face was wearing thin in his deeper and silent struggle with
+Rice Jones.</p>
+
+<p>He knew that that judicial mind was fathoming and understanding his past
+relations with Maria upon the evidence he had himself furnished. Every
+day since their encounter in the college the doctor had armed himself.
+If he saw Rice Jones appear suddenly on the street, his hand sought his
+pocket. Sometimes he thought of leaving the Territory; which would be
+giving up the world and branding himself a coward. The sick girl was
+forgotten in this nightmare of a personal encounter. As a physician, he
+knew the danger of mania, and prescribed hard labor to counteract it.
+Dismounting under the bluff and tying his horse, he had many times
+toiled and sweated up the ascent, and let himself down again, bruised
+and scratched by stones and briers.</p>
+
+<p>Very trivial in Dr. Dunlap's eyes were the anxieties of some poor
+fellows whom he saw later in the day appealing to Colonel Menard. The
+doctor was returning to a patient.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> The speeches were over, and the
+common meadow had become a wide picnic ground under the slant of a low
+afternoon sun. Those outdwelling settlers, who had other business to
+transact besides storing political opinions, now began to stir
+themselves; and a dozen needy men drew together and encouraged one
+another to ask Colonel Menard for salt. They were obliged to have salt
+at once, and he was the only great trader who brought it in by the
+flatboat load and kept it stored. He had a covered box in his cellar as
+large as one of their cabins, and it was always kept filled with cured
+meats.</p>
+
+<p>They stood with hands in their pockets and coonskin caps slouching over
+their brows, stating the case to Colonel Menard. But poverty has many
+grades. The quizzical Frenchman detected in some of his clients a
+moneyed ability which raised them above their fellows.</p>
+
+<p>"I have salt," admitted the colonel, speaking English to men who did not
+understand French, "but I have not enough<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> to make brine of de Okaw
+river. I bet you ten dollaire you have not money in your pockets to pay
+for it."</p>
+
+<p>More than half the pockets owned this fact. One man promised to pay when
+he killed his hogs. Another was sure he could settle by election day.
+But the colonel cut these promises short.</p>
+
+<p>"I will settle this matter. De goats that have no money will stand on
+this side, and de sheep that have money will stand on that."</p>
+
+<p>The hopeless majority budged to his right hand, and the confident ones
+to his left. He knew well what comfort or misery hung on his answer, and
+said with decision which no one could turn:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Now, messieurs, I am going to lend all my salt to these poor men who
+cannot get it any other way. You fellows who have money in your pockets,
+you may go to Sa' Loui', by gar, and buy yourselves some."</p>
+
+<p>The peninsula of Kaskaskia was glorified by sunset, and even having its
+emerald<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> stretches purpled by the evening shadows of the hills, before
+Rice Jones could go home to his sister. The hundreds thronging him all
+day and hurrahing at his merciless wit saw none of his trouble in his
+face.</p>
+
+<p>He had sat by Maria day after day, wiping the cold dampness from her
+forehead and watching her self-restraining pride. They did not talk
+much, and when they spoke it was to make amusement for each other. This
+young sister growing up over the sea had been a precious image to his
+early manhood. But it was easier to see her die now that the cause of
+Dr. Dunlap's enmity was growing distinct to him.</p>
+
+<p>"No wonder he wanted me shot," thought Rice. "No wonder he took all her
+family as his natural foes at sight."</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes the lawyer dropped his papers and walked his office,
+determining to go out and shoot Dr. Dunlap. The most judicial mind has
+its revolts against concise statement. In these boiling moods Rice did<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>
+not want evidence; he knew enough. But cooler counsel checked him. There
+were plenty of grounds and plenty of days yet to come for a political
+duel, in which no names and no family honor need be mixed.</p>
+
+<p>Rice turned back from the gallery steps with a start at hearing a voice
+behind him. It was only young Pierre Menard at his father's gate. The
+veins on the child's temples were distended by their embarrassed
+throbbing, and his cheeks shone darkly red.</p>
+
+<p>"I want, in fact, to speak to you, Monsieur Zhone," stammered Pierre,
+looking anxiously down the street lest the slave or Jean Lozier should
+appear before he had his say.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, colonel junior?" said Rice, returning to the gate.</p>
+
+<p>"I want, in fact, to have some talk about our family."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you haven't any disagreement in your family that the law will
+have to settle?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, monsieur, we do not quarrel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> much. And we never should quarrel
+at all if we had a mother to teach us better," said young Pierre
+adroitly.</p>
+
+<p>Rice studied him with a sidelong glance of amusement, and let him
+struggle unhelped to his object.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur Zhone, do you intend to get married?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly," replied the prompt lawyer.</p>
+
+<p>"But why should you want to get married? You have no children."</p>
+
+<p>"I might have some, if I were married," argued Rice.</p>
+
+<p>"But unless you get some you don't need any mother for them. On the
+contrary, we have great need of a mother in our family."</p>
+
+<p>"I see. You came to take my advice about a stepmother. I have a
+stepmother myself, and I am the very man to advise you. But suppose you
+and I agree on the person for the place, and the colonel refuses her?"</p>
+
+<p>The boy looked at him sharply, but there was no trace of raillery on
+Rice's face.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You never can tell what the colonel intends to do until he does it,
+monsieur, but I think he will be glad to get her. The girls&mdash;all of us,
+in fact, think he ought to be satisfied with her."</p>
+
+<p>"You are quite right. I don't know of a finer young woman in Kaskaskia
+than Miss Peggy Morrison."</p>
+
+<p>"But she isn't the one, Monsieur Zhone. Oh, she wouldn't do at all."</p>
+
+<p>"She wouldn't? I have made a mistake. It's Mademoiselle Vigo."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, she wouldn't do, either. There is only one that would do." The
+boy tried to swallow his tumult of palpitation. "It is Mademoiselle
+Ang&eacute;lique Saucier, monsieur."</p>
+
+<p>Rice looked reproachfully at him over folded arms.</p>
+
+<p>"That's why I came to you about it, monsieur. In the first place, Odile
+picked her out because she is handsome; Berenice and Alzira want her
+because she is good-natured; and I want her because I like to sit in the
+room where she is."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Young man, this cannot be," said Rice Jones.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you engaged her yourself, monsieur? If you haven't, please don't.
+Nobody else will suit us; and you can take Mademoiselle Peggy Morrison
+that you think is such a fine young woman."</p>
+
+<p>Rice laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"You and I are not the only men in Kaskaskia who admire Mademoiselle
+Saucier, my lad."</p>
+
+<p>"But you are the worst one," said Pierre eagerly. "Odile thinks if you
+let her alone we may get her."</p>
+
+<p>"But I can't let her alone. I see the force of your claims, but human
+nature is so perverse, Pierre, that I want her worse than ever."</p>
+
+<p>Pierre dug with his heel in the grass. His determined countenance
+delighted the rival.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur, if you do get her, you have our whole family to beat."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I see what odds there are against me," owned Rice.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"We are going to marry her if we can&mdash;and my father is willing. He is
+nearly always willing to please us."</p>
+
+<p>"This is fair and open," pronounced Rice, "and the way for gentlemen to
+treat each other. You have done the right thing in coming to talk this
+matter over with me."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not sure of that, m'sieur."</p>
+
+<p>"I am, for there is nothing better than fair and open rivalry. And after
+all, nobody can settle this but Mademoiselle Saucier herself. She may
+not be willing to take any of us. But, whatever the result, shake hands,
+Pierre."</p>
+
+<p>The boy transferred his riding-whip, and met the lawyer's palm with a
+hearty grasp. They shook hands, laughing, and Pierre felt surprised to
+find how well he liked Rice Jones.</p>
+
+<p>As the wide and capacious Kaskaskia houses were but a single story high,
+Maria's bedroom was almost in the garden. Sweet-brier stretched above
+the foundation and climbed her window; and there were rank<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> flowers,
+such as marigolds and peppery bouncing-betties, which sent her pungent
+odors. Sometimes she could see her stepmother walking the graveled paths
+between the vegetable beds, or her father and Rice strolling back and
+forth together of an evening. Each one was certain to bring her
+something,&mdash;a long-stemmed pink, or phlox in a bunch, like a handful of
+honeycomb. The gardener pulled out dead vines and stalks and burned them
+behind a screen of bushes, the thin blue smoke trailing low.</p>
+
+<p>Her father would leave his office to sit beside her, holding the hand
+which grew thinner every day. He had looked forward to his daughter's
+coming as a blossoming-time in his life. Maria had not left her bed
+since the night of her hemorrhage. A mere fortnight in the Territory
+seemed to have wasted half her little body.</p>
+
+<p>When you have strained to bear your burden and keep up with the world's
+march, lightly commiserated by the strong, there is great peace in
+finally giving up and lying<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> down by the roadside. The hour often
+fiercely wished for, and as often repelled with awe, is here. The
+visible is about to become invisible. It is your turn to pass into the
+unknown. You have seen other faces stiffen, and other people carried out
+and forgotten. Your face is now going to chill the touch. You are going
+to be carried out. But, most wonderful of all, you who have been so
+keenly alive are glad to creep close to Death and lay your head in his
+lap.</p>
+
+<p>There are natures to whom suffering is degradation. Sympathy would burn
+them like caustic. They are dumb on the side which seeks promiscuous
+fellowship. They love one person, and live or die by that love.</p>
+
+<p>"I have borne it by myself so far," Maria would think; "I can bear it by
+myself the rest of the way."</p>
+
+<p>Yet the sleepy nurse was often roused at dead of night by her sobbing:
+"Oh, James, that you should be in the same town with me, and never come
+near to see me die!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> And I love you,&mdash;I love you so in spite of
+everything."</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes she resolved to tell her brother the whole story. He would
+perhaps think better of Dr. Dunlap than he now did. Yet, on the
+contrary, his implacable pride and sense of justice might drive him
+directly out to kill the man she loved. And again she would burn with
+rage and shame at Dr. Dunlap's condescension to a legal marriage. He was
+willing.</p>
+
+<p>"You are not willing," she would whisper fiercely at the night candle.
+"You do not love me any more."</p>
+
+<p>The old glamour again covering her, she would lie in a waking dream for
+hours, living over their stolen life together. And she puzzled herself
+trying to fit the jagged pieces of her experience, and to understand why
+all these things should happen. The mystery to come is not greater than
+the mystery which has been, when one lies on a dying bed and counts the
+many diverse individuals that have lived in his skin and been called by
+his name.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At other times, all she had lost of common good flashed through Maria in
+a spark: the deeds to other souls; the enjoyment of nature, which is a
+continual discovery of new worlds; the calm joy of daily life, that best
+prayer of thanks to Almighty God.</p>
+
+<p>Maria always thought of these wholesome things when Ang&eacute;lique came in at
+twilight, a little exhilarated by her escape from the tyrant at home.
+The nurse would give place, and go out to talk with the other negroes,
+while Ang&eacute;lique sat down and held Maria's hand. Perhaps invisible
+streams of health flowed from her, quieting the sick girl. She smiled
+with pure happiness, on account of general good and comfort; her oval
+face and dark hair and eyes having a certain freshness of creation.
+Maria looked at her and wondered what love and sorrow would do to her.</p>
+
+<p>Ang&eacute;lique had one exquisite characteristic which Maria did not at first
+notice, but it grew upon her during these quiet half-hours when she was
+spared the effort of talking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> or listening. It was a fixed look of
+penetrating sweetness, projecting the girl herself into your nature, and
+making her one with you. No intrusive quality of a stare spoiled it. She
+merely became you for the time being; and this unconscious pretty trick
+had brought down many a long Kaskaskian, for it drove directly through
+the hearts of men.</p>
+
+<p>The provincial girl sometimes puzzled herself about the method of
+education abroad which had produced such a repressed yet such an
+appealing creature as Maria Jones. When she talked to the triangular
+little face on the pillow, she talked about the outdoor world rather
+than its people; so that after Ang&eacute;lique went away Maria often fell
+asleep, fancying herself on the grass, or lying beside the rivers or
+under the cool shadows of rocks.</p>
+
+<p>As Rice Jones entered the house, after his talk about Ang&eacute;lique with
+young Pierre Menard, he met her coming out. It was the first time that
+her twilight visits to his sister had brought them face to face, and
+Rice<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> directly turned off through the garden with her, inquiring how
+Maria had borne the noise of the day.</p>
+
+<p>"She is very quiet," said Ang&eacute;lique. "She was indeed falling asleep when
+I came out."</p>
+
+<p>"I sent my man at noon and at three o'clock to bring me word of her."</p>
+
+<p>There was still a great trampling of horses in the streets. Shouts of
+departing happy voters sounded from the Okaw bridge, mixing with the
+songs of river men. The primrose lights of many candles began to bloom
+all over Kaskaskia. Rice parted the double hedge of currant bushes which
+divided his father's garden from Saucier's, and followed Ang&eacute;lique upon
+her own gravel walk, holding her by his sauntering. They could smell the
+secluded mould in the shadow of the currant roots, which dew was just
+reaching. She went to a corner where a thicket of roses grew. She had
+taken a handful of them to Maria, and now gathered a fresh handful for
+herself, reaching in deftly with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> mitted arms, holding her gown between
+her knees to keep it back from the briers. Some of them were wild roses,
+with a thin layer of petals and effulgent yellow centres. There was a
+bouquet of garden-breaths from gray-green sage and rosemary leaves and
+the countless herbs and vegetables which every slaveholding Kaskaskian
+cultivated for his large household. Pink and red hollyhocks stood
+sentinel along the paths. The slave cabins, the loom-house, the kitchen,
+and a row of straw beehives were ranged at the back of the lawn, edging
+the garden.</p>
+
+<p>Ang&eacute;lique came back to the main walk, picking her way with slipper toes,
+and offered part of her spoil to Rice. He took some roses, and held the
+hand which gave them. She had come in his way too soon after his mocking
+little talk with young Pierre Menard. He was occupied with other things,
+but that had made him feel a sudden need.</p>
+
+<p>Ang&eacute;lique blushed in the dense twilight, her face taking childlike lines
+of apprehen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>sion. Her heart sank, and she suffered for him vicariously
+in advance. Her sensibility to other presences was so keen that she had
+once made it a subject of confession. "Father, I cannot feel any
+separateness from the people around me. Is this a sin?" "Believe that
+you have the saints and holy angels also in your company, and it will be
+no sin," answered Father Olivier.</p>
+
+<p>Though she was used to these queer demonstrations of men, her conscience
+always rebuked her for the number of offers she received. No sooner did
+she feel on terms of excellent friendliness with any man than he began
+to fondle her hand and announce himself her lover. It must be as her
+tante-gra'm&egrave;re said, that girls had too much liberty in the Territory.
+Jules Vigo and Billy Edgar had both proposed in one day, and Ang&eacute;lique
+hid herself in the loom-house, feeling peculiarly humbled and ashamed to
+face the family, until her godmother had her almost forcibly brought
+back to the usual post.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I love you," said Rice Jones.</p>
+
+<p>"But please, no, Monsieur Zhone, no."</p>
+
+<p>"I love you," he repeated, compressing his lips. "Why 'no, Monsieur
+Zhone, no'?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know." Ang&eacute;lique drew her hand back and arranged her roses
+over and over, looking down at them in blind distress.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it Pierre Menard?"</p>
+
+<p>She glanced up at him reproachfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, monsieur, it is only that I do not want"&mdash;She put silence in the
+place of words. "Monsieur," she then appealed, "why do men ask girls who
+do not want them to? If one appeared anxious, then it would be
+reasonable."</p>
+
+<p>"Not to men," said Rice, smiling. "We will have what is hard to be got.
+I shall have you, my Ang&eacute;lique. I will wait."</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur," said Ang&eacute;lique, thinking of an obstacle which might block
+his way, "I am a Catholic, and you are not."</p>
+
+<p>"Priests don't frighten me. And Father Olivier is too sensible an old
+fellow to ob<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>ject to setting you in the car of my ambition."</p>
+
+<p>They stood in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night, Monsieur Zhone," said Ang&eacute;lique. "Don't wait."</p>
+
+<p>"But I shall wait," said Rice.</p>
+
+<p>He had bowed and turned away to the currant hedge, and Ang&eacute;lique was
+entering her father's lawn, when he came back impetuously. He framed her
+cheeks in his hands, and she could feel rather than see the power of
+possession in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Ang&eacute;lique!" he said, and the word rushed through her like flame. She
+recoiled, but Rice Jones was again in his father's garden, moving like a
+shadow toward the house, before she stirred. Whether it was the trick of
+the orator or the irrepressible outburst of passion, that appeal
+continued to ring in her ears and to thrill.</p>
+
+<p>More disturbed than she had ever been before by the tactics of a lover,
+Ang&eacute;lique hurried up the back gallery steps, to find Peggy Morrison
+sitting in her chamber win<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>dow, cross-legged, leaning over with one palm
+supporting a pointed chin. The swinging sashes were pushed outward, and
+Peggy's white gown hung down from the broad sill.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that you, Peggy?" said Ang&eacute;lique. "I thought you were dancing at
+Vigo's this evening."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you were, too."</p>
+
+<p>"Mama felt obliged to send our excuses, on account of going to sister's
+baby."</p>
+
+<p>"How beautiful these large French families are!" observed Peggy; "some
+of them are always dying or teething, and the girls are slaves to their
+elders."</p>
+
+<p>"We must be beautiful," said Ang&eacute;lique, "since two of the Morrisons have
+picked wives from us; and I assure you the Morrison babies give us the
+most trouble."</p>
+
+<p>"You might expect that. I never saw any luck go with a red-headed
+Morrison."</p>
+
+<p>Ang&eacute;lique sat down on the sill, also, leaning against the side of the
+window. The garden was becoming a void of dimness, through which a few
+fireflies sowed them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>selves. Vapor blotted such stars as they might have
+seen from their perch, and the foliage of fruit trees stirred with a
+whisper of wind.</p>
+
+<p>"I am so glad you came to stay with me, Peggy. But you are dressed; why
+did you not go?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am hiding."</p>
+
+<p>"What are you hiding from?"</p>
+
+<p>"Jules Vigo, of course."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Jules."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you are always saying poor this and that, after you set them on by
+rejecting them. They run about like blind, mad oxen till they bump their
+stupid heads against somebody that will have them. I shouldn't wonder if
+I got a second-hand husband one day, taking up with some cast-off of
+yours."</p>
+
+<p>"Peggy, these things do not flatter me; they distress me," said
+Ang&eacute;lique genuinely.</p>
+
+<p>"They wouldn't distress me. If I had your face, and your hands and arms,
+and the way you carry yourself, I'd love to kill men. They have no sense
+at all."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Ang&eacute;lique heard her grind her teeth, and exclaimed,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Peggy, what has poor Jules done?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Jules!&mdash;he is nothing. I have just engaged myself to him to get rid
+of him, and now I have some right to be let alone. He's only the fourth
+one of your victims that I've accepted, and doctored up, and set on foot
+again. I take them in rotation, and let them easily down to marrying
+some girl of capacity suitable to them. And until you are married off, I
+have no prospect of ever being anything but second choice."</p>
+
+<p>Ang&eacute;lique laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Your clever tongue so fascinates men that this is all mockery, your
+being second choice. But indeed I like men, Peggy; if they had not the
+foolishness of falling in love."</p>
+
+<p>"Ang&eacute;lique Saucier, when do you intend to settle in life?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know," said the French girl slowly. "It is pleasant to be as
+we are."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Peggy glanced at her through the dark.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you intend to be a nun?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I have no vocation."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if you don't marry, the time will come when you'll be called an
+old maid."</p>
+
+<p>"That is what mama says. It is a pity to make ugly names for good
+women."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be drawn and quartered before I'll be called an old maid," said
+Peggy fiercely. "What difference does it make, after all, which of these
+simpletons one takes for a husband? Were you ever in love with one of
+them, Ang&eacute;lique?"</p>
+
+<p>Peggy had the kind of eyes which show a disk of light in the dark, and
+they revealed it as she asked this question.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I think not," answered Ang&eacute;lique.</p>
+
+<p>"You think not. You believe, to the best of your knowledge and
+recollection, that such a thing has never happened to you," mocked
+Peggy. And then she made a sudden pounce at Ang&eacute;lique's arm. "What was
+the matter with you when you ran up the gallery steps, a minute ago?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The startled girl drew in her breath with surprise, but laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"It was lighter then," hinted Peggy.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you see him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I saw him. And I saw you coaxing him along with a bunch of roses,
+for all the world like catching a pony with a bunch of grass. And I saw
+him careering back to neigh in your face."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Peggy, I wish Monsieur Reece Zhone could but hear what you say. Do
+teach me some of your clever ridicule. It must be that I take suitors
+too seriously."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," said Peggy dryly, "I need it all for my second-hand lot. He
+is the worst fool of any of them."</p>
+
+<p>"Take care, Peggy, you rouse me. Why is a man a fool for loving me?"</p>
+
+<p>"He said he loved you, then?"</p>
+
+<p>The Saucier negroes were gathering on doorsteps, excited by the day and
+the bustle of crowds which still hummed in the streets. Now a line of
+song was roared from the farthest cabin, and old and young voices all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>
+poured themselves into a chorus. A slender young moon showed itself
+under foliage, dipping almost as low as the horizon. Under all other
+sounds of life, but steadily and with sweet monotony, the world of
+little living things in grass and thicket made itself heard. The dewy
+darkness was a pleasure to Ang&eacute;lique, but Peggy moved restlessly, and
+finally clasped her hands behind her neck and leaned against the window
+side, watching as well as she could the queen of hearts opposite. She
+could herself feel Ang&eacute;lique's charm of beautiful health and outreaching
+sympathy. Peggy was a candid girl, and had no self-deceptions. But she
+did have that foreknowledge of herself which lives a germ in some
+unformed girls whose development surprises everybody. She knew she could
+become a woman of strength and influence, the best wife in the Territory
+for an ambitious man who had the wisdom to choose her. Her sharp
+fairness would round out, moreover, and her red head, melting the snows
+which fell in middle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> age on a Morrison, become a softly golden and
+glorious crown. At an age when Ang&eacute;lique would be faded, Peggy's richest
+bloom would appear. She was like the wild grapes under the bluffs; it
+required frost to ripen her. But women whom nature thus obliges to wait
+for beauty seldom do it graciously; transition is not repose.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, which is it to be, Rice Jones or Pierre Menard? Be candid with
+me, Ang&eacute;lique, as I would be with you. You know you will have to decide
+some time."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not think Monsieur Reece Zhone is for me," said Ang&eacute;lique, with
+intuitive avoidance of Colonel Menard's name; Peggy cared nothing for
+the fate of Colonel Menard. "Indeed, I believe his mind dwells more on
+his sister now than on any one else."</p>
+
+<p>"I hate people's relations!" cried Peggy brutally; "especially their
+sick relations. I couldn't run every evening to pet Maria Jones and feed
+her pap."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not pet her nor feed her pap,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> declared Ang&eacute;lique, put on the
+defensive. "Don't be a little beast, Peggy," she added in French.</p>
+
+<p>"I see how it is: you are going to take him. The man who needs a bug in
+his ear worse than any other man in the Territory will never be handed
+over to me to get it. But let me tell you, you will have your hands full
+with Rice Jones. This Welsh-English stock is not soft stuff to manage.
+When he makes that line with his lips that looks like a red-hot razor
+edge, his poor wife will wish to leave this earth and take to the
+bluffs."</p>
+
+<p>"You appear to think a great deal about Monsieur Reece Zhone and his
+future wife," said Ang&eacute;lique mischievously.</p>
+
+<p>"I know what you mean," said Peggy defiantly, "and we may as well have
+it out now as any time. If you throw him at me, I shall quarrel with
+you. I detest Rice Jones. He makes me crosser than any other person in
+the world."</p>
+
+<p>"How can you detest a man like that? I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> am almost afraid of him. He has
+a wonderful force. It is a great thing at his age to be elected to the
+National Assembly as the leader of his party in the Territory."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not afraid of him," said Peggy, with a note of pride.</p>
+
+<p>"No,&mdash;for I have sometimes thought, Peggy, that Monsieur Reece Zhone and
+you were made for each other."</p>
+
+<p>Peggy Morrison sneered. Her nervous laughter, however, had a sound of
+jubilation.</p>
+
+<p>The talk stopped there. They could see fog rising like a smoke from the
+earth, gradually making distant indistinct objects an obliterated
+memory, and filling the place where the garden had been.</p>
+
+<p>"We must go in and call for candles," said Ang&eacute;lique.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Peggy, turning on the broad sill and stretching herself along
+it, "let me lay my head in your lap and watch that lovely mist come up
+like a dream. It makes me feel happy. You are a good girl, Ang&eacute;lique."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PART_THIRD" id="PART_THIRD"></a>PART THIRD.</h2>
+
+
+
+<p class="em">THE RISING.</p>
+
+
+<p>Father Baby's part in the common fields lay on the Mississippi side of
+the peninsula, quite three miles from town. The common fields as an
+entire tract belonged to the community of Kaskaskia; no individual held
+any purchased or transferable right in them. Each man who wished to
+could claim his proportion of acres and plant any crop he pleased, year
+after year. He paid no rent, but neither did he hold any fee in the
+land.</p>
+
+<p>Early on rainy summer mornings, the friar loved to hoist his capote on
+the cord, and tramp, bare-legged, out to his two-acre farm, leaving his
+slave, with a few small coins in the till, to keep shop should any
+customer forestall his return.</p>
+
+<p>"The fathers of all orders," explained<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> Father Baby, "from their
+earliest foundations, have counted it a worthy mortification of the
+flesh to till the ground. And be ready to refresh me without grinning,
+when I come back muddy from performing the labor to which I might send
+you, if I were a man who loved sinful ease. Monastic habits are above
+the understanding of a black rascal like you.".</p>
+
+<p>The truth was, the friar loved to play in wet dirt. Civilized life and
+the confinement of a shop worked a kind of ferment in his wild spirit,
+which violent dancing somewhat relieved, but which intimate contact with
+the earth cooled and settled. Father Baby sometimes stripped off his
+capote and lay down in the hollow between furrows of corn, like a very
+lean but peaceful pig. He would not have been seen, on any account, and
+lifted an apprehensive head in the darkness of the morning if a bird
+rustled past. This performance he called a mortification of his frame;
+but when this sly churchman slipped up and put on his capote again, his
+thin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> visage bore the same gratified lines which may be seen on the face
+of a child making mud pies.</p>
+
+<p>It had rained steadily since the political field day which had drawn
+such crowds to Kaskaskia. The waters of the Okaw had risen, and Father
+Baby's way to his work had been across fields of puddles, through which
+he waded before dawn; knowing well that a week's growth of weeds was
+waiting for him in its rankness.</p>
+
+<p>The rain was not over. It barely yet restrained itself, and threatened
+without falling; blotting out distance as the light grew. A damp air
+blew from the northwest. Father Baby found the little avenues between
+his rows of maize and pea vines choked with the liberal growth which no
+man plants, and he fell furiously to work. His greatest pleasure was the
+order and thrift of his little farm, and until these were restored he
+could not even wallow comfortably. When he had hoed and pulled out
+stubborn roots until his back ached, he stood erect, letting his hands<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>
+hang outspread, magnified by their mask of dirt, and rested himself,
+thinking of the winter dinners he would enjoy when this moist land
+should take on a silver coating of frost, and a frozen sward resist the
+tread of his wooden shoe.</p>
+
+<p>"O Lord," said Father Baby, "I confess I am a sinner; we all are. But I
+am a provident sinner who makes good use of the increase Thou dost send
+through the earth. I do Thee to wit that Antoine Lamarche's crop is
+pretty weedy. The lazy dog will have to buy of me, and if I do not skin
+him well&mdash;But hold on. My blessed Master, I had forgot that Antoine has
+a sick child in his house. I will set his garden in order for him.
+Perhaps Thou wilt count it to me for righteousness, and let it offset
+some of my iniquities."</p>
+
+<p>So when he had finished his own, the friar put his hoe into his
+neighbor's patch, and worked until the sweat rolled down his thin
+cheeks. Gusts of rain added their moisture. As much light as the world
+was to have that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> day filtered through sheets of vapor. The bluffs
+bordering the Okaw could not be seen except as a vague bank of forest;
+and as for the lowlands across the great river, they might as well have
+had no existence.</p>
+
+<p>It grew upon Father Baby's observation that the Mississippi had never
+looked so threatening. He stuck to his hoeing until he was nearly
+exhausted, and Antoine Lamarche's ground showed at least enough
+improvement to offset all the cheating he had done that week, and then
+made his way among bushes to the verge of the bank. The strong current
+always bearing down from the northwest against the peninsula had
+increased its velocity to a dizzy sweep. It bit out pieces of the shore
+as large as Father Baby's shop, and far and near these were seen falling
+in with splashes like the spouting of whales.</p>
+
+<p>"At this rate," said Father Baby aloud, "I shall have no part left in
+the common fields by next year."</p>
+
+<p>The river's tremendous rolling roar was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> also swollen to unusual
+magnitude. He looked afar over a tawny surface at undermined stumps and
+trees racing past one another. The June rise, which the melting of snows
+in those vague regions around its head-waters was called, had been
+considerable, but nothing to terrify the Kaskaskians. One week's rain
+and the drainage of the bottom lands could scarcely have raised the
+river to such a height. "Though Heaven alone can tell," grumbled the
+friar, "what the Mississippi will do for its own amusement. All the able
+slaves in Kaskaskia should be set to work on the levee before this day
+is an hour older."</p>
+
+<p>Carrying the hoe on his shoulder like any laborer, and drawing the hood
+of his garment over his bald crown as the mist of rain increased to a
+driving sheet, Father Baby tramped along the river edge toward an
+unfinished defense against the waters. It was a high dike, beginning on
+a shoulder of the peninsula above the town, but extending barely a mile
+across a marsh where the river<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> had once continuously raveled the shore
+even in dry seasons. The friar was glad to discern a number of figures
+at work carting earth to the most exposed and sunken spots of this dike.</p>
+
+<p>The marsh inside the embankment was now a little lake, and some shouting
+black boys were paddling about there in a canoe which had probably been
+made during the leisure enforced by wet weather. It was a rough and
+clumsy thing, but very strongly put together.</p>
+
+<p>The tavern in Kaskaskia was a common meeting-place. Other guest houses,
+scattered through the town, fed and lodged the humble in an humble way;
+but none of them dared to take the name "tavern," or even to imitate its
+glories. In pleasant weather, its gallery was filled with men
+bargaining, or hiring the labor of other men. It was the gathering and
+distributing point of news, the headquarters of the Assembly when that
+body was in session,&mdash;a little h&ocirc;tel de ville, in fact, where municipal
+business was transacted.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The wainscoted dining-room, which had a ceiling traversed by oak beams,
+had been the scene of many a stately banquet. In front of this was the
+bar-room, thirty by forty feet in dimensions, with a great stone
+fireplace built at one end. There was a high carved mantel over this,
+displaying the solid silver candlesticks of the house, and the silver
+snuffers on their tray embossed with dragons. The bar was at the end of
+the room opposite the fireplace, and behind it shone the grandest of
+negro men in white linen, and behind him, tier on tier, an array of
+flasks and flat bottles nearly reaching the low ceiling. Poor
+Kaskaskians who entered there, entered society. They always pulled their
+cappos off their heads, and said "Good-evening, messieurs," to the
+company in general. It was often as good as a feast to smell the spicy
+odors stealing out from the dining-room. It was a gentle community, and
+the tavern bar-room was by no means a resort of noisy drinkers. If any
+indecorum threatened, the host was able to quell it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> He sat in his own
+leather chair, at the hearth corner in winter, and on the gallery in
+summer; a gigantic Frenchman, full of accumulated happiness.</p>
+
+<p>It was barely dusk when candles were lighted in the sconces around the
+walls, and on the mantel and bar. The host had his chair by a crackling
+fire, for continual dampness made the July night raw; and the crane was
+swung over the blaze with a steaming tea-kettle on one of its hooks.
+Several Indians also sat by the stone flags, opposite the host, moving
+nothing but their small restless eyes; aboriginal America watching
+transplanted Europe, and detecting the incompatible qualities of French
+and English blood.</p>
+
+<p>The bar-room had its orchestra of three banjos, making it a hall of
+music every night in the year. And herein Africa added itself to the
+civilization of the New World. Three coal-black slaves of the host's sat
+on a bench sacred to them, and softly twanged their instruments,
+breaking out at intervals into the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> wild chants of their people;
+improvising, and stimulating each other by musical hints and
+exclamations. It was evident that they esteemed their office; and the
+male public of Kaskaskia showed them consideration. While the volume of
+talk was never lessened during their glees, the talkers all listened
+with at least one ear. There was no loud brawling, and the laughter
+raised by argument rarely drowned the banjos. Sometimes a Frenchman was
+inspired to cut a pigeon wing; and Father Baby had tripped it over every
+inch of this oak floor, when the frenzy for dancing seized him and the
+tunes were particularly irresistible. The bar-room gave him his only
+taste of Kaskaskia society, and he took it with zest. Little wizened
+black-eyed fellows clapped their hands, delighting, while their priest
+was not by, in the antics of a disreputable churchman; but the bigger
+and colder race paid little attention to him.</p>
+
+<p>Various as were the home backgrounds of the lives converging at the
+tavern, there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> were but two topics before that little public while the
+cosy fire roared and the banjos rattled. A rumor of coming high water
+was running down the Mississippi valley like the wind which is driven
+before a rush of rain; and the non-separation party had suffered some
+local defeat in the Indiana Territory. The first item of news took
+greatest hold on those serious Anglo-Americans who had come from the
+Atlantic coast to found estates in this valley. On the contrary, the
+peasant tenant gave his mind to politics. It was still an intoxicating
+privilege for him to have a say in the government.</p>
+
+<p>"Dese Indiana Territory fellers," piped a grasshopper of a Frenchman,
+springing from his chair in excitement, "dey want our slaves, dey want
+our Territory,&mdash;dey want de hide off our backs."</p>
+
+<p>"Tony Lamarche," drawled a Virginian, "you don't know what you're
+talking about. You haven't e'er a slave to your name; and you don't own
+a foot of the Territory. As<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> for your hide, it wouldn't make a drumhead
+nohow. So what are you dancin' about?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I got no land, I got some of dose rights of a citizen, eh?" snorted
+Antoine, planting himself in front of the Virginian, and bending forward
+until they almost touched noses.</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon you have, and I reckon you better use them. You git your
+family over on to the bluff before your house is sucked into the Okaw."</p>
+
+<p>"And go and hoe the weeds out of your maize patch, Antoine," exhorted
+Father Baby, setting an empty glass back on the bar. "I cleaned part of
+them out for you myself, with the rain streaming down my back, thinking
+only of your breadless children. And what do I find when I come home to
+my shop but that Antoine Lamarche has been in and carried off six
+dog-leg twists of tobacco on credit! I say nothing about it. I am a
+childless old friar; but I have never seen children eat tobacco."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The baited Frenchman turned on Father Baby; but, like a skittish girl,
+the friar hopped across the room, shook off his wooden shoes, picked up
+the skirt of his habit, and began to dance. The exhilarating drink, the
+ruddiness of the fire, the discomfort outside, the smoothness of the oak
+boards,&mdash;these were conditions of happiness for Father Baby. This was
+perhaps the crowning instant of his experience. He was a butterfly man.
+He saw his lodger, Dr. Dunlap, appear at the door as haggard as the
+dead. The friar's first thought was:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"That fellow has proposed for Mademoiselle Saucier and been
+rejected. I'm glad I'm a churchman, and not yoked up to draw a
+family, like these fools, and like he wants to be. This bowing
+down and worshiping another human being,&mdash;crazy if you don't get
+her, and crazed by her if you do,&mdash;I'll have none of it."</p></div>
+
+<p>Dr. Dunlap raised his arms and shouted to the company in the bar-room.
+What he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> said no one could hear. Hissing and roaring filled the world,
+submerging the crackling of the fire, the banjo tunes, and human voices.
+Men looked at each other, stupefied, holding their pipes from their
+mouths. Then a wave struck the solid old tavern, hissed across its
+gallery, and sprawled through the hall upon the bar-room floor. Not a
+person in the house could understand what had happened to Kaskaskia
+peninsula; but Jean Lozier stood on the bluff and saw it.</p>
+
+<p>Jean was watching the lights of Kaskaskia while his sick grandfather
+slept. The moon was nearly full, but on such a night one forgot there
+was a moon. The bushes dripped on Jean, and the valley below him was a
+blur pierced by those rows of lights. A great darkness was coming out of
+the northwest, whistling as it came. He saw the sky and the turbid
+Mississippi meet and strangely become one. There were waters over the
+heavens, and waters under the heavens. A wall like a moving dam swept
+across the world and filled it. The boy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> found himself sitting on the
+ground holding to a sapling, drenched and half drowned by the spray
+which dashed up the bluffs. The darkness and hissing went over him, and
+he thought he was dying without absolution, at the end of the world. He
+lay down and gasped and shuddered until the great Thing was gone,&mdash;the
+incredible Thing, in which no one believes except him who has seen it,
+and which no name can name; that awful spirit of Deluge, which lives in
+the traditions of every race. Jean had never heard of waterspout or
+cloudburst or any modern name given to the Force whenever its leash is
+slipped for a few minutes. He felt himself as trivial a thing in chaos
+as the ant which clung on his hand and bit him because it was drowning.</p>
+
+<p>The blind downpour being gone, though rain still fell and the wind
+whistled in his ears, Jean climbed across bent or broken saplings nearer
+the bluff's edge to look at Kaskaskia. The rows of lights were partially
+blotted; and lightning, by its swift<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> unrollings, showed him a town
+standing in a lake. The Mississippi and the Okaw had become one water,
+spreading as far as the eye could see. Now bells began to clamor from
+that valley of foam. The bell of the Immaculate Conception, cast in
+France a hundred years before, which had tolled for D'Artaguette, and
+made jubilee over weddings and christenings, and almost lived the life
+of the people, sent out the alarm cry of smitten metal; and a tinkling
+appeal from the convent supplemented it.</p>
+
+<p>There was no need of the bells to rouse Kaskaskia; they served rather as
+sounding buoys in a suddenly created waterway. Peggy Morrison had come
+to stay all night with Ang&eacute;lique Saucier. The two girls were shut in
+their bedroom, and Ang&eacute;lique's black maid was taking the pins from
+Peggy's hair, when the stone house received its shock, and shuddered
+like a ship. Screams were heard from the cabins. Ang&eacute;lique threw the
+sashes open, and looked into storm and darkness; yet the light<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>ning
+showed her a driving current of water combed by pickets of the garden
+fence. It washed over the log steps, down which some of her father's
+slaves were plunging from their doors, to recoil and scramble and mix
+their despairing cries with the wakening clamor of bells.</p>
+
+<p>Their master shouted encouragement to them from the back gallery.
+Ang&eacute;lique's candles were blown out by the wind when she and Peggy tried
+to hold them for her father. The terrified maid crouched down in a
+helpless bunch on the hall floor, and Madame Saucier herself brought the
+lantern from the attic. The perforated tin beacon, spreading its bits of
+light like a circular shower of silver on the gallery floor, was held
+high for the struggling slaves. Heads as grotesque as the waterspouts on
+old cathedrals craned through the darkness and up to the gallery posts.
+The men breasted the deepening water first, and howling little blacks
+rode on their fathers' shoulders. Captain Saucier pulled the trembling
+crea<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>tures in, standing waist-deep at the foot of the steps. The
+shrieking women balanced light bundles of dry clothes on their heads,
+and the cook brought useless kettles and pans, not realizing that all
+the food of the house was lost in a water-filled cellar.</p>
+
+<p>The entire white-eyed colony were landed, but scarcely before it was
+time to close the doors of the ark. A far-off roar and a swell like that
+of the ocean came across the submerged country. No slave had a chance to
+stand whimpering and dripping in the hall. Captain Saucier put up the
+bars, and started a black line of men and women, with pieces of
+furniture, loads of clothing and linen, bedding and pewter and silver,
+and precious baskets of china, or tiers of books, upon their heads, up
+the attic stairs. Ang&eacute;lique's harp went up between two stout fellows,
+tingling with little sighs as they bumped it on the steps.
+Tante-gra'm&egrave;re's room was invaded, and her treasures were transferred
+before she had a chance to prohibit it. The children were taken from
+their beds by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> nurse, and carried to beds made for them in the
+attic, where they gazed awhile at their rude dark canopy of rafters, and
+fell asleep again in luxury, sure of protection, and expecting much of
+such novel times.</p>
+
+<p>The attic, like the house under it, had dignity of space, in which
+another large family might have found shelter. Over rawhide trunks and
+the disused cradle and still-crib was now piled the salvage of a wealthy
+household. Two dormer windows pierced the roof fronting the street, and
+there was also one in the west gable, extending like a hallway toward
+the treetops, but none in the roof at the back.</p>
+
+<p>The timbers of the house creaked, and at every blow of the water the
+inmates could hear it splashing to the chimneys on one side, and running
+down on the other.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," said Captain Saucier desperately, "tante-gra'm&egrave;re must be roused
+and carried up."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, the feather beds are all piled together for her, with fresh linen
+sheets and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> all her cushions; but," gasped madame his wife, "she has
+never before been waked in the night. Is it not better to send Ang&eacute;lique
+to bring her by degrees into a frame of mind for being removed?"</p>
+
+<p>"There is no time. I have left her till the last minute, hoping she
+might wake."</p>
+
+<p>They made a procession into her chamber, Ang&eacute;lique and Peggy carrying
+candles, the grand-nephew and grand-niece ready for a conflict. Waters
+booming against the house, and already making river coves of familiar
+rooms, were scarcely more to be dreaded than the obstinate will of a
+creature as small as a child.</p>
+
+<p>Ang&eacute;lique lifted a ruffle of tante-gra'm&egrave;re's nightcap and whispered in
+her ear. She stirred, and struck out with one hand, encountering the
+candle flame. That brought her upright, staring with indignant black
+eyes at the conclave.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear tante-gra'm&egrave;re, we are in danger. There is a great overflow of the
+rivers."</p>
+
+<p>The autocrat felt for her whip in its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> accustomed place, and armed
+herself with it.</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon us for disturbing you, tante-gra'm&egrave;re," said her grand-nephew,
+"but I am obliged to carry you into the attic."</p>
+
+<p>"Is the sun up?" cried the little voice.</p>
+
+<p>"The water is, madame," answered Peggy.</p>
+
+<p>"If you wait for the sun, tante-gra'm&egrave;re," urged her grand-nephew's
+wife, "you will drown here."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you tell me I will drown in my own bed? I will not drown. Where is
+Wachique?"</p>
+
+<p>"She is carrying your chairs into the attic, tante-gra'm&egrave;re."</p>
+
+<p>"My chairs gone to the attic in my lifetime? And who has claimed my
+dower chest and my linen?"</p>
+
+<p>"All your things are safely removed except this bedstead, madame,"
+declared Ang&eacute;lique's mother. "They were set down more carefully than my
+china."</p>
+
+<p>"How long have I been asleep?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only a few hours, tante-gra'm&egrave;re. It is early in the night."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Her withered face was quite wrathful.</p>
+
+<p>"The water is all over the floor, madame. We are standing to our ankles.
+In a few minutes we shall be standing to our knees. Look at it. Do you
+hear the roaring and the wash outside? Kaskaskia is under water, and the
+people have to climb to the roofs."</p>
+
+<p>The aged woman always listened incredulously to Peggy. She now craned
+over the side of the bed, and examined for herself streams like
+quicksilver slipping along the dark boards.</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you not do something to prevent this, instead of coming in here
+to break my rest?" she inquired.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Saucier extended his hands to lift her, but she lay down again,
+holding the whip bolt upright.</p>
+
+<p>"If I go to the attic, Captain Saucier, my bed goes with me."</p>
+
+<p>"There is not time to move it."</p>
+
+<p>"And there is such a beautiful bed up there, quite ready, with all your
+cushions."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"My bed goes with me," repeated tante-gra'm&egrave;re.</p>
+
+<p>"There will soon be water enough to carry it," remarked Peggy, "if it
+will float."</p>
+
+<p>Waves crashing across the gallery broke against tante-gra'm&egrave;re's closed
+shutters and spurted between the sashes. This freak of the storm
+devastating Kaskaskia she regarded with sidelong scrutiny, such as a
+crow gives to the dubious figure set to frighten it. The majesty of the
+terror which was abroad drove back into their littleness those sticks
+and pieces of cloth which she had valued so long. Again came the crash
+of water, and this time the shutters bowed themselves and a sash blew
+in, and the Mississippi burst into the room.</p>
+
+<p>The candles were out, but Captain Saucier had caught up his relative as
+the water struck. Ang&eacute;lique groped for her mother, and she and Peggy led
+that dazed woman through the hall, laughing at their own shudders and
+splashes, and Captain Saucier<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> waded after them. So the last vestige of
+human life forsook this home, taking to the shelter of the attic; and
+ripples drove into the fireplaces and frothed at the wainscots.</p>
+
+<p>The jangling of the bells, to which the family had scarcely listened in
+their nearer tumult and frantic haste, became very distinct in the
+attic. So did the wind which was driving that foaming sea. All the
+windows were closed, but moisture was blown through the tiniest
+crevices. There were two rooms in the attic. In the first one the slaves
+huddled among piles of furniture. The west room held the children's
+pallets and tante-gra'm&egrave;re's lowly substitute for her leviathan bed. She
+sat up among pillows, blinking resentfully. Ang&eacute;lique at once had a pair
+of bedroom screens brought in, and stretched a wall of privacy across
+the corner thus occupied; but tante-gra'm&egrave;re as promptly had them
+rearranged to give her a tunnel for observation. In chaotic anger and
+terror she snapped her whip at intervals.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What is it, dear tante-gra'm&egrave;re?" Ang&eacute;lique would inquire.</p>
+
+<p>"Send Wachique down to bring up my bedstead."</p>
+
+<p>"But, dear tante-gra'm&egrave;re, Wachique would drown. The water is already
+half way up the attic stairs."</p>
+
+<p>"Am I to lie here on the floor like a slave?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dear, there are six feather beds under you."</p>
+
+<p>"How long is this to last?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not long, I hope."</p>
+
+<p>Peggy stood at the gable window and looked out at the seething night. To
+her the peninsula seemed sinking. She could not see anything distinctly.
+Foam specked the panes. The bells kept up their alarm. Father Olivier
+was probably standing on the belfry ladder cheering his black ringer,
+and the sisters took turns at their rope with that determined calmness
+which was the rule of their lives. Peggy tried to see even the roof of
+her home. She was a grateful daughter;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> but her most anxious thoughts
+were not of the father and mother whose most anxious thoughts would be
+of her.</p>
+
+<p>When the fury of the cloudburst had passed over, and the lightning no
+longer flickered in their faces, and the thunder growled away in the
+southeast, the risen water began to show its rolling surface. A little
+moonlight leaked abroad through cloudy crevices. Ang&eacute;lique was bathing
+her mother's face with camphor; for Madame Saucier sat down and fainted
+comfortably, when nothing else could be done. Something bumped against
+the side of the house, and crept crunching and bumping along, and a
+voice hailed them.</p>
+
+<p>"That is Colonel Menard!" cried Ang&eacute;lique.</p>
+
+<p>Her father opened one of the dormer windows and held the lantern out of
+it. Below the steep roof a boat was dashed by the swell, and Colonel
+Menard and his oarsman were trying to hold it off from the eaves. A
+lantern was fastened in the prow.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"How do you make a landing at this port?"</p>
+
+<p>"The saints know, colonel. But we will land you. How dared you venture
+out in the trail of such a storm?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not like to wait on weather, Captain Saucier. Besides, I am a good
+swimmer. Are you all safe?"</p>
+
+<p>"Safe, thank Heaven," called Madame Saucier, reviving at the hint of
+such early rescue, and pressing to the window beside her husband. "But
+here are twenty people, counting our slaves, driven to the roof almost
+without warning; and who can say where the water will stop?"</p>
+
+<p>"On that account, madame, I came out with the boat as soon as I could.
+But we shall be stove in here. Monsieur the captain, can you let the
+family down the roof to me?"</p>
+
+<p>Captain Saucier thought he could, and he saw it would have to be done
+quickly. By dim lantern light the Saucier children were hurried into
+their clothing, and Wachique<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> brought a wrap of fur and wool for
+tante-gra'm&egrave;re. Three of the slave men were called in, and they rigged a
+rope around their master's waist, by which they could hold and guide him
+in his attempt to carry living freight down the slippery roof.</p>
+
+<p>"How many can you carry?" he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"Six at a time," answered Colonel Menard. "To try to do more would
+hardly be safe, in this rough water."</p>
+
+<p>"Were the boats at the wharf swept away?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is not now easy to tell where the wharf was. But some of the large
+craft seem wedged among trees along the bluff. By daylight we shall get
+some out. And I have sent to the governor for all the boats he can
+muster for us."</p>
+
+<p>Ang&eacute;lique came to the dormer window and touched her father's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you all ready?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Tante-gra'm&egrave;re will not go into the boat."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But she must. There will be six of you, with Peggy; and Colonel Menard
+cannot much longer hang by the eaves."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps if you pick her up and run with her, papa, as you did from the
+danger below, she may allow it."</p>
+
+<p>"She must go into the boat directly," said Captain Saucier; and the
+negroes paid out the rope as he stalked to the screened corner.</p>
+
+<p>Ang&eacute;lique leaned over the sill and the chill wilderness of waters. The
+wind sung in her ears. She could not distinctly see Colonel Menard, and
+there was such a sound of waves that she was not sure it was best to try
+her voice against them. His man had an oar thrust into the broken window
+below, and was thereby able to hold the boat against the current.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur the colonel!" called Ang&eacute;lique; and she saw the swift removal
+of his hat.</p>
+
+<p>"Mademoiselle, have you been alarmed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, monsieur. Even my father was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> unable to do anything for the family
+until you came. But it seems when we find one relief we get another
+anxiety with it."</p>
+
+<p>"What other anxiety have you now?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid you will be drowned trying to carry us out."</p>
+
+<p>"My bel-o-ved, would you care?" said Pierre Menard, speaking English,
+which his slave could not understand, and accenting on the first
+syllable the name he gave her.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; it would be a serious inconvenience to me," replied Ang&eacute;lique.</p>
+
+<p>"Now that is worth coming here for. De northwest wind, I do not feel it
+since you say that."</p>
+
+<p>"I was thinking before you came, monsieur, what if I should never see
+you again? And if I saw you plainly now I could not talk so much. But
+something may happen. It is so strange, and like another world, this
+water."</p>
+
+<p>Tante-gra'm&egrave;re screamed, and Ang&eacute;lique disappeared from the window-sill.
+It was not the mere outcry of a frightened woman.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> The keen small shriek
+was so terrible in its helplessness and appeal to Heaven that Captain
+Saucier was made limp by it.</p>
+
+<p>"What shall I do?" he asked his family.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot force her into the boat when she cries out like that."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps she will go at dawn," suggested Ang&eacute;lique. "The wind may sink.
+The howling and the darkness terrify her more than the water."</p>
+
+<p>"But Colonel Menard cannot wait until dawn. We shall all be drowned here
+before she will budge," lamented Madame Saucier.</p>
+
+<p>"Leave her with me," urged Peggy Morrison, "and the rest of you go with
+Colonel Menard. I'll manage her. She will be ready to jump out of the
+window into the next boat that comes along."</p>
+
+<p>"We cannot leave her, Peggy, and we cannot leave you. I am responsible
+to your father for your safety. I will put you and my family into the
+boat, and stay with her myself."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Ang&eacute;lique will not leave me!" cried the little voice among the screens.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you ready to lower them?" called Colonel Menard.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Saucier went again to the window, his wife and daughter and
+Peggy with him.</p>
+
+<p>"I could not leave her," said Ang&eacute;lique to Peggy. They stood behind the
+father and mother, who told their trouble across the sill.</p>
+
+<p>"That spoiled old woman needs a good shaking," declared Peggy.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor little tante-gra'm&egrave;re. It is a dreadful thing, Peggy, to be a
+child when you are too old for discipline."</p>
+
+<p>"Give my compliments to madame, and coax her," urged Colonel Menard.
+"Tell her, if she will let herself be lowered to me, I will pledge my
+life for her safety."</p>
+
+<p>The two children stood huddled together, waiting, large-eyed and silent,
+while their elders kneeled around the immovable invalid. Peggy laughed
+at the expectant attitudes of the pleaders.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Tante-gra'm&egrave;re has now quite made up her mind to go," Madame Saucier
+announced over and over to her family and to Peggy, and to the slaves at
+the partition door, all of whom were waiting for the rescue barred from
+them by one obstinate little mummy.</p>
+
+<p>But these hopeful assertions were wasted. Tante-gra'm&egrave;re had made up her
+mind to stay. She held to her whip, and refused to be touched. Her fixed
+decree was announced to Colonel Menard. He asked for the women and
+children of the family in haste. He and his man were wasting time and
+strength holding the boat against the waves. It was in danger of being
+swamped.</p>
+
+<p>Ang&eacute;lique stood deferentially before her father and asked his permission
+to stay with his grand-aunt. In the same deferential manner she asked
+permission of her mother. Madame Saucier leaned on her husband's
+shoulder and wept. It was plain that the mother must go with her two
+young children only. Peggy said she would not leave Ang&eacute;lique.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur the colonel," spoke Ang&eacute;lique again into the windy darkness,
+"we are not worth half the trouble you are taking for us. I wonder you
+do not leave such ridiculous people to drown or get out as we can. But
+my tante-gra'm&egrave;re is so old; please forgive her. My mother and the
+children are quite ready. I wish poor Mademoiselle Zhone were with you,
+too."</p>
+
+<p>"I will fetch Mademoiselle Zhone out of her house before madame and the
+children get in," said Pierre Menard promptly. "As for the delay, it is
+nothing, mademoiselle; we must get you all to land as we can."</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur, will it not be dangerous? I thought of her because she is so
+sick. But there is foam everywhere; and the trees are in your way."</p>
+
+<p>"We can find a track," answered the colonel. "Push off, boy."</p>
+
+<p>The boat labored out, and the click of oars in rowlocks became presently
+a distant thumping, and then all sound was lost in the wash of water.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Ang&eacute;lique went to the dormer window in the gable. As she threw the
+sashes wide she was partly drenched by a wave, and tante-gra'm&egrave;re sent
+from the screens a shrill mandate against wind which cut to the bone.
+Captain Saucier fastened the sashes again. He was a crestfallen man. He
+had fought Indians with credit, but he was not equal to the weakest
+member of his household.</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally the rafters creaked from a blow, and a wave rushed up the
+roof.</p>
+
+<p>"It is rising higher," said Peggy.</p>
+
+<p>Ang&eacute;lique wished she had not mentioned Mademoiselle Zhone. Perhaps, when
+the colonel had risked his life to bring the sick girl out of a swamped
+house, her family might prefer to wait until morning to putting her in
+the boat now.</p>
+
+<p>The bells kept ringing, now filling the attic with their vibrations, and
+then receding to a faint and far-off clamor as the wind swept by. They
+called to all the bluff-dwellers within miles of Kaskaskia.</p>
+
+<p>The children sat down, and leaned their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> heads against their mother's
+knee. The others waited in drawing-room chairs; feeling the weariness of
+anxiety and broken domestic habits. Captain Saucier watched for the
+return of the boat; but before it seemed possible the little voyage
+could be made they felt a jar under the gable window, and Rice Jones's
+voice called.</p>
+
+<p>The gable of the house had a sloping roof, its window being on a level
+with the other windows. Captain Saucier leaned far out. The wind had
+extinguished the boat's lantern. The rowers were trying to hold the boat
+broadside to the house, but it rose and fell on waves which became
+breakers and threatened to capsize it. All Kaskaskia men were acquainted
+with water. Pierre Menard had made many a river journey. But the
+Mississippi in this wild aspect was new to them all.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you take her in?" shouted Rice. "My sister thinks she cannot be got
+ashore alive."</p>
+
+<p>"Can you lift her to me?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"When the next wave comes," said Rice.</p>
+
+<p>He steadied himself and lifted Maria. As the swell again tossed the boat
+upward, he rose on a bench and lifted her as high as he could. Captain
+Saucier caught the frail bundle and drew the sick girl into the attic.
+He laid her down on the children's bed, leaving her to Ang&eacute;lique, while
+he prepared to put them and their mother into the boat. Rice crept over
+the wet strip of gable roof, and entered the window after his sister. By
+lantern light he was a strong living figure. His austerely white face
+was full of amusement at the Kaskaskian situation. His hat had blown
+away. The water had sleeked down his hair to a satin skullcap on his
+full head.</p>
+
+<p>"This is a wet night, madame and mesdemoiselles," he observed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Monsieur Zhone," lamented Madame Saucier, "how can you laugh? We
+are all ruined."</p>
+
+<p>"No, madame. There is no such word as 'ruin' in the Territory."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And I must take my two little children, and leave Ang&eacute;lique here in the
+midst of this water."</p>
+
+<p>Rice had directly knelt down by his sister and put his hand on her
+forehead. Maria was quite still, and evidently gathering her little
+strength together.</p>
+
+<p>"But why do you remain?" said Rice to Ang&eacute;lique. She was at Maria's
+opposite side, and she merely indicated the presence behind the screens;
+but Peggy explained aloud,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"She can't go because tante-gra'm&egrave;re won't be moved."</p>
+
+<p>"Put that limb of a Morrison girl out of the house," came an unexpected
+mandate from amongst the screens.</p>
+
+<p>"I would gladly put her out," said Captain Saucier anxiously. "Peggy, my
+child, now that Mademoiselle Zhone is with Ang&eacute;lique, be persuaded to go
+with madame and the children."</p>
+
+<p>Peggy shook her head, laughing. A keen new delight in delay and danger
+made her sparkle.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Go yourself, Captain Saucier. One gentleman is enough to take care of
+us."</p>
+
+<p>"I think you ought to go, Captain Saucier," said Rice. "You will be
+needed. The boat may be swamped by some of those large waves. I am
+ashamed of leaving my stepmother behind; but she would not leave my
+father, and Maria clung to me. We dared not fill the boat too full."</p>
+
+<p>Ang&eacute;lique ran and kissed the children before her father put them into
+the boat, and offered her cheeks to her mother. Madame Saucier was a fat
+woman. She clung appalled to her husband, as he let her over the
+slippery roof. Two slave men braced themselves and held the ropes which
+steadied him, the whites of their eyes showing. Their mistress was
+landed with a plunge, but steadied on her seat by Colonel Menard.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," she cried out, "I have left the house without saying adieu to
+tante-gra'm&egrave;re. My mind is distracted. She will as long as she lives
+remember this discourtesy."</p>
+
+<p>"It could be easily remedied, madame,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> suggested Colonel Menard,
+panting as he braced his oar, "if she would step into the boat herself,
+as we all wish her to do."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, monsieur the colonel, you are the best of men. If you had only had
+the training of her instead of my poor gentle Francis, she might not be
+so hard to manage now."</p>
+
+<p>"We must not flatter ourselves, madame. But Mademoiselle Ang&eacute;lique must
+not remain here much longer for anybody's whim."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think the water is rising?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is certainly rising."</p>
+
+<p>Madame Saucier uttered a shriek as a great swell rolled the boat. The
+searching wind penetrated all her garments and blew back loose ends of
+her hair. There was now a partially clear sky, and the moon sent forth a
+little lustre as a hint of what she might do when she had entirely freed
+herself from clouds.</p>
+
+<p>The children were lowered, and after them their black nurse.</p>
+
+<p>"There is room for at least one more!" called Pierre Menard.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Captain Saucier stood irresolute.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you not trust me with these fragments of our families?" said Rice.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, Monsieur Reece, certainly. It is not that. But you see the
+water is still rising."</p>
+
+<p>"I was testing the rise of the water when Colonel Menard reached us. The
+wind makes it seem higher than it really is. You can go and return,
+captain, while you are hesitating."</p>
+
+<p>"I am torn in two," declared the Indian fighter. "It makes a child of me
+to leave Ang&eacute;lique behind."</p>
+
+<p>"Francis Saucier," came in shrill French from the screens, "get into
+that boat, and leave my godchild alone."</p>
+
+<p>The captain laughed. He also kissed the cheeks of tante-gra'm&egrave;re's
+godchild and let himself slide down the roof, and the boat was off
+directly.</p>
+
+<p>The slaves, before returning to their own room, again fastened the
+sashes of the dormer window. The clamor of bells which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> seemed to pour
+through the open window was thus partly silenced. The lantern made its
+dim illumination with specks of light, swinging from a nail over the
+window alcove. Maria had not yet unclosed her eyes. Her wasted hand made
+a network around one of Rice's fingers, and as the coughing spasm seized
+her she tightened it.</p>
+
+<p>"She wants air," he said hastily, and Ang&eacute;lique again spread wide the
+window in the gable, when the thin cry of her tante-gra'm&egrave;re forbade it.</p>
+
+<p>"But, dear tante-gra'm&egrave;re, Mademoiselle Zhone must have air."</p>
+
+<p>"And must she selfishly give me rheumatism in order to give herself
+air?"</p>
+
+<p>"But, dear tante-gra'm&egrave;re"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Shut that window."</p>
+
+<p>"I dare not, indeed."</p>
+
+<p>Rice seized two corners of the feather pallet, and made it travel in a
+swift swish across the attic boards to the window at the front, which he
+opened. Supporting Maria in his arms, he signaled Ang&eacute;lique, with an
+amused<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> face, to obey her tyrant; and she did so. But Peggy stalked
+behind the screens, and put her face close to the black eyes in the
+great soft lair built up of so many beds.</p>
+
+<p>"You and I are nice people, madame," said Peggy through her teeth. "We
+don't care who suffers, if we are happy. We ought to have been twins;
+the same little beast lives in us both."</p>
+
+<p>Tante-gra'm&egrave;re's eyes snapped.</p>
+
+<p>"You are a limb," she responded in shrill French.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; we know each other," said Peggy.</p>
+
+<p>"When you are old, there will come a little wretch to revile you."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't revile you, madame. I dote on you."</p>
+
+<p>"Your mother should box your ears, mademoiselle."</p>
+
+<p>"It would do me no good, madame."</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to try it," said tante-gra'm&egrave;re, without humor.</p>
+
+<p>Ang&eacute;lique did not hear this little quarrel. She was helping Rice with
+his sister. His<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> pockets were full of Maria's medicines. He set the
+bottles out, and Ang&eacute;lique arranged them ready for use. They gave her a
+spoonful and raised her on pillows, and she rested drowsily again,
+grateful for the damp wind which made the others shiver. Ang&eacute;lique's
+sweet fixed gaze, with an unconscious focus of vital power, dwelt on the
+sick girl; she felt the yearning pity which mothers feel. And this, or
+the glamour of dim light, made her oval face and dark hair so beautiful
+that Rice looked at her; and Peggy, coming from the screens, resented
+that look.</p>
+
+<p>Peggy sat down in the window, facing them, the dormer alcove making a
+tunnel through which she could watch like a spider; though she lounged
+indifferently against the frame, and turned toward the water streets and
+storm-drenched half houses which the moon now plainly revealed. The
+northwest wind set her teeth with its chill, and ripples of froth chased
+each other up the roof at her.</p>
+
+<p>"The water is still rising," remarked Peggy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Look, Peggy," begged Ang&eacute;lique, "and see if Colonel Menard and my
+father are coming back with the boat."</p>
+
+<p>"It is too soon," said Rice.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps Colonel Menard will never come back," suggested Peggy. "It was
+a bad sign when the screech-owl screeched in the old Jesuit College."</p>
+
+<p>"But the storm is over now. The water is not washing over the house."</p>
+
+<p>"The moon shows plenty of whitecaps. It is rough."</p>
+
+<p>"As long as this wind lasts the water will be boisterous," said Rice.
+"But Colonel Menard no more minds rough weather than a priest carrying
+the sacrament. He is used to the rivers."</p>
+
+<p>"Hear a Protestant catering to a papist," observed Peggy. "But it is
+lost on Ang&eacute;lique. She is as good as engaged to Colonel Menard. She
+accepted him through the window before all of us, when he came to the
+rescue."</p>
+
+<p>"Must I congratulate him?" Rice in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>quired of Ang&eacute;lique. "He certainly
+deserves his good luck."</p>
+
+<p>"Peggy has no right to announce it so!" exclaimed Ang&eacute;lique, feeling
+invaded and despoiled of family privacy. "It is not yet called an
+engagement."</p>
+
+<p>Peggy glanced at Rice Jones, and felt grateful to Heaven for the flood.
+She admired him with keen appreciation. He took his disappointment as he
+would have taken an offered flower, considered it without changing a
+muscle, and complimented the giver.</p>
+
+<p>Guns began to be heard from the bluffs in answer to the bells. Peggy
+leaned out to look across the tossing waste at a dim ridge of shadow
+which she knew to be the bluffs. The sound bounded over the water. From
+this front window of the attic some arches of the bridge were always
+visible. She could not now guess where it crossed, or feel sure that any
+of its masonry withstood the enormous pressure.</p>
+
+<p>The negroes were leaning out of their dormer window, also, and watching
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> nightmare world into which the sunny peninsula was changed. When a
+particularly high swell threw foam in their faces they started back, but
+others as anxious took their places.</p>
+
+<p>"Boats will be putting out from the bluffs plentifully, soon," said
+Rice. "Before to-morrow sunset all Kaskaskia and its goods and chattels
+will be moved to the uplands."</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder what became of the poor cows," mused Ang&eacute;lique. "They were
+turned out to the common pasture before the storm."</p>
+
+<p>"Some of them were carried down by the rivers, and some swam out to the
+uplands. It is a strange predicament for the capital of a great
+Territory. But these rich lowlands were made by water, and if they can
+survive overflow they must be profited by it."</p>
+
+<p>"What effect will this have on the election?" inquired Peggy, and Rice
+laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"You can't put us back on our ordinary level, Miss Peggy. We are lifted
+above elections for the present."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Here is a boat!" she exclaimed, and the slaves at the other window
+hailed Father Olivier as he tried to steady himself at the angle formed
+by the roofs.</p>
+
+<p>Ang&eacute;lique looked out, but Rice sat still beside his sister.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you all quite safe?" shouted the priest.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite, father. The slaves were brought in, and we are all in the
+attic."</p>
+
+<p>"Keep up your courage and your prayers. As soon as this strong wind dies
+away they will put out from shore for you."</p>
+
+<p>"Colonel Menard has already been here and taken part of the family."</p>
+
+<p>"Has he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, father; though tante-gra'm&egrave;re is afraid to venture yet, so we
+remain with her."</p>
+
+<p>They could see the priest, indistinctly, sitting in a small skiff, which
+he tried to keep off the roof with a rough paddle.</p>
+
+<p>"Where did you find a boat, father?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think it is one the negroes had on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> marsh by the levee. It lodged
+in my gallery, and by the help of the saints I am trying to voyage from
+house to house, as far as I can, and carry a little encouragement. I
+have the parish records here with me; and if this vessel capsizes, their
+loss would be worse for this parish than the loss of me."</p>
+
+<p>"But, father, you are not trying to reach the land in that frail canoe?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet, my daughter; not until some of the people are taken out. I did
+intend to venture for help, but the ringing of the bells has been of
+service to us. The sexton will stay in the belfry all night. I was able
+to get him there by means of this boat."</p>
+
+<p>"Come up here until the wind dies down, Monsieur Olivier," urged Peggy.
+"That little tub is not strong enough to carry you. I have seen it. The
+slaves made it, with scarcely any tools, of some boards from the old
+Jesuit College."</p>
+
+<p>"The little tub has done good service to-night, mademoiselle; and I must
+get as far as the tavern, at least, to carry news of their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> families to
+men there. Antoine Lamarche's child is dead, and his family are on the
+roof. I was able to minister to its parting soul; and I set the others,
+for safety, astride the roof-pole, promising them heavy penance if they
+moved before help came. He ought now to take this boat and go to them,
+if I can put him in heart to do it."</p>
+
+<p>"A Protestant hardly caters to a papist when he puts some faith in the
+courage of a man like Father Olivier," said Rice to Peggy.</p>
+
+<p>"Did I hint that you would cater to any one?" she responded, with a lift
+of her slender chin. The wind had blown out a long tress of Peggy's
+hair, which trailed to the floor. Rice seldom looked at her; but he
+noticed this sweep of living redness with something like approval; in
+shadow it shone softened to bronze.</p>
+
+<p>"I think my father and Colonel Menard are coming back," said Ang&eacute;lique.
+"I see a light moving out from the bluffs."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no; they are only picking their way among trees to a landing."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"They have gone with the current and the wind," said Rice. "It will take
+a longer time to make their way back against the current and the wind."</p>
+
+<p>"Let us begin to bind and gag madame now, anyhow," Peggy suggested
+recklessly. "It's what the colonel will do, if he is forced to it. She
+will never of her own will go into the boat."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor tante-gra'm&egrave;re. I should have asked Father Olivier to urge her.
+But this is such a time of confusion one thinks of nothing."</p>
+
+<p>Ang&eacute;lique bent to watch Maria's stupor. Rice had put the skeleton hand
+under a coverlet which was drawn to the sick girl's chin. He sat beside
+her on one of the brocaded drawing-room chairs, his head resting against
+the high back and his crossed feet stretched toward the window, in an
+attitude of his own which expressed quiescent power. Peggy went directly
+behind the screens, determined to pounce upon the woman who prolonged
+their stay in a flooded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> house, and deal with her as there would not be
+opportunity to do later. Tante-gra'm&egrave;re was asleep.</p>
+
+<p>Ang&eacute;lique sat down with Peggy on the floor, a little way from the pile
+of feather beds. They were very weary. The tonic of excitement, and even
+of Rice Jones's presence, failed in their effect on Peggy. It was past
+midnight. The girls heard cocks crowing along the bluffs. Ang&eacute;lique took
+the red head upon her shoulder, saying,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It would be better if we slept until they call, since there is nothing
+else to do."</p>
+
+<p>"You might coquette over Maria Jones. I won't tell."</p>
+
+<p>"What a thorn you are, Peggy! If I did not know the rose that goes with
+it"&mdash;Ang&eacute;lique did not state her alternative.</p>
+
+<p>"A red rose," scoffed Peggy; and she felt herself drowsing in the mother
+arms.</p>
+
+<p>Rice was keenly awake, and when the girls went into the privacy of the
+screens he sat looking out of the window at the oblong of darkly blue
+night sky which it shaped<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> for him. His temples throbbed. Though the
+strange conditions around him were not able to vary his usual habits of
+thought, something exhilarated him; and he wondered at that, when Peggy
+had told him Ang&eacute;lique's decision against him. He felt at peace with the
+world, and for the first time even with Dr. Dunlap.</p>
+
+<p>"We are here such a little time," thought Rice, "and are all such poor
+wretches. What does it matter, the damage we do one another in our
+groping about? God forgive me! I would have killed that man, and maybe
+added another pang to the suffering of this dying girl."</p>
+
+<p>Maria stirred. The snoring of the sleeping negroes penetrated the
+dividing wall. He thought he heard a rasping on the shingles outside
+which could not be accounted for by wind or water, and rose to his feet,
+that instant facing Dr. Dunlap in the window.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Dunlap had one leg across the low sill. The two men stood
+breathless. Maria<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> saw the intruder. She sat up, articulating his name.
+At that piteous sound, betraying him to her brother, the cowardly
+impulse of many days' growth carried Dr. Dunlap's hand like a flash to
+his pocket. He fired his pistol directly into Rice's breast, and dropped
+back through the window to the boat he had taken from the priest.</p>
+
+<p>The screams of women and the terrified outcry of slaves filled the
+attic. Rice threw his arms above his head, and sunk downward. In the
+midst of the smoke Peggy knelt by him, and lifted his head and
+shoulders. The night wind blew upon them, and she could discern his
+dilated eyes and piteous amazement.</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Dunlap has shot me," he said to her. "I don't know why he did it."
+And his face fell against her bosom as he died.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PART_FOURTH" id="PART_FOURTH"></a>PART FOURTH.</h2>
+
+
+
+<p class="em">THE FLOOD.</p>
+
+
+<p>The moonlight shone in through both windows and the lantern glimmered.
+The choking smell of gunpowder spread from room to room. Two of the
+slave men sprung across the sill to pursue Dr. Dunlap, but they could do
+nothing. They could see him paddling away from the house, and giving
+himself up to the current; a desperate man, whose fate was from that
+hour unknown. Night and the paralysis which the flood laid upon human
+action favored him. Did a still pitying soul bend above his wild-eyed
+and reckless plunging through whirls of water, comprehending that he had
+been startled into assassination; that the deed was, like the result of
+his marriage, a tragedy he did not foresee? Some men are made for
+strong<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> domestic ties, yet run with brutal precipitation into the
+loneliness of evil.</p>
+
+<p>A desire to get out of the flood-bound tavern, an unreasonable impulse
+to see Ang&eacute;lique Saucier and perhaps be of use to her, a mistakenly
+silent entering of the house which he hardly knew how to
+approach,&mdash;these were the conditions which put him in the way of his
+crime. The old journey of Cain was already begun while Ang&eacute;lique was
+robbing her great-grand-aunt's bed of pillows to put under Rice Jones.
+The aged woman had gone into her shell of sleep, and the muffled shot,
+the confusion and wailing, did not wake her. Wachique and another slave
+lifted the body and laid it on the quickly spread couch of pillows.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody thought of Maria. She lay quite still, and made no sound in that
+flurry of terror.</p>
+
+<p>"He is badly hurt," said Ang&eacute;lique. "Lizette, bring linen, the first
+your hand touches; and you, Achille, open his vest and find the wound
+quickly."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But it's no use, ma'amselle," whispered Wachique, lifting her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not be afraid, poor Achille. I will show you how myself. We cannot
+wait for any one to help us. What would my father and Colonel Menard
+say, if they found Monsieur Reece Zhone killed in our house?"</p>
+
+<p>In her panic Ang&eacute;lique tore the vest wide, and found the great stain
+over the place where the heart should be. She was kneeling, and she
+turned back to Peggy, who stood behind her.</p>
+
+<p>Death is great or it is a piteous change, like the slaughter of brutes,
+according as we bear ourselves in its presence. How mighty an experience
+it is to wait where world overlaps the edge of world, and feel the
+vastness of eternity around us! A moment ago&mdash;or was it many ages?&mdash;he
+spoke. Now he is gone, leaving a strange visible image lying there to
+awe us. The dead take sudden majesty. They become as gods. We think they
+hear us when we speak of them, and their good becomes sacred. A dead
+face<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> has all human faults wiped from it; and that Shape, that Presence,
+whose passiveness seems infinite, how it fills the house, the town, the
+whole world, while it stays!</p>
+
+<p>The hardest problem we have to face here is the waste of our best
+things,&mdash;of hopes, of patience, of love, of days, of agonizing labor, of
+lives which promise most. Rice's astonishment at the brutal waste of
+himself had already passed off his countenance. The open eyes saw
+nothing, but the lips were closed in sublime peace.</p>
+
+<p>"And his sister," wept Ang&eacute;lique. "Look at Mademoiselle Zhone, also."</p>
+
+<p>The dozen negroes, old and young, led by Achille, began to sob in music
+one of those sweet undertone chants for the dead which no race but
+theirs can master. They sung the power of the man and the tenderness of
+the young sister whose soul followed her brother's, and they called from
+that ark on the waters for saints and angels to come down and bless the
+beds of the two. The bells intoned with them, and a sinking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> wind
+carried a lighter ripple against the house.</p>
+
+<p>"Send them out," spoke Peggy Morrison, with an imperious sweep of the
+arm; and the half-breed authoritatively hurried the other slaves back to
+their doorway. The submissive race understood and obeyed, anxiously
+watching Peggy as she wavered in her erectness and groped with the
+fingers of both hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Put camphor under Ma'amselle Peggy's nose, Wachique," whispered
+Achille.</p>
+
+<p>Peggy found Rice's chair, and sat down; but as soon as she returned to a
+consciousness of the bottle under her nose and an arm around her, she
+said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Go away. A Morrison never faints."</p>
+
+<p>Ang&eacute;lique was kneeling like a nun. She felt the push of a foot.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop that crying," said Peggy fiercely. "I hate to hear it. What right
+have you to cry?"</p>
+
+<p>"No right at all. But the whole Territory will weep over this."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What right has the Territory in him now? The Territory will soon find
+another brilliant man."</p>
+
+<p>"And this poor tiny girl, Peggy, so near her death, what had she done to
+deserve that it should come in this form? Are men gone mad in this
+flood, that Dr. Dunlap, for a mere political feud, should seek out
+Monsieur Reece Zhone in my father's house, and shoot him down before our
+eyes? I am dazed. It is like a nightmare."</p>
+
+<p>Peggy set her mouth and looked abroad into the brightening night.</p>
+
+<p>Ang&eacute;lique dropped her face in her hands and shook with sobbing. The
+three girlish figures, one rigid on the bed, another rigid in the chair,
+and the third bending in vicarious suffering between them, were made
+suddenly clear by an illumination of the moon as it began to find the
+western window. Wachique had busied herself seeking among piles of
+furniture for candles, which she considered a necessity for the dead.
+The house supply of wax tapers was in the submerged<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> cellar. So she took
+the lantern from its nail and set it on the floor at the head of the two
+pallets, and it threw scattered spots of lustre on Rice's white forehead
+and Maria's hair. This humble shrouded torch, impertinent as it looked
+when the lily-white moonlight lay across it, yet reminded beholders of a
+stable, and a Child born in a stable who had taught the race to turn
+every sorrow into glory.</p>
+
+<p>The night sent its quiet through the attic, though the bells which had
+clamored so over the destruction of verdure and homes appeared now to
+clamor louder over the destruction of youth.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you understand this, Peggy? They died heretic and unblessed, yet I
+want to know what they now know until it seems to me I cannot wait. When
+I have been playing the harp to tante-gra'm&egrave;re, and thinking so much,
+long, long afternoons, such a strange homesickness has grown in me. I
+could not make anybody believe it if I told it. These two have found out
+what is beyond. They have found out the great secret. Oh, Peggy,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> I do
+want to know it, also. There will be an awful mourning over them; and
+when they go into their little earthen cellars, people will pity that,
+and say, 'Poor things.' But they know the mystery of the ages now, and
+we know nothing. Do you think they are yet very far away? Monsieur
+Reece? Mademoiselle?"</p>
+
+<p>Ang&eacute;lique's low interrogating call, made while she keenly listened with
+lifted face, had its only response in a mutter from Wachique, who feared
+any invocation of spirits. Peggy sat looking straight ahead of her
+without a word. She could not wash her face soft with tears, and she
+felt no reaching out towards disembodiment. What she wanted was love in
+this world, and pride in her love; long years of glad living on the
+verdure of earth in the light of the sun. One presence could make the
+common old world celestial enough for her. She had missed her desire.
+But Rice had turned his face to her as he died.</p>
+
+<p>Two boats moved to the eaves and rested<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> there, shaken only by a ripple
+of the quieting water. The overflowed rivers would lie calm when the
+wind allowed it, excepting where a boiling current drove. The dazed
+girls yet seemed to dream through the strong indignation and the inquiry
+and fruitless plans of arriving men. It was a dream when Captain Saucier
+sat down and stared haggardly at the two who had perished under his
+roof, and Colonel Menard stood with his hat over his face. It was a
+dream when the brother and sister were lowered and placed on one pallet
+in a boat. The hollow of the rafters, the walls on which one might mark
+with his nail, the waiting black faces, the figures toiling down the
+roof with those loads,&mdash;were any of these sights real?</p>
+
+<p>"Wrap yourselves," said Captain Saucier to Peggy and Ang&eacute;lique. "The
+other boat is quite ready for you."</p>
+
+<p>"But, papa, are Monsieur Reece and his sister going alone with the
+rowers?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am myself going with them."</p>
+
+<p>"Papa," urged Ang&eacute;lique, "Mademoi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>selle Zhone was a young girl. If I
+were in her place, would you not like to have some young girl sit by my
+head?"</p>
+
+<p>"But you cannot go."</p>
+
+<p>"No, but Peggy can."</p>
+
+<p>"Peggy would rather go with you."</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure she will do it."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you, Peggy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I will."</p>
+
+<p>So Ang&eacute;lique wrapped Peggy first, and went with her as far as the
+window. It was the window through which Dr. Dunlap had stepped.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-by, dear Peggy," whispered Ang&eacute;lique; for the other seemed
+starting on the main journey of her life.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-by, dear Ang&eacute;lique."</p>
+
+<p>Peggy's eyes were tearless still, but she looked and looked at
+Ang&eacute;lique, and looked back mutely again when she sat at Rice's head in
+the boat. She had him to herself. Between the water and the sky, and
+within the dim horizon band, she could be alone with him. He was her own
+while the boat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> felt its way across the waste. The rowers sat on a bench
+over the foot of the pallet. Captain Saucier was obliged to steer. Peggy
+sat in the prow, and while they struggled against the rivers, she looked
+with the proud courage of a Morrison at her dead whom she must never
+claim again.</p>
+
+<p>The colonel put Ang&eacute;lique first into the waiting boat. Wachique was set
+in front of her, to receive tante-gra'm&egrave;re when the potentate's
+chrysalid should be lowered. For the first time in her life Ang&eacute;lique
+leaned back, letting slip from herself all responsibility. Colonel
+Menard could bring her great-grand-aunt out. The sense of moving in a
+picture, of not feeling what she handled, and of being cut off from the
+realities of life followed Ang&eacute;lique into the boat. She was worn to
+exhaustion. Her torpid pulses owned the chill upon the waters.</p>
+
+<p>There was room in which a few of the little blacks might be stowed
+without annoying tante-gra'm&egrave;re, but their mothers begged to keep them
+until all could go together.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Now, my children," said Colonel Menard, "have patience for another hour
+or two, when the boats shall return and bring you all off. The house is
+safe; there is no longer a strong wind driving waves over it. A few
+people in Kaskaskia have had to sit on their roofs since the water
+rose."</p>
+
+<p>Achille promised to take charge of his master's household. But one of
+the women pointed to the stain on the floor. The lantern yet burned at
+the head of Rice's deserted pillows. Superstition began to rise from
+that spot. They no longer had Ang&eacute;lique among them, with her atmosphere
+of invisible angels.</p>
+
+<p>"That is the blood of the best man in the Territory," said Colonel
+Menard. "I would give much more of my own to bring back the man who
+spilled it. Are you afraid of a mere blood-spot in the gray of the
+morning? Go into the other room and fasten the door, then. Achille will
+show you that he can stay here alone."</p>
+
+<p>"If mo'sieu' the colonel would let me go into that room, too"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Go in, Achille," said the colonel indulgently.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Menard made short work of embarking tante-gra'm&egrave;re. In
+emergencies, he was deft and delicate with his hands. She never knew who
+caught her in coverlets and did her up like a papoose, with a pillow
+under her head.</p>
+
+<p>"Pull westward to the next street," he gave orders to his oarsmen. "We
+found it easy going with the current that way. It will double the
+distance, but give us less trouble to get into dead water the other side
+of the Okaw."</p>
+
+<p>Early summer dawn was breaking over that deluged world, a whiter light
+than moonshine giving increasing distinctness to every object. This hint
+of day gave rest to the tired ringers in church tower and convent
+belfry. The bells died away, and stillness brooded on the water plain.
+Hoarse roaring of the yellow current became a mere monotonous background
+for other sounds. A breath stole from the east, bringing the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> scent of
+rain-washed earth and foliage and sweet mints. There was no other wind;
+and the boat shot easily on its course alongside a thicket made by
+orchard treetops. Some birds, maybe proprietors of drowned nests, were
+already complaining over these, or toppling experimentally down on
+branch tips.</p>
+
+<p>Kaskaskia had become a strange half-town, cut off around its middle. It
+affected one like a man standing on his armpits. The capital of the
+Territory was composed chiefly of roofs and dormer windows, of squatty
+wooden islands in a boundless sea. The Church of the Immaculate
+Conception was a laughable tent of masonry, top-heavy with its square
+tower. As for cultivated fields and the pastures where the cattle
+grazed, such vanished realities were forgotten. And what was washing
+over the marble tombs and slate crosses in the churchyard?</p>
+
+<p>The flood strangely lifted and forced skyward the plane of life, yet
+lowered all life's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> functions. An open and liberal sky, dappling with a
+promise from the east, bent over and mocked paralyzed humanity.</p>
+
+<p>The noble bluffs had become a sunken ridge, water meeting the forests a
+little below their waists. From their coverts boats could now be seen
+putting out in every direction, and, though the morning star was paling,
+each carried a light. They were like a party of belated fireflies
+escaping from daylight. Faces in dormer windows waited for them. Down by
+the Jesuit College weak hurrahs arose from people on roofs.</p>
+
+<p>"The governor has come with help for us," said Pierre Menard.</p>
+
+<p>In this dead world of Kaskaskia not a dog barked; not one of the
+shortened chimney-stacks smoked. Some of the houses had their casements
+closed in terrible silence; but out of others neighbors looked and
+greeted Ang&eacute;lique in the abashed way peculiar to people who have not got
+used to an amputation, and are sensitive about their new appearance in
+the world. Heads leaned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> out, also, firing jokes after the boat, and
+offering the colonel large shares in the common fields and entire crops
+for a seat in his conveyance.</p>
+
+<p>Drift of rotten wood stuck to the house sides, and broken trees or
+stumps, jammed under gallery roofs, resented the current, and broke the
+surface as they rose and dipped. Strange craft, large and small, rode
+down the turgid sweep. Straw beehives rolled along like gigantic pine
+cones, and rustic hencoops of bottom-land settlers kept their balance as
+they moved. Far off, a cart could be outlined making a hopeless ford.
+The current was so broad that its sweep extended beyond the reach of
+sight; and perhaps the strangest object carried by this tremendous force
+was a small clapboarded house. Its back and front doors stood open, and
+in the middle of the floor stood a solitary chair. One expected to see a
+figure emerge from a hidden corner and sit down forlornly in the chair.</p>
+
+<p>The slender voice of a violin stole across<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> the water,&mdash;an exorcism of
+the spell that had fallen on Kaskaskia. As the boat reached the tavern
+corner, this thread of melody was easily followed to the ballroom on the
+second floor of the tavern, where the Assembly balls were danced. A
+slave, who had nothing but his daily bread to lose, and who would be
+assured of that by the hand of charity when his master could no longer
+maintain him, might take up the bow and touch the fiddle gayly in such a
+time of general calamity. But there was also dancing in the ballroom.
+The boat turned south and shot down a canal bordered by trunkless shade
+trees, which had been one of the principal streets of Kaskaskia. At the
+instant of turning, however, Father Baby could be seen as he whirled,
+though his skinny head and gray capote need not have added their
+evidence to the exact sound of his foot which came so distinctly across
+the water. His little shop, his goods, his secret stocking-leg of
+coin,&mdash;for Father Baby was his own banker,&mdash;were buried out of sight.
+His<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> crop in the common fields and provision for winter lay also under
+the Mississippi. His late lodger had taken to the river, and was
+probably drowned. He had no warrant except in the nimbleness of his
+slave's legs that he even had a slave left. Yet he had never in his life
+felt so full of dance. The flood mounted to his head like wine. Father
+Olivier was in the tavern without forbidding it. Doubtless he thought
+the example an exhilarating one, when a grown-up child could dance over
+material loss, remembering only the joy of life.</p>
+
+<p>Wachique had felt her bundle squirm from the moment it was given to her.
+She enlarged on the hint Colonel Menard had given, and held the drapery
+bound tightly around the prisoner. The boat shot past the church, and
+over the spot where St. John's bonfire had so recently burnt out, and
+across that street through which the girls had scampered on their
+Midsummer Night errand.</p>
+
+<p>"But stop," said Colonel Menard; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> he pointed out to the rowers an
+obstruction which none of them had seen in the night. From the Jesuit
+College across the true bed of the Okaw a dam had formed, probably
+having for its base part of the bridge masonry. Whole trees were swept
+into the barricade. "We cannot now cross diagonally and come back
+through the dead water at our leisure, for there is that dam to be
+passed. Pull for the old college."</p>
+
+<p>The boat was therefore turned, and thus took the same course that the
+girls had taken. The current was at right angles with its advance,
+though the houses on the north somewhat broke that force. The roofless
+building, ridiculously shortened in its height, had more the look of a
+fortress than when it was used as one. The walls had been washed out
+above both great entrances, making spacious jagged arches through which
+larger craft than theirs could pass. Colonel Menard was quick to see
+this; he steered and directed his men accordingly. The Jesuit College
+was too well built to crumble on the heads<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> of chance passers, though
+the wind and the flood had battered it; to row through it would shorten
+their course.</p>
+
+<p>Ang&eacute;lique did not say a word about the changed aspect of her world. A
+warmth in the pearly light over the bluffs promised a clear day: and how
+Kaskaskia would look with the sun shining on her predicament! The boat
+cut through braiding and twisting water, and shot into the college. Part
+of the building's upper floor remained; everything else was gone.</p>
+
+<p>The walls threw a shadow upon them, and the green flicker, dancing up
+and down as they disturbed the inclosure, played curiously on their
+faces. The stones suddenly echoed a slap. Tante-gra'm&egrave;re's struggling
+wrath, which Wachique had tried to keep bound in the coverlet, having
+found an outlet, was swift as lightning in its reprisal. The stings of
+the whiplash had exhilaration and dignity compared to this attack. It
+was the climax of her midget rages. She forgot the breeding of a
+gentlewoman, and furiously struck her slave in the face.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Wachique started up, her Pottawatomie blood painting her cheek bones.
+That instant she was an Indian, not a slave. She remembered everything
+this petted despot had done to her, and, lifting her bundle, threw it as
+far as her arms could send it across the water floor of the college. The
+pitiful little weight sunk with a gurgling sound.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down, woman!" shouted Colonel Menard.</p>
+
+<p>Wachique cowered, and tried to obey. But the motion she had given the
+boat was not to be overcome. It careened, and the water rushed over
+their knees, filled it full, and became a whirlpool of grasping hands
+and choking heads.</p>
+
+<p>The overturned boat, wedged partially under the flooring, lodged against
+the eastern wall. Both negro rowers came up from their plunge and
+climbed like cats upon this platform, smearing a mire of sodden
+plastering over their homespun trousers as they crawled. One of them
+reached down and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> caught the half-breed by the hair, as she rose at the
+edge of the flooring. Between them they were able to draw her up.</p>
+
+<p>The shock of a cold flood around Ang&eacute;lique's ears sent life as vivid as
+fire through her brain. The exhaustion and stupor of the night were
+gone. She felt her body swallowed. It went down to the floor where the
+girls had walked when they chanted, "Hempseed, I sow thee." It rose, and
+all the rapturous advantage which there was in continuing to inhabit it
+took mighty possession of her. She was so healthily, so happily lodged.
+It was a sin to say she was longing for the mystery hereafter, when all
+the beautiful mysteries here were unknown to her. Then Colonel Menard
+was holding her up, and she was dragged to sight and breathing once
+more, and to a solid support under her melting life. She lay on the
+floor, seeing the open sky above her, conscious that streams of water
+poured from her clothes and her hair, ran down her face, and dripped
+from her ears. A slow terror<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> which had underlain all these physical
+perceptions now burst from her thoughts like flame. Her
+great-grand-aunt, the infant of the house, was all this time lying at
+the bottom of the old college. It was really not a minute, but minutes
+are long to the drowning. Ang&eacute;lique caught her breath, saying,
+"Tante-gra'm&egrave;re!" She heard a plunge, and knew that Colonel Menard had
+stood on the platform only long enough to cast aside his coat and shoes
+before he dived.</p>
+
+<p>The slaves, supporting themselves on their palms, stretched forward,
+open-mouthed. There was the rippling surface, carrying the shadow of the
+walls. Nothing came up. A cow could be heard lowing on the bluffs to her
+lost calf. The morning twitter of birds became an aggressive and
+sickening sound.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is he?" demanded Ang&eacute;lique, creeping also to her trembling knees.
+"Where is monsieur the colonel?"</p>
+
+<p>Both men gave her the silent, frightened testimony of their rolling
+eyes, but Wachique lay along the floor with hidden face.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> Not a bubble
+broke the yellow sheet smothering and keeping him down.</p>
+
+<p>As the driving of steel it went through Ang&eacute;lique that the aching and
+passion and ferocity which rose in her were love. She loved that man
+under the water; she so loved him that she must go down after him; for
+what was life, with him there? She must have loved him when she was a
+child, and he used to take off his hat to her, saying, "Good-day,
+mademoiselle." She must have felt a childish jealousy of the woman
+called Madame Menard, who had once owned him,&mdash;had owned the very
+coloring of his face, the laugh in his eye, the mastery of his presence
+among men. She loved Colonel Menard&mdash;and he was gone.</p>
+
+<p>"Turn over the boat!" screamed Ang&eacute;lique. "He is caught in the cellars
+of this old house,&mdash;the floors are broken. We must find him. He will
+never come up."</p>
+
+<p>The men, ready to do anything which was suggested to their slow minds,
+made haste to creep along the weakened flooring, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> shook as they
+moved, and to push the boat from its lodgment. The oars were fast in the
+rowlocks, and stuck against beams or stones, and made hard work of
+getting the boat righted.</p>
+
+<p>"Why does he not come up? Does any one stay under water as long as this?
+Oh, be quick! Turn it,&mdash;turn it over!" Ang&eacute;lique reached down with the
+men to grasp the slippery boat, her vivid will giving their clumsiness
+direction and force. They got it free and turned it, dipping a little
+water as they did so; but she let herself into its wet hollow and bailed
+that out with her hands. The two dropped directly after her, and with
+one push of the oars sent the boat over the spot where Colonel Menard
+had gone down.</p>
+
+<p>"Which of you will go in?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ma'amselle, I can't swim," piteously declared the older negro.</p>
+
+<p>"Neither can I, ma'amselle," pleaded the other.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I shall have to go in myself. I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> cannot swim, either, and I shall
+die, but I cannot help it."</p>
+
+<p>The desperate and useless impulse which so often perishes in words
+returned upon her with its absurdity as she stared down, trying to part
+the muddy atoms of the Mississippi. The men held the boat in a scarcely
+visible stream moving from west to east through the gaps in the
+building. They eyed her, waiting the motions of the Caucasian mind, but
+dumbly certain it was their duty to seize her if she tried to throw
+herself in.</p>
+
+<p>They waited until Ang&eacute;lique hid her face upon a bench, shivering in her
+clinging garments with a chill which was colder than any the river gave.
+A ghostly shadow of themselves and the boat and the collapsed figure of
+the girl began to grow upon the water. More stones in the moist walls
+showed glistening surfaces as the light mounted. The fact that they had
+lost their master, that his household was without a head, that the
+calamity of Kaskaskia involved their future, then took possession of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>
+both poor fellows, and the great heart of Africa shook the boat with
+sobs and groans and useless cries for help.</p>
+
+<p>"Come out here, you black rascals!" called a voice from the log dam.</p>
+
+<p>Ang&eacute;lique lifted her head. Colonel Menard was in plain sight, resting
+his arms across a tree, and propping a sodden bundle on branches.
+Neither Ang&eacute;lique nor his men had turned a glance through the eastern
+gap, or thought of the stream sweeping to the dam. The spot where he
+sank, the broken floor, the inclosing walls, were their absorbing
+boundaries as to his fate. As the slaves saw him, a droll and sheepish
+look came on their faces at having wailed his death in his living ears.
+They shot through the door vigorously, and brought the boat with care
+alongside the trunk supporting him.</p>
+
+<p>The colonel let them take tante-gra'm&egrave;re in. He was exhausted. One arm
+and his cheek sunk on the side of the boat, and they drew him across it,
+steadying themselves by the foliage upreared by the tree.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He opened his eyes, and saw rose and pearl streaks in the sky. The sun
+was mounting behind the bluffs. Then a canopy of leaves intervened, and
+a whir of bird wings came to his ears. The boat had reached dead water,
+and was moving over the submerged roadbed, and groping betwixt the stems
+of great pecan-trees,&mdash;the great pecan-trees which stood sentinel on the
+river borders of his estate. He noticed how the broken limbs flourished
+in the water, every leaf satisfied with the moisture it drew.</p>
+
+<p>The colonel realized that he was lying flat in a boat which had not been
+bailed dry, and that his head rested on wet homespun, by its odor
+belonging to Louis or Jacques; and he saw their black naked arms
+paddling with the oars. Beyond them he saw Wachique holding her mistress
+carefully and unrestrained; and the negro in her quailed before him at
+the deed the Indian had done, scarcely comforted by the twinkle in the
+colonel's eye. Tante-gra'm&egrave;re was sitting up meekly, less affected by
+dampness than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> anybody else in the boat. She had a fresh and toughened
+look. Her baptism in the rivers had perhaps renewed her for another
+century.</p>
+
+<p>"Madame, you are certainly the most remarkable woman in this Territory.
+You have borne this night marvelously well, and the accident of the boat
+even better."</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all, monsieur the colonel."</p>
+
+<p>She spoke as children do when effectually punished for ill temper.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you cold?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am wet, monsieur. We are all wet. It is indeed a time of flood."</p>
+
+<p>"We shall soon see a blazing fire and a hot breakfast, and all the
+garments in the country will be ours without asking."</p>
+
+<p>The colonel raised himself on his elbow and looked around. Ang&eacute;lique sat
+beside his head; so close that they both blushed.</p>
+
+<p>They were not wet nor chilled nor hungry. They had not looked on death
+nor felt the shadow of eternity. The sweet mystery of continued life was
+before them. The flood,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> like a sea of glass, spread itself to the
+thousand footsteps of the sun.</p>
+
+<p>Tante-gra'm&egrave;re kept her eyes upon them. But it is not easy to hear what
+people say when you are riding among treetops and bird's-nests in the
+early morning.</p>
+
+<p>"Mademoiselle, we are nearly home."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, monsieur."</p>
+
+<p>"It has been to me a great night."</p>
+
+<p>"I can understand that, monsieur."</p>
+
+<p>"The children will be dancing when they see you. Odile and Pierre were
+awake, and they both cried when the first boat came home last night
+without you."</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur the colonel, you are too good to us."</p>
+
+<p>"Ang&eacute;lique, do you love me?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is true, monsieur."</p>
+
+<p>"But it must be owned I am a dozen years older than you, and I have
+loved before."</p>
+
+<p>"I never have."</p>
+
+<p>"Does it not seem a pity, then, that you who have had the pick of the
+Territory<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> should become the second wife of Pierre Menard?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should rather be the second choice with you, monsieur, than the first
+choice of any other man in the Territory."</p>
+
+<p>"Mademoiselle, I adore you."</p>
+
+<p>"That remains to be seen, monsieur."</p>
+
+<p>"What did you think when I was under water?"</p>
+
+<p>"I did not think, monsieur. I perished. It was then you conquered me."</p>
+
+<p>"Good. I will take to the water whenever any little difference arises
+between us. It is a lucky thing for me that I am a practiced river man."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not say it could be done again. Never will there be such another
+night and morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Now see how it is with nature, Ang&eacute;lique. Life is always rising out of
+death. This affair of ours,&mdash;I call it a lily growing out of the water.
+Does it trouble you that your old home is out there standing almost to
+its eaves in the Mississippi?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Papa cannot now give me so good a dower." The girl's lowered eyes
+laughed into his.</p>
+
+<p>"We will not have any settlements or any dower. We will be married in
+this new American way. Everything I have left from this flood will be
+yours and the children's, anyhow. But while there is game in the woods,
+or bacon in the cellar, or flour in the bin, or wine to be tapped, or a
+cup of milk left, not a child or woman or man shall go hungry. I was not
+unprepared for this. My fur storehouse there on the bank of the Okaw is
+empty. At the first rumor of high water I had the skins carried to the
+strong-house on the hill."</p>
+
+<p>Ang&eacute;lique's wet hair still clung to her forehead, but her warmth had
+returned with a glow. The colonel was a compact man, who had passed
+through water as his own element. To be dripping was no hindrance to his
+courtship.</p>
+
+<p>"When may we celebrate the marriage?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is it a time to speak of marriage when two are lying dead in the
+house?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>His countenance changed at the rebuke, and, as all fortunate people do
+when they have passed the selfish fury of youth, he apologized for
+success.</p>
+
+<p>"It is true. And Reece Zhone was the only man in the Territory whom I
+feared as a rival. As soon as he is laid low I forget him. He would not
+so soon forget me. Yet I do not forget him. The whole Illinois Territory
+will remember him. But Reece Zhone himself would not blame me, when I am
+bringing you home to my house, for hinting that I hope to keep you
+there."</p>
+
+<p>"To keep me there, monsieur the colonel! No, I am not to be married in a
+hurry."</p>
+
+<p>"But I made my proposals months ago, Ang&eacute;lique. The children and I have
+long had our secrets about bringing you home. Two of them sit on my knee
+and two of them climb my back, and we talk it over. They will not let
+you leave the house alive, mademoiselle. Father Olivier will still
+celebrate the sacraments among us. Kaskaskia will have the consolations
+of religion for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> this flood; but I may not have the consolation of
+knowing my own wedding-day."</p>
+
+<p>"The church is now half full of water."</p>
+
+<p>"Must I first bail out the church?"</p>
+
+<p>"I draw the line there, monsieur the colonel. You are a prevailing man.
+You will doubtless wind me around your thumb as you do the Indians. But
+when I am married, I will be married in church, and sign the register in
+the old way. What, monsieur, do you think the water will never go down?"</p>
+
+<p>"It will go down, yes, and the common fields will be the better for it.
+But it is hard a man should have to watch a rivergauge to find out the
+date of his own wedding."</p>
+
+<p>"Yet one would rather do that than never have a wedding at all."</p>
+
+<p>"I kiss your hand on that, mademoiselle."</p>
+
+<p>"What are those little rings around the base of the trees, monsieur the
+colonel?"</p>
+
+<p>"They are marks which show that the water is already falling. It must be
+two<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> inches lower than last night on the Church of the Immaculate
+Conception. I am one sixth of a foot on my way toward matrimony."</p>
+
+<p>A tent like a white blossom showed through the woods; then many more.
+The bluffs all about Pierre Menard's house were dotted with them. Boats
+could be seen coming back from the town, full of people. Two or three
+sails were tacking northward on that smooth and glistening fresh-water
+sea. Music came across it, meeting the rising sun; the nuns sang their
+matin service as they were rowed.</p>
+
+<p>Ang&eacute;lique closed her eyes over tears. It seemed to her like floating
+into the next world,&mdash;in music, in soft shadow, in keen rapture,&mdash;seeing
+the light on the hills beyond while her beloved held her by the hand.</p>
+
+<p>All day boats passed back and forth between the tented bluffs and the
+roofs of Kaskaskia, carrying the goods of a temporarily houseless
+people. At dusk, some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> jaded men came back&mdash;among them Captain Saucier
+and Colonel Menard&mdash;from searching overflow and uplands for Dr. Dunlap.</p>
+
+<p>At dusk, also, the fireflies again scattered over the lake, without
+waiting for a belated moon. Jean Lozier stood at the top of the bluff,
+on his old mount of vision, and watched these boats finishing the work
+of the day. They carried the only lights now to be seen in Kaskaskia.</p>
+
+<p>He was not excited by the swarming life just below him. His idea of
+Kaskaskia was not a buzzing encampment around a glittering seigniory
+house, with the governor's presence giving it grandeur, and Rice Jones
+and his sister, waiting their temporary burial on the uplands, giving it
+awe. Old Kaskaskia had been over yonder, the place of his desires, his
+love. The glamour and beauty and story were on the smothered valley, and
+for him they could never be anywhere else.</p>
+
+<p>Father Olivier came out on the bluff, and Jean at once pulled his cap
+off, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> looked at the ground instead of at the pale green and
+wild-rose tints at the farther side of the world. They heard the soft
+wash of the flood. The priest bared his head to the evening air.</p>
+
+<p>"My son, I am sorry your grandfather died last night, while I was unable
+to reach him."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, father."</p>
+
+<p>"You have been a good son. Your conscience acquits you. And now the time
+has come when you are free to go anywhere you please."</p>
+
+<p>Jean looked over the flood.</p>
+
+<p>"But there's no place to go to now, father. I was waiting for Kaskaskia,
+and Kaskaskia is gone."</p>
+
+<p>"Not gone, my son. The water will soon recede. The people will return to
+their homes. Kaskaskia will be the capital of the new State yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, father," said Jean dejectedly. He waited until the priest
+sauntered away. It was not for him to contradict a priest. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> watching
+humid darkness grow over the place where Kaskaskia had been, he told
+himself in repeated whispers,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It'll never be the same again. Old Kaskaskia is gone. Just when I am
+ready to go there, there is no Kaskaskia to go to."</p>
+
+<p>Jean sat down, and propped his elbows on his knees and his face in his
+hands, as tender a spirit as ever brooded over ruin. He thought he could
+bear the bereavement better if battle and fire had swept it away; but to
+see it lying drowned before him made his heart a clod.</p>
+
+<p>Singly and in bunches the lantern-bearing boats came home to their
+shelter in the pecan-trees, leaving the engulfed plain to starlight. No
+lamp was seen, no music tinkled there; in the water streets the evening
+wind made tiny tracks, and then it also deserted the town, leaving the
+liquid sheet drawn and fitted smoothly to place. Nothing but water,
+north, west, and south; a vast plain reflecting stars, and here and
+there showing spots like burnished shields. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> grotesque halves of
+buildings in its foreground became as insignificant as flecks of shadow.
+The sky was a clear blue dome, the vaporous folds of the Milky Way
+seeming to drift across it in indistinct light.</p>
+
+<p>Now, above the flowing whisper of the inland sea, Jean Lozier could hear
+other sounds. Thunder began in the north, and rolled with its cloud
+toward the point where Okaw and Mississippi met; shaggy lowered heads
+and flying tails and a thousand hoofs swept past him; and after them
+fleet naked men, who made themselves one with the horses they rode. The
+buffalo herds were flying before their hunters. He heard bowstrings
+twang, and saw great creatures stagger and fall headlong, and lie
+panting in the long grass.</p>
+
+<p>Then pale blue wood smoke unfolded itself upward, and the lodges were
+spread, and there was Cascasquia of the Illinois. Black gowns came down
+the northern trail, and a cross was set up.</p>
+
+<p>The lodges passed into wide dormered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> homesteads, and bowers of foliage
+promised the fruits of Europe among old forest trees. Jean heard the
+drum, and saw white uniforms moving back and forth, and gun barrels
+glistening, and the lilies of France floating over expeditions which put
+out to the south. This was Kaskaskia. The traffic of the West gathered
+to it. Men and women crossed the wilderness to find the charm of life
+there; the waterways and a north trail as firm as a Roman road bringing
+them easily in. Neyon de Villiers lifted the hat from his fine gray head
+and saluted society there; and the sulky figure of Pontiac stalked
+abroad. Fort Gage, and the scarlet uniform of Great Britain, and a new
+flag bearing thirteen stripes swam past Jean's eyes. The old French days
+were gone, but the new American days, blending the gathered races into
+one, were better still. Kaskaskia was a seat of government, a Western
+republic, rich and merry and generous and eloquent, with the great river
+and the world at her feet. The hum of traffic came up to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> Jean. He saw
+the beautiful children of gently nurtured mothers; he saw the men who
+moulded public opinion; he saw brawny white-clothed slaves; he saw the
+crowded wharf, the bridge with long rays of motes stretching across it
+from the low-lying sun.</p>
+
+<p>Now it disappeared. The weird, lonesome flood spread where that city of
+his desires had been.</p>
+
+<p>"Kaskaskia is gone. 'But the glory remains when the light fades away.'"</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Old Kaskaskia, by Mary Hartwell Catherwood
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Old Kaskaskia, by Mary Hartwell Catherwood
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Old Kaskaskia
+
+Author: Mary Hartwell Catherwood
+
+Release Date: May 19, 2006 [EBook #18423]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD KASKASKIA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Stacy Brown, Robert Cicconetti and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions
+(www.canadiana.org))
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+OLD KASKASKIA
+
+
+BY
+
+MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD
+
+AUTHOR OF "THE LADY OF FORT ST. JOHN," "THE ROMANCE OF DOLLARD," ETC.
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+  BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+  HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
+  The Riverside Press, Cambridge
+  1893
+
+
+  Copyright, 1893,
+
+  By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO., and
+  MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD.
+
+  _All rights reserved._
+
+
+  _The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._
+  Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+PART FIRST:                   PAGE
+
+The Bonfire of St. John          1
+
+
+PART SECOND:
+
+A Field Day                     55
+
+
+PART THIRD:
+
+The Rising                     106
+
+
+PART FOURTH:
+
+The Flood                      160
+
+
+
+
+OLD KASKASKIA.
+
+
+
+
+PART FIRST.
+
+THE BONFIRE OF ST. JOHN.
+
+
+Early in the century, on a summer evening, Jean Lozier stood on the
+bluff looking at Kaskaskia. He loved it with the homesick longing of one
+who is born for towns and condemned to the fields. Moses looking into
+the promised land had such visions and ideals as this old lad cherished.
+Jean was old in feeling, though not yet out of his teens. The
+training-masters of life had got him early, and found under his red
+sunburn and knobby joints, his black eyes and bushy eyebrows, the nature
+that passionately aspires. The town of Kaskaskia was his sweetheart. It
+tantalized him with advantage and growth while he had to turn the clods
+of the upland. The long peninsula on which Kaskaskia stood, between the
+Okaw and the Mississippi rivers, lay below him in the glory of sunset.
+Southward to the point spread lands owned by the parish, and known as
+the common pasture. Jean could see the church of the Immaculate
+Conception and the tower built for its ancient bell, the convent
+northward, and all the pleasant streets bowered in trees. The wharf was
+crowded with vessels from New Orleans and Cahokia, and the arched stone
+bridge across the Okaw was a thoroughfare of hurrying carriages.
+
+The road at the foot of the bluff, more than a hundred feet below Jean,
+showed its white flint belt in distant laps and stretches through
+northern foliage. It led to the territorial governor's country-seat of
+Elvirade; thence to Fort Chartres and Prairie du Rocher; so on to
+Cahokia, where it met the great trails of the far north. The road also
+swarmed with carriages and riders on horses, all moving toward Colonel
+Pierre Menard's house. Jean could not see his seignior's chimneys for
+the trees and the dismantled and deserted earthworks of Fort Gage. The
+fort had once protected Kaskaskia, but in these early peaceful times of
+the Illinois Territory it no longer maintained a garrison.
+
+The lad guessed what was going on; those happy Kaskaskians, the fine
+world, were having a ball at Colonel Menard's. Summer and winter they
+danced, they made fetes, they enjoyed life. When the territorial
+Assembly met in this capital of the West, he had often frosted himself
+late into the winter night, watching the lights and listening to the
+music in Kaskaskia. Jean Lozier knew every bit of its history. The
+parish priest, Father Olivier, who came to hear him confess because he
+could not leave his grandfather, had told it to him. There was a record
+book transmitted from priest to priest from the earliest settlement of
+Cascasquia of the Illinois. Jean loved the story of young D'Artaguette,
+whom the boatmen yet celebrated in song. On moonlight nights, when the
+Mississippi showed its broad sheet four miles away across the level
+plain, he sometimes fooled himself with thinking he could see the fleet
+of young soldiers passing down the river, bearing the French flag;
+phantoms proceeding again to their tragedy and the Indian stake.
+
+He admired the seat where his seignior lived in comfort and great
+hospitality, but all the crowds pressing to Pierre Menard's house seemed
+to him to have less wisdom than the single man who met and passed them
+and crossed the bridge into Kaskaskia. The vesper bell rung, breaking
+its music in echoes against the sandstone bosom of the bluff. Red
+splendors faded from the sky, leaving a pearl-gray bank heaped over the
+farther river. Still Jean watched Kaskaskia.
+
+      "But the glory remains when the light fades away,"
+
+he sung to himself. He had caught the line from some English boatmen.
+
+"Ye dog, ye dog, where are you, ye dog?" called a voice from the woods
+behind him.
+
+"Here, grandfather," answered Jean, starting like a whipped dog. He took
+his red cap from under his arm, sighing, and slouched away from the
+bluff edge, the coarse homespun which he wore revealing knots and joints
+in his work-hardened frame.
+
+"Ye dog, am I to have my supper to-night?"
+
+"Yes, grandfather."
+
+But Jean took one more look at the capital of his love, which he had
+never entered, and for which he was unceasingly homesick. The governor's
+carriage dashed along the road beneath him, with a military escort from
+Fort Chartres. He felt no envy of such state. He would have used the
+carriage to cross the bridge.
+
+"If I but lived in Kaskaskia!" whispered Jean.
+
+The man on horseback, who met and passed the ball-goers, rode through
+Kaskaskia's twinkling streets in the pleasant glow of twilight. Trade
+had not reached its day's end. The crack of long whips could be heard,
+flourished over oxen yoked by the horns, or three or four ponies hitched
+tandem, all driven without reins, and drawing huge bales of merchandise.
+Few of the houses were more than one story high, but they had a
+sumptuous spread, each in its own square of lawn, orchard, and garden.
+They were built of stone, or of timbers filled in with stone and mortar.
+
+The rider turned several corners, and stopped in front of a small house
+which displayed the wares of a penny-trader in its window.
+
+From the open one of the two front doors a black boy came directly out
+to take the bridle; and behind him skipped a wiry shaven person, whose
+sleek crown was partly covered by a Madras handkerchief, the common
+headgear of humble Kaskaskians. His feet clogged their lightness with a
+pair of the wooden shoes manufactured for slaves. A sleeved blanket,
+made with a hood which lay back on his shoulders, almost covered him,
+and was girdled at the waist by a knotted cord.
+
+"Here I am again, Father Baby," hailed the rider, alighting.
+
+"Welcome home, doctor. What news from Fort Chartres?"
+
+"No news. My friend the surgeon is doing well. He need not have sent for
+me; but your carving doctor is a great coward when it comes to
+physicking himself."
+
+They entered the shop, while the slave led the horse away; and no
+customers demanding the trading friar's attention, he followed his
+lodger to an inner room, having first lighted candles in his wooden
+sconces. Their yellow lustre showed the tidiness of the shop, and the
+penny merchandise arranged on shelves with that exactness which has been
+thought peculiar to unmarried women. Father Baby was a scandal to the
+established confessor of the parish, and the joke of the ungodly. Some
+said he had been a dancing-master before he entered the cloister, and it
+was no wonder he turned out a renegade and took to trading. Others
+declared that he had no right to the gray capote, and his tonsure was a
+natural loss of hair; in fact, that he never had been a friar at all.
+But in Kaskaskia nobody took him seriously, and Father Olivier was not
+severe upon him. Custom made his harlequin antics a matter of course;
+though Indians still paused opposite his shop and grinned at sight of a
+long-gown peddling. His religious practices were regular and severe, and
+he laid penance on himself for all the cheating he was able to
+accomplish.
+
+"I rode down from Elvirade with Governor Edwards," said the doctor. "He
+and all Kaskaskia appear to be going to Colonel Menard's to-night."
+
+"Yes, I stood and counted the carriages: the Bonds, the Morrisons, the
+Vigos, the Sauciers, the Edgars, the Joneses"--
+
+"Has anything happened these three days past?" inquired the doctor,
+breaking off this list of notable Kaskaskians.
+
+"Oh, many things have happened. But first here is your billet."
+
+The young man broke the wafer of his invitation and unfolded the paper.
+
+"It is a dancing-party," he remarked. His nose took an aquiline curve
+peculiar to him. The open sheet, as he held it, showed the name of "Dr.
+Dunlap" written on the outside. He leaned against a high black mantel.
+
+"You will want hot shaving-water and your best ruffled shirt," urged the
+friar.
+
+"I never dance," said the other indifferently.
+
+"And you do well not to," declared Father Baby, with some contemptuous
+impatience. "A man who shakes like a load of hay should never dance. If
+I had carried your weight, I could have been a holier man."
+
+Dr. Dunlap laughed, and struck his boot with his riding-whip.
+
+"Don't deceive yourself, worthy father. The making of an abbot was not
+in you. You old rascal, I am scarcely in the house, and there you stand
+all of a tremble for your jig."
+
+Father Baby's death's-head face wrinkled itself with expectant smiles.
+He shook off his wooden shoes and whirled upon one toe.
+
+The doctor went into another room, his own apartment in the friar's
+small house. His office fronted this, and gave him a door to the street.
+Its bottles and jars and iron mortar and the vitreous slab on which he
+rolled pills were all lost in twilight now. There were many other
+doctors' offices in Kaskaskia, but this was the best equipped one, and
+was the lair of a man who had not only been trained in Europe, but had
+sailed around the entire world. Dr. Dunlap's books, some of them in
+board covers, made a show on his shelves. He had an articulated
+skeleton, and ignorant Kaskaskians would declare that they had seen it
+whirl past his windows many a night to the music of his violin.
+
+"What did you say had happened since I went away?" he inquired,
+sauntering back and tuning his fiddle as he came.
+
+"There's plenty of news," responded Father Baby. "Antoine Lamarche's
+cow fell into the Mississippi."
+
+Dr. Dunlap uttered a note of contempt.
+
+"It would go wandering off where the land crumbles daily with that
+current setting down from the northwest against us; and Antoine was far
+from sneering in your cold-blooded English manner when he got the news."
+
+"He tore his hair and screamed in your warm-blooded French manner?"
+
+"That he did."
+
+The doctor stood in the bar of candle-light which one of the shop
+sconces extended across the room, and lifted the violin to his neck. He
+was so large that all his gestures had a ponderous quality. His dress
+was disarranged by riding, and his blond skin was pricked through by the
+untidy growth of a three-days' beard, yet he looked very handsome.
+
+Dr. Dunlap stood in the light, but Father Baby chose the dark for those
+ecstatic antics into which the fiddle threw him. He leaped high from
+the floor at the first note, and came down into a jig of the most
+perfect execution. The pat of his bare soles was exquisitely true. He
+raised the gown above his ankles, and would have seemed to float but for
+his response in sound. Yet through his most rapturous action he never
+ceased to be conscious of the shop. A step on the sill would break the
+violin's charm in the centre of a measure.
+
+But this time no step broke it, and the doctor kept his puppet friar
+going until his own arm began to weary. The tune ended, and Father Baby
+paused, deprived of the ether in which he had been floating.
+
+Dr. Dunlap sat down, nursing the instrument on his crossed knees while
+he altered its pitch.
+
+"Are you not going to Colonel Menard's at all?" inquired the friar.
+
+"It would be a great waste of good dancing not to," said the doctor
+lazily. "But you haven't told me who else has lost a cow or had an
+increase of goats while I was away."
+
+"The death of even a beast excites pity in me."
+
+"Yes, you are a holy man. You would rather skin a live Indian than a
+dead sheep."
+
+The doctor tried his violin, and was lifting it again to position when
+Father Baby remarked:--
+
+"They doubtless told you on the road that a party has come through from
+Post Vincennes."
+
+"Now who would doubtless tell me that?"
+
+"The governor's suite, since they must have known it. The party was in
+almost as soon as you left. Perhaps," suggested the friar, taking a
+crafty revenge for much insolence, "nobody would mention it to you on
+account of Monsieur Zhone's sister."
+
+The violin bow sunk on the strings with a squeak.
+
+"What sister?"
+
+"The only sister of Monsieur Reece Zhone, Mademoiselle Zhone, from
+Wales. She came to Kaskaskia with the party from Post Vincennes."
+
+On Dr. Dunlap's face the unshorn beard developed like thorns on a mask
+of wax. The spirit of manly beauty no longer infused it.
+
+"Why didn't you tell me this at first?" he asked roughly.
+
+"Is the name of Zhone so pleasant to you?" hinted the shrugging friar.
+"But take an old churchman's advice now, my son, and make up your
+quarrel with the lawyer. There will be occasion. That pretty young thing
+has crossed the sea to die. I heard her cough."
+
+The doctor's voice was husky as he attempted to inquire,--
+
+"Did you hear what she was called?"
+
+"Mademoiselle Mareea Zhone."
+
+The young man sagged forward over his violin. Father Baby began to
+realize that his revel was over, and reluctantly stuck his toes again
+into his wooden shoes.
+
+"Will you have something to eat and drink before you start?"
+
+"I don't want anything to eat, and I am not going to Colonel Menard's
+to-night."
+
+"But, my son," reasoned the staring friar, "are you going to quit your
+victuals and all good company because one more Zhone has come to town,
+and that one such a small, helpless creature? Mademoiselle Saucier will
+be at Menard's."
+
+Dr. Dunlap wiped his forehead. He, and not the cool friar, appeared to
+have been the dancer. A chorus of slaves singing on some neighboring
+gallery could be heard in the pause of the violin. Beetles, lured by the
+shop candles, began to explore the room where the two men were, bumping
+themselves against the walls and buzzing their complaints.
+
+"A man is nothing but a young beast until he is past twenty-five years
+old," said Dr. Dunlap.
+
+Father Baby added his own opinion to this general remark.--
+
+"Very often he is nothing but an old beast when you catch him past
+seventy. But it all depends on what kind of a man he is."
+
+"Friar, do you believe in marriage?"
+
+"How could I believe in marriage?"
+
+"But do you believe in it for other people?"
+
+"The Church has always held it to be a sacred institution."
+
+Dr. Dunlap muttered a combination of explosive words which he had
+probably picked up from sailors, making the churchman cross himself. He
+spoke out, with a reckless laugh:--
+
+"I married as soon as I came of age, and here I am, ruined for my prime
+by that act."
+
+"What!" exclaimed Father Baby, setting his hands on his hips, "you a man
+of family, and playing bachelor among the women of Kaskaskia?"
+
+"Oh, I have no wife now. She finally died, thank Heaven. If she had only
+died a year sooner! But nothing matters now."
+
+"My son," observed Father Baby severely, "Satan has you in his net. You
+utter profane words, you rail against institutions sanctioned by the
+Church, and you have desired the death of a human being. Repent and do
+penance"--
+
+"You have a customer, friar," sneered the young man, lifting his head to
+glance aside at a figure entering the shop. "Vigo's idiot slave boy is
+waiting to be cheated."
+
+"By my cappo!" whispered Father Baby, a cunning look netting wrinkles
+over his lean face, "you remind me of the bad shilling I have laid by me
+to pass on that nigger. O Lamb of mercy,"--he turned and hastily plumped
+on his knees before a sacred picture on the wall,--"I will, in expiation
+for passing that shilling, say twelve paters and twelve aves at the foot
+of the altar of thy Virgin Mother, or I will abstain from food a whole
+day in thy honor."
+
+Having offered this compromise, Father Baby sprung with a cheerful
+eagerness to deal with Vigo's slave boy.
+
+The doctor sat still, his ears closed to the chatter in the shop. His
+bitter thoughts centred on the new arrival in Kaskaskia, on her brother,
+on all her family.
+
+She herself, unconscious that he inhabited the same hemisphere with her,
+was standing up for the reel in Pierre Menard's house. The last carriage
+had driven to the tall flight of entrance steps, discharged its load,
+and parted with its horses to the huge stone stable under the house. The
+mingling languages of an English and French society sounded all around
+her. The girl felt bewildered, as if she had crossed ocean and forest to
+find, instead of savage wilderness, an enchanted English county full of
+French country estates. Names and dignitaries crowded her memory.
+
+A great clear glass, gilt-framed and divided into three panels, stood
+over the drawing-room mantel. It reflected crowds of animated faces, as
+the dance began, crossing and recrossing or running the reel in a vista
+of rooms, the fan-lights around the hall door and its open leaves
+disclosing the broad gallery and the dusky world of trees outside; it
+reflected cluster on cluster of wax-lights. To this day the great glass
+stands there, and, spotless as a clear conscience, waits upon the
+future. It has held the image of Lafayette and many an historic
+companion of his.
+
+On the other side of the hall, in the dining-room, stood a carved
+mahogany sideboard holding decanters and glasses. In this quiet retreat
+elderly people amused themselves at card-tables. Apart from them, but
+benignantly ready to chat with everybody, sat the parish priest; for
+every gathering of his flock was to him a call for social ministration.
+
+A delicious odor of supper escaped across a stone causeway from the
+kitchen, and all the Menard negroes, in their best clothes, were
+collected on the causeway to serve it. Through open doors they watched
+the flying figures, and the rocking of many a dusky heel kept time to
+the music.
+
+The first dance ended in some slight confusion. A little cry went
+through the rooms: "Rice Jones's sister has fainted!" "Mademoiselle
+Zhone has fainted!" But a few minutes later she was sitting on a
+gallery chair, leaning against her brother and trying to laugh through
+her coughing, and around her stood all girlish Kaskaskia, and the
+matrons also, as well as the black maid Colonel Menard had sent with
+hartshorn.
+
+Father Olivier brought her a glass of wine; Mrs. Edwards fanned her; the
+stars shone through the pecan-trees, and all the loveliness of this new
+hemisphere and home and the kindness of the people made her close her
+eyes to keep the tears from running out. The separation of the sick from
+all healthy mankind had never so hurt her. Something was expected of
+her, and she was not equal to it. She felt death's mark branding in, and
+her family spoke of her recovery! What folly it was to come into this
+gay little world where she had no rights at all! Maria Jones wondered
+why she had not died at sea. To be floating in that infinity of blue
+water would be better than this. She pictured herself in the weighted
+sack,--for we never separate ourselves from our bodies,--and tender
+forgiveness covering all her mistakes as the multitude of waters covered
+her.
+
+"I will not dance again," laughed Maria. Her brother Rice could feel her
+little figure tremble against him. "It is ridiculous to try."
+
+"We must have you at Elvirade," said the governor's wife soothingly. "I
+will not let the young people excite you to too much dancing there."
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Edwards!" exclaimed Peggy Morrison. "I never do dance quite as
+much anywhere else, or have quite as good a time, as I do at Elvirade."
+
+"Hear these children slander me when I try to set an example of sobriety
+in the Territory!"
+
+"You shall not want a champion, Mrs. Edwards," said Rice Jones. "When I
+want to be in grave good company, I always make a pilgrimage to
+Elvirade."
+
+"One ought to be grave good company enough for himself," retorted
+Peggy, looking at Rice Jones with jealous aggressiveness. She was a
+lean, sandy girl, at whom he seldom glanced, and her acrid girlhood
+fought him. Rice Jones was called the handsomest man in Kaskaskia, but
+his personal beauty was nothing to the ambitious force of his presence.
+The parted hair fitted his broad, high head like a glove. His straight
+nose extended its tip below the nostrils and shadowed the long upper
+lip. He had a long chin, beautifully shaped and shaven clean as marble,
+a mouth like a scarlet line, and a very round, smooth throat, shown by
+his flaring collar. His complexion kept a cool whiteness which no
+exposure tanned, and this made striking the blackness of his eyes and
+hair.
+
+"Please will you all go back into the drawing-room?" begged Maria. "My
+brother will bring me a shawl, and then I shall need nothing else."
+
+"But may I sit by you, mademoiselle?"
+
+It was Angelique Saucier leaning down to make this request, but Peggy
+Morrison laughed.
+
+"I warn you against Angelique, Miss Jones. She is the man-slayer of
+Kaskaskia. They all catch her like measles. If she stays out here, they
+will sit in a row along the gallery edge, and there will be no more
+dancing."
+
+"Do not observe what Peggy says, mademoiselle. We are relations, and so
+we take liberties."
+
+"But no one must give up dancing," urged Maria.
+
+They arranged for her in spite of protest, however. Rice muffled her in
+a shawl, Mademoiselle Saucier sat down at her right side and Peggy
+Morrison at her left, and the next dance began.
+
+Maria Jones had repressed and nestling habits. She curled herself into a
+very small compass in the easy gallery chair, and looked off into the
+humid mysteries of the June night. Colonel Menard's substantial slave
+cabins of logs and stone were in sight, and up the bluff near the house
+was a sort of donjon of stone, having only one door letting into its
+base.
+
+"That's where Colonel Menard puts his bad Indians," said Peggy Morrison,
+following Maria's glance.
+
+"It is simply a little fortress for times of danger," said Mademoiselle
+Saucier, laughing. "It is also the colonel's bureau for valuable papers,
+and the dairy is underneath."
+
+"Well, you French understand one another's housekeeping better than we
+English do; and may be the colonel has been explaining these things to
+you."
+
+"But are there any savage men about here now?"
+
+"Oh, plenty of them," declared Peggy. "We have some Pottawatomies and
+Kickapoos and Kaskaskias always with us,--like the poor. Nobody is
+afraid of them, though. Colonel Menard has them all under his thumb, and
+if nobody else could manage them he could. My father says they will
+give their furs to him for nothing rather than sell them to other
+people. You must see that Colonel Menard is very fascinating, but I
+don't think he charms Angelique as he does the Indians."
+
+Mademoiselle Saucier's smile excused anything Peggy might say. Maria
+thought this French girl the most beautiful woman she had ever seen. The
+waist of her clinging white gown ended under the curve of her girlish
+breasts, and face, neck, and arms blossomed out with the polish of
+flower-petals. Around her throat she wore gold beads suspending a cross.
+Her dark hair, which had an elusive bluish mist, like grapes, was pinned
+high with a gold comb. Her oval face was full of a mature sympathy
+unusual in girls. Maria had thought at first she would rather be alone
+on the gallery, but this reposeful and tender French girl at once became
+a necessity to her.
+
+"Peggy," said Angelique, "I hear Jules Vigo inquiring for you in the
+hall."
+
+"Then I shall take to the roof," responded Peggy.
+
+"Have some regard for Jules."
+
+"You may have, but I shan't. I will not dance with a kangaroo."
+
+"Do you not promise dances ahead?" inquired Maria.
+
+"No, our mothers do not permit that," answered Angelique. "It is
+sometimes best to sit still and look on."
+
+"That means, Miss Jones," explained Peggy, "that she has set a fashion
+to give the rest of the girls a chance. I wouldn't be so mealy-mouthed
+about cutting them out. But Angelique has been ruined by waiting so much
+on her tante-gra'mere. When you bear an old woman's temper from dawn
+till dusk, you soon forget you're a girl in your teens."
+
+"Don't abuse the little tante-gra'mere."
+
+"She gets praise enough at our house. Mother says she's a discipline
+that keeps Angelique from growing vain. Thank Heaven, we don't need such
+discipline in our family."
+
+"It is my father's grand-aunt," explained Angelique to Maria, "and when
+you see her, mademoiselle, you will be surprised to find how well she
+bears her hundred years, though she has not been out of her bed since I
+can remember. Mademoiselle, I hope I never shall be very old."
+
+Maria gave Angelique the piercing stare which unconsciously belongs to
+large black eyes set in a hectic, nervous face.
+
+"Would you die now?"
+
+"I feel always," said the French girl, "that we stand facing the mystery
+every minute, and sometimes I should like to know it."
+
+"Now hear that," said Peggy. "I'm no Catholic, but I will say for the
+mother superior that she never put that in your head at the convent. It
+is wicked to say you want to die."
+
+"But I did not say it. The mystery of being without any body,--that is
+what I want to know. It is good to meditate on death."
+
+"It isn't comfortable," said Peggy. "It makes me have chills down my
+back."
+
+She glanced behind her through the many-paned open window into the
+dining-room. Three little girls and a boy were standing there, so close
+to the sill that their breath had touched Peggy's neck. They were
+Colonel Menard's motherless children. A black maid was with them,
+holding the youngest by the hand. They were whispering in French under
+cover of the music. French was the second mother tongue of every
+Kaskaskia girl, and Peggy heard what they said by merely taking her
+attention from her companions.
+
+"I will get Jean Lozier to beat Monsieur Reece Zhone. Jean Lozier is
+such an obliging creature he will do anything I ask him."
+
+"But, Odile," argued the boy, with some sense of equity, "she is not yet
+engaged to our family."
+
+"And how shall we get her engaged to us if Monsieur Reece Zhone must
+hang around her? Papa says he is the most promising young man in the
+Territory. If I were a boy, Pierre Menard, I would do something with
+him."
+
+"What would you do?"
+
+"I would shoot him. He has duels."
+
+"But my father might punish me for that."
+
+"Very well, chicken-heart. Let Mademoiselle Saucier go, then. But I will
+tell you this: there is no one else in Kaskaskia that I will have for a
+second mother."
+
+"Yes, we have all chosen her," owned Pierre, "but it seems to me papa
+ought to make the marriage."
+
+"But she would not know we children were willing to have her. If you did
+something to stop Monsieur Zhone's courtship, she would then know."
+
+"Why do you not go out on the gallery now and tell her we want her?"
+exclaimed Pierre. "The colonel says it is best to be straightforward in
+any matter of business."
+
+"Pierre, it is plain to be seen that you do not know how to deal with
+young ladies. They like best to be fought over. It is not proper to
+_tell_ her we are willing to have her. The way to do is to drive off the
+other suitors."
+
+"But there are so many. Tante Isidore says all the young men in
+Kaskaskia and the officers left at Fort Chartres are her suitors.
+Monsieur Reece Zhone is the worst one, though. I might ask him to go out
+to papa's office with me to-night, but we shall be sent to bed directly
+after supper. Besides, here sits his sister who was carried out
+fainting."
+
+"While he is in our house we are obliged to be polite to him," said
+Odile. "But if I were a boy, I would, some time, get on my pony and ride
+into Kaskaskia"--The conspiring went on in whispers. The children's
+heads bobbed nearer each other, so Peggy overheard no more.
+
+It was the very next evening, the evening of St. John's Day, that young
+Pierre rode into Kaskaskia beside his father to see the yearly bonfire
+lighted. Though many of the old French customs had perished in a mixing
+of nationalities, St. John's Day was yet observed; the Latin race
+drawing the Saxon out to participate in the festival, as so often
+happens wherever they dwell.
+
+The bonfire stood in the middle of the street fronting the church. It
+was an octagonal pyramid, seven or eight feet high, built of dry oak and
+pecan limbs and logs, with straw at all the corners.
+
+The earth yet held a red horizon rim around its dusky surface. Some
+half-distinct swallows were swarming into the church belfry, as silent
+as bats; but people swarming on the ground below made a cheerful noise,
+like a fair. The St. John bonfire was not a religious ceremony, but its
+character lifted it above the ordinary burning of brushwood at night.
+The most dignified Kaskaskians, heretics as well as papists, came out to
+see it lighted; the pagan spell of Midsummer Night more or less
+affecting them all.
+
+Red points appeared at the pile's eight corners and sprung up flame,
+showing the eight lads who were bent down blowing them; showing the
+church front, and the steps covered with little negroes good-naturedly
+fighting and crowding one another off; showing the crosses of slate and
+wood and square marble tombs in the graveyard, and a crowd of honest
+faces, red kerchiefs, gray cappos, and wooden shoes pressing close
+around it. Children raced, shouting in the light, perpetuating
+unconsciously the fire-worship of Asia by leaping across outer edges of
+the blaze. It rose and showed the bowered homes of Kaskaskia, the tavern
+at an angle of the streets, with two Indians, in leggins and
+hunting-shirts, standing on the gallery as emotionless spectators. It
+illuminated fields and woods stretching southward, and little weeds
+beside the road whitened with dust. The roaring and crackling heat drove
+venturesome urchins back.
+
+Father Baby could be seen established behind a temporary counter,
+conveniently near the pile, yet discreetly removed from the church
+front. Thirsty rustics and flatboat men crowded to his kegs and clinked
+his glasses. The firelight shone on his crown which was bare to the sky.
+Father Olivier passed by, receiving submissive obeisance from the
+renegade, but returning him a shake of the head.
+
+Girls slipped back and forth through the church gate. Now their laughing
+faces grouped three or four together in the bonfire light. In a moment,
+when their mothers turned to follow them with the eye, they were nowhere
+to be seen. Perhaps outside the beacon's glare hobgoblins and fairies
+danced. Midsummer Night tricks and the freemasonry of youth were at
+work.
+
+People watched one another across that pile with diverse aims. Rice
+Jones had his sister on his arm, wrapped in a Spanish mantilla. Her tiny
+face, with a rose above one ear, was startling against this black
+setting. They stood near Father Baby's booth; and while Peggy Morrison
+waited at the church gate to signal Maria, she resented Rice Jones's
+habitual indifference to her existence. He saw Angelique Saucier beside
+her mother, and the men gathering to her, among them an officer from
+Fort Chartres. They troubled him little; for he intended in due time to
+put these fellows all out of his way. There were other matters as vital
+to Rice Jones. Young Pierre Menard hovered vainly about him. The moment
+Maria left him a squad of country politicians surrounded their political
+leader, and he did some effectual work for his party by the light of the
+St. John fire.
+
+Darkness grew outside the irregular radiance of that pile, and the night
+concert of insects could be heard as an interlude between children's
+shouts and the hum of voices. Peggy Morrison's lifted finger caught
+Maria's glance. It was an imperative gesture, meaning haste and secrecy,
+and separation from her brother Rice. Maria laughed and shook her head
+wistfully. The girlish pastimes of Midsummer Night were all done for
+her. She thought of nights in her own wild county of Merionethshire,
+when she had run, palpitating like a hare, to try some spell or charm
+which might reveal the future to her; and now it was revealed.
+
+An apparition from the other hemisphere came upon her that instant. She
+saw a man standing by the friar's booth looking at her. What his eyes
+said she could not, through her shimmering and deadly faintness,
+perceive. How could he be here in Kaskaskia? The shock of seeing him
+annihilated physical weakness in her. She stood on limbs of stone. Her
+hand on her brother's arm did not tremble; but a pinched blueness spread
+about her nostrils and eye sockets, and dinted sudden hollows in her
+temples.
+
+Dr. Dunlap took a step toward her. At that, she looked around for some
+place to hide in, the animal instinct of flight arising first, and
+darted from her brother into the graveyard. Rice beheld this freak with
+quizzical surprise, but he had noted the disappearance of more than one
+maid through that gate, and was glad to have Maria with them.
+
+"Come on," whispered Peggy, seizing her. "Clarice Vigo has gone to fetch
+Angelique, and then we shall be ready."
+
+Behind the church, speaking all together like a chorus of blackbirds,
+the girls were clustered, out of the bonfire's light. French and English
+voices debated.
+
+"Oh, I wouldn't do such a thing."
+
+"Your mother did it when she was a girl."
+
+"But the young men may find it out and follow."
+
+"Then we'll run."
+
+"I'm afraid to go so far in the dark."
+
+"What, to the old Jesuit College?"
+
+"It isn't very dark, and our old Dinah will go with us; she's waiting
+outside the fence."
+
+"But my father says none of our Indians are to be trusted in the dark."
+
+"What a slander on our Indians!"
+
+"But some of them are here; they always come to the St. John bonfire."
+
+"All the men in Kaskaskia are here, too. We could easily give an
+alarm."
+
+"Anyhow, nothing will hurt us."
+
+"What are you going to do, girls?" inquired the voice of Angelique
+Saucier. The whole scheme took a foolish tinge as she spoke. They were
+ashamed to tell her what they were going to do.
+
+Peggy Morrison drew near and whispered, "We want to go to the old Jesuit
+College and sow hempseed."
+
+"Hempseed?"
+
+"Yes. You do it on Midsummer Night."
+
+"Will it grow the better for that?" asked the puzzled French girl.
+
+"We don't want it to grow, you goose. We want to try our fortunes."
+
+"It was Peggy Morrison's plan," spoke out Clarice Vigo.
+
+"It's an old English custom," declared Peggy, "as old as burning
+brushwood."
+
+"Would you like to observe this old English custom, Mademoiselle Zhone?"
+questioned Angelique.
+
+"Yes, let us hurry on."
+
+"I think myself it would be charming." The instant Angelique thought
+this, Peggy Morrison's plan lost foolishness, and gained in all eyes the
+dignity of adventure. "But we have no hempseed."
+
+"Yes, we have," responded Peggy. "Our Dinah is there outside the fence
+with her lap full of it."
+
+"And how do you sow it?"
+
+"You scatter it and say, 'Hempseed, I sow thee,--hempseed, I sow thee;
+let him who is to marry me come after me and mow thee.'"
+
+An abashed titter ran through girlish Kaskaskia.
+
+"And what happens then?"
+
+"Then you look back and see somebody following you with a scythe."
+
+A suppressed squeal ran through girlish Kaskaskia.
+
+"Now if we are going, we ought to go, or it will all be found out,"
+observed Peggy with decision.
+
+They had only to follow the nearest cross-street to reach the old Jesuit
+College; but some were for making a long detour into the common fields
+to avoid being seen, while others were for passing close by the bonfire
+in a solid squad. Neither Peggy nor Angelique could reconcile these
+factions, and Peggy finally crossed the fence and led the way in
+silence. The majority hung back until they were almost belated. Then,
+with a venturous rush, they scaled the fence and piled themselves upon
+Dinah, who was quietly trying to deal out a handful of hempseed to every
+passer; and some of them squalled in the fear of man at her uplifted
+paw. Then, shying away from the light, they entered a street which was
+like a canal of shadow. The houses bounding it were all dark, except the
+steep roof slopes of the southern row, which seemed to palpitate in the
+bonfire's flicker.
+
+Finding themselves away from their families in this deserted lane, the
+girls took to their heels, and left like sheep a perceptible little
+cloud of dust smoking in the gloom behind them.
+
+Beyond the last house and alongside the Okaw river stood the ruined
+building with gaping entrances. The girls stumbled among irregular
+hummocks which in earlier days had been garden beds and had supplied
+vegetables to the brethren. The last commandant of Kaskaskia, who
+occupied the Jesuits' house as a fortress, had complained to his
+superiors of a leaky and broken roof. There was now no roof to complain
+of, and the upper floors had given way in places, leaving the stone
+shell open to the sky. It had once been an imposing structure, costing
+the Jesuits forty thousand piasters. The uneven stone floor was also
+broken, showing gaps into vaults beneath; fearful spots to be avoided,
+which the custom of darkness soon revealed to all eyes. Partitions yet
+standing held stained and ghastly smears of rotted plaster.
+
+The river's gurgle and rush could be distinctly heard here, while the
+company around the bonfire were lost in distance.
+
+Angelique had given her arm to Maria Jones in the flight down the road;
+but when they entered the college Maria slipped away from her. A blacker
+spot in an angle of the walls and a smothered cough hinted to the
+care-taker where the invalid girl might be found, but where she also
+wished to be let alone.
+
+Now a sob rising to a scream, as if the old building had found voice and
+protested against invasion, caused a recoil of the invaders. Girls
+brought up in neighborly relations with the wilderness, however, could
+be only a moment terrified by the screech-owl. But at no previous time
+in its history, not even when it was captured as a fort, had the Jesuit
+College inclosed such a cluster of wildly beating hearts. Had light been
+turned on the group, it would have shown every girl shaking her hand at
+every other girl and hissing, "S--s--sh!"
+
+"Girls, be still."
+
+"Girls, do be still."
+
+"Girls, if you won't be still, somebody will come."
+
+"Clarice Vigo, why don't you stop your noise?"
+
+"Why do you not stop yours, mademoiselle?"
+
+"I haven't spoken a word but sh! I have been trying my best to quiet
+them all."
+
+"So have I."
+
+"Ellen Bond fell over me. She was scared to death by a screech-owl!"
+
+"It was you fell over me, Miss Betsey."
+
+"If we are going to try the charm," announced Peggy Morrison, "we must
+begin. You had better all get in a line behind me and do just as I do.
+You can't see me very well, but you can scatter the hempseed and say
+what I say. And it must be done soberly, or Satan may come mowing at our
+heels."
+
+From a distant perch to which he had removed himself, the screech-owl
+again remonstrated. Silence settled like the slow fluttering downward of
+feathers on every throbbing figure. The stir of a slipper on the
+pavement, or the catching of a breath, became the only tokens of human
+presence in the old college. These postulants of fortune in their
+half-visible state once more bore some resemblance to the young ladies
+who had stood in decorum answering compliments between the figures of
+the dance the night before.
+
+On cautious shoe leather the march began. One voice, two voices, and
+finally a low chorus intoned and repeated,--
+
+"Hempseed, I sow thee,--hempseed, I sow thee; let him who is to marry me
+come after me and mow thee."
+
+Peggy led her followers out of the east door towards the river; wheeling
+when she reached a little wind-row of rotted timbers. This chaos had
+once stood up in order, forming makeshift bastions for the fort, and
+supporting cannon. Such boards and posts as the negroes had not carried
+off lay now along the river brink, and the Okaw was steadily undermining
+that brink as it had already undermined and carried away the Jesuits'
+spacious landing.
+
+Glancing over their shoulders with secret laughter for that fearful
+gleam of scythes which was to come, the girls marched back; and their
+leader's abrupt halt jarred the entire line. A man stood in the opposite
+entrance. They could not see him in outline, but his unmistakable hat
+showed against a low-lying sky.
+
+"Who's there?" demanded Peggy Morrison.
+
+The intruder made no answer.
+
+They could not see a scythe about him, but to every girl he took a
+different form. He was Billy Edgar, or Jules Vigo, or Rice Jones, or any
+other gallant of Kaskaskia, according to the varying faith which beating
+hearts sent to the eyes that saw him.
+
+The spell of silence did not last. A populous roost invaded by a fox
+never resounded with more squalling than did the old Jesuit College. The
+girls swished around corners and tumbled over the vegetable beds.
+Angelique groped for Maria, not daring to call her name, and caught and
+ran with some one until they neared the light, when she found it was
+the dumpy little figure of her cousin Clarice.
+
+As soon as the girls were gone, the man who had broken up their hempseed
+sowing advanced a few steps on the pavement. He listened, and that
+darker shadow in the angle of the walls was perceptible to him.
+
+"Are you here?"
+
+"I am here," answered Maria.
+
+Rice Jones's sister could not sit many minutes in the damp old building
+without being missed by the girls and her family. His voice trembled.
+She could hear his heart beating with large strokes. His presence
+surrounded her like an atmosphere, and in the darkness she clutched her
+own breast to keep the rapture from physically hurting her.
+
+"Maria, did you know that my wife was dead?"
+
+"Oh, James, no!"
+
+Her whisper was more than a caress. It was surrender and peace and
+forgiveness. It was the snapping of a tension which had held her two
+years.
+
+"Oh, James, when I saw you to-night I did not know what to do. I have
+not been well. You have borne it so much better than I have."
+
+"I thought," said Dr. Dunlap, "it would be best for us to talk matters
+over."
+
+She caught her breath. What was the matter with this man? Once he had
+lain at her feet and kissed the hem of her garment. He was hers. She had
+never relinquished her ownership of him even when her honor had
+constrained her to live apart from him. Whose could he be but hers?
+
+Dr. Dunlap had thought twenty-four hours on what he would say at this
+unavoidable meeting, and he acknowledged in a business-like tone,--
+
+"I did not treat you right, Maria. My wretched entanglement when I was a
+boy ruined everything. But when I persuaded you into a secret marriage
+with me, I meant to make it right when the other one died. And you
+found it out and left me. If I treated you badly, you treated me badly,
+too."
+
+He knew the long chin of the Joneses. He could imagine Maria lifting her
+slim chin. She did not speak.
+
+"I came over here to begin life again. When you ran off to your friends,
+what was there for me to do but take to the navy again or sail for
+America? Kaskaskia was the largest post in the West; so I came here. And
+here I found your family, that I thought were in another Territory. And
+from the first your brother has been my enemy."
+
+His sulky complaint brought no response in words; but a strangling sob
+broke all restraint in the angle of the wall.
+
+"Maria," exclaimed the startled doctor, "don't do that. You excite
+yourself."
+
+In her paroxysm she rolled down on the stone floor, and he stooped in
+consternation and picked her up. He rested his foot on the ledge where
+she had sat, and held her upon his knee. She struggled for breath until
+he thought she would die, and the sweat of terror stood on his forehead.
+When he had watched her by the bonfire, his medical knowledge gave her
+barely two months of life; and within those two months, he had also told
+himself bitterly then, Rice Jones could marry Angelique Saucier; but to
+have her die alone with him in this old building was what he could not
+contemplate.
+
+Scarcely conscious of his own action, the doctor held her in positions
+which helped her, and finally had the relief of hearing her draw a free
+breath as she lapsed against his shoulder. Even a counterfeit tie of
+marriage has its power. He had lived with this woman, she believing
+herself his lawful wife. Their half-year together had been the loftiest
+period of his life. The old feeling, smothered as it was under
+resentment and a new passion, stirred in him. He strained her to his
+breast and called her the pet names he used to call her. The diminutive
+being upon his knee heard them without response. When she could speak
+she whispered,--
+
+"Set me down."
+
+Dr. Dunlap moved his foot and placed her again on the stone ledge. She
+leaned against the wall. There was a ringing in her ears. The
+unpardonable sin in man is not his ceasing to love you. That may be a
+mortal pain, but it has dignity. It is the fearful judgment of seeing in
+a flash that you have wasted your life on what was not worth the waste.
+
+"Now if you are composed, Maria," said Dr. Dunlap hurriedly, "I will say
+what I followed you here to say. The best thing for us to do, now that I
+am free to do it, is to have the marriage ceremony repeated over us and
+made valid. I am ready and willing. The only drawback is the prejudice
+of your family against me."
+
+A magnanimous tone in his voice betrayed eagerness to put the Joneses
+under obligations to him.
+
+"Dr. Dunlap,"--when Maria had spoken his name she panted awhile,--"when
+I found out I was not your wife, and left you, I began then to cough.
+But now--we can never be married."
+
+"Why, Maria?"
+
+She began those formidable sounds again, and he held his breath.
+
+Somebody in the distance began playing a violin. Its music mingled with
+the sounds which river-inclosed lands and the adjacent dwellings of men
+send up in a summer night.
+
+"You know," said Maria when she could speak, "how we deceived my people
+in Wales and in London. None of my family here know anything about that
+marriage."
+
+Another voice outside the walls, keen with anxiety, shouted her name.
+Dr. Dunlap hurried a few yards from her, then stopped and held his
+ground. A man rushed into the old building regardless of the broken
+floor.
+
+"Maria, are you here?"
+
+"Yes, brother Rice."
+
+She was leaving her corner to meet him. The doctor could see that she
+sunk to her hands and knees with weakness and helped herself up by the
+wall.
+
+"Where are you? Is any one with you?"
+
+As they met in the darkness the brother felt her hands and trembling
+figure.
+
+"What possessed you to sit down here in this damp old place? You are
+clammy as stone. Poor little thing, were you frightened? What have you
+been doing?"
+
+"I have been talking," replied Maria.
+
+The doctor's heart labored like a drum. Perhaps she would tell it all
+out to Rice Jones now.
+
+The same acrid restraint may be heard in a mother's voice when she
+inquires, as Rice did,--
+
+"Who was talking with you?"
+
+"Dr. Dunlap."
+
+"Dr. Dunlap? You don't know Dr. Dunlap."
+
+"We met in England," daringly broke out Dr. Dunlap himself.
+
+"He is here yet, is he?" said Rice Jones. "Doctors are supposed to be
+the natural protectors of ailing women; but here's one that is helping a
+sick girl to take her death cold."
+
+An attack on his professional side was what Dr. Dunlap was not prepared
+for. He had nothing to say, and Maria's brother carried her out of the
+old college and took the nearest way home.
+
+Noise was ceasing around the sinking bonfire, a clatter of wooden shoes
+setting homeward along the streets of Kaskaskia. Maria saw the stars
+stretching their great network downward enmeshing the Mississippi. That
+nightly vision is wonderful. But what are outward wonders compared to
+the unseen spiritual chemistry always at work within and around us,
+changing our loves and beliefs and needs?
+
+Rice stopped to rest as soon as they were out of Dr. Dunlap's hearing.
+Light as she was, he felt his sister's complete prostration in her
+weight.
+
+"For God's sake, Maria," he said to her in Welsh,--"is that fellow
+anything to you?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"But he says he met you in England."
+
+She said nothing, and Rice also remained in silence. When he spoke
+again, it was in the tone of dry statement which he used for presenting
+cases in court.
+
+"My pistols have hair triggers and go off at a touch. I had a political
+difference with a gentleman some time ago, and this Dr. Dunlap acted as
+his second. We were standing ready, but before the word was given, and
+while the pistol hung down in my hand, it went off, and the ball struck
+the ground at my feet. Then Dr. Dunlap insisted I had had my shot, and
+must stand still and be fired at without firing again. His anxiety to
+have me shot was so plain that my opponent refused to fire, and we made
+up our difference. That's the Dr. Dunlap we have here in the Territory,
+whatever he may have been in England."
+
+Rice hurried on with her, his motherless little sister, who had been
+left with kinspeople in Wales because she was too delicate to bear the
+hardships of the family transplanting. He blamed himself for her
+exposure and prostration, and held her tenderly, whispering,--
+
+"Mareea-bach!"
+
+She tried to answer the Welsh caressing name, but her throat gurgled and
+a warm stream ran out of her mouth, and he knew it was blood.
+
+
+
+
+PART SECOND.
+
+
+
+
+A FIELD DAY.
+
+
+The gallery pillars of the Sauciers' house hung full of fragrant vines.
+The double doors stood hospitably wide, but no one was visible through
+the extent of hall, though the sound of harp music filled it, coming
+from a large darkened room. Angelique was playing for her
+great-grand-aunt Angelique, the despot of the Saucier family.
+
+This survivor of a past century had her treasures displayed and her
+throne set up in the state apartment of the house. The Sauciers
+contented themselves with a smaller drawing-room across the hall. Her
+throne was a vast valanced, canopied, gilded bed, decorated with down
+sacks in chintz covers to keep her warm, high pillows set up as a
+background for her, and a little pillow for every bone which might make
+a dint in the feather bed. Another such piece of furniture was not to be
+found in the Territory. It and her ebony chairs, her claw-footed tables,
+her harp and dower chest, had come with her from France. The harp alone
+she had already given to Angelique, who was to inherit all she owned.
+
+From childhood the girl had been this aged woman's constant attendant.
+Some days the black servants took their orders at the door, and nobody
+but Angelique was allowed to enter that room. Then the tyrant would
+unbend, and receive family and neighborhood visits. Though she had lived
+a spinster's life, she herself taught Angelique to call her
+"tante-gra'mere," and this absurd mixture of names had been taken up by
+the entire family. So tight a grip did she hold on the growing child
+that Angelique was educated by half-days at the convent; she never had
+an entire day free from tante-gra'mere. Madame Saucier often rose
+against such absorption, and craved the privilege of taking the girl's
+place.
+
+"There is a fete of the children on the bluffs to-day," madame would
+plead; or, "There is a religious procession, and the mother superior has
+particularly sent for Angelique."
+
+But tante-gra'mere lifted her thin shout against every plea, and, if
+pushed, would throw the little pillows at her grand-nephew's wife. What
+were fetes and processions to her claims?
+
+"I am the godmother of this child," she declared; "it is for me to say
+what she shall do."
+
+The patriarch of a French family was held in such veneration that it was
+little less than a crime to cross her. The thralldom did not ruin
+Angelique's health, though it grew heavier with her years; but it made
+her old in patient endurance and sympathetic insight while she was a
+child. She sat pitying and excusing her elder's whims when she should
+have been playing. The oldest story in humanity is the story of the
+house tyrant,--that usurper often so physically weak that we can carry
+him in our arms, yet so strong that he can tumble down the pillars of
+family peace many times a day.
+
+There was something monkey-like in the tempers of tante-gra'mere. To see
+her grasp her whip and beat her slaves with a good will, but poor
+execution, was to smile self-reproachfully as at the antics of a sick
+child. Though it is true, for a woman who had no use of her legs, she
+displayed astonishing reach in her arms. Her face was a mass of puckers
+burnt through by coal-black eyes. Her mouth was so tucked and folded
+inward that she appeared to have swallowed her lips. In the daytime she
+wore a black silk cap tied under the chin, and a dimity short gown over
+a quilted petticoat. Tante-gra'mere was rich in stored finery. She had
+inherited brocades, and dozen dozens of linen, including sheets and
+napkins. Her things were washed by themselves and bleached on their own
+green, where the family washing never dared intrude.
+
+Fortunately for Angelique, tante-gra'mere's hours were early, and she
+slept as aged people seldom do. At sunset, summer or winter, she had
+herself promptly done up in linen, the whip placed near her hand, and
+her black woman's bed made within reach on the floor. She then went into
+a shell of sleep which dancing-parties in the house had not broken, and
+required no further attention until the birds stirred in the morning.
+Angelique rushed out to evening freedom with a zest which became rapture
+when she danced. Perhaps this fresh delight made her the best dancer in
+Kaskaskia.
+
+The autocrat loved to compound her own dinners. She had a salver which
+Angelique placed before her on the bed; and the old child played in
+pastry or salads, or cut vegetable dice for her soup. The baking or
+boiling or roasting was done with rigor at her own fireplace by her
+blacks, the whiplash in her hand hovering over their bare spots. Silence
+was the law of the presence-chamber when she labored with her recipes,
+of which she had many, looking like spider tracks on very yellow paper.
+These she kept locked up with many of the ingredients for creating them.
+She pored over them with unspectacled eyes whenever she mixed a cunning
+dish; and even Angelique dared not meddle with them, though they were to
+be part of the girl's inheritance.
+
+Angelique now played on the harp to soothe tante-gra'mere's digestion
+after her midday dinner, while outdoors all Kaskaskia buzzed with
+excitement. It was a field day in territorial politics. All the girls
+were at Peggy Morrison's house, watching the processions march by, and
+making bouquets to send up to the speakers, of whom Rice Jones was
+chief. Tante-gra'mere had her heavy green shutters closed, to keep out
+disturbing sights and the noise of fife and drum. Her eyes snapped in
+the gloom. It was a warm day, and the large apartment looked like a
+linen bazaar, so many garments had tante-gra'mere discarded on account
+of the heat, and hung about her. The display made Angelique's face burn
+when Colonel Menard was announced; but it was one of tante-gra'mere's
+unshakable beliefs that her linen was so superior to other people's its
+exposure was a favor to the public. Any attempt to fold it away would
+put her into a fury.
+
+The colonel had his hat and riding-whip in his hand. He stood smiling at
+both the aged woman and the girl, with his comprehensive grasp of all
+individualities. The slave woman placed a chair for him between the bed
+and the harp. Angelique loved the harp; but she was glad to let her
+hands fall in her lap, and leave Colonel Menard to work good nature in
+her tante-gra'mere. The autocrat tolerated him with as much liking as
+she could give to any suitor of Angelique's. The intentions of the
+others were discovered only through slaves used as spies; but he came
+into her state apartment and showed her consideration. She sat up on her
+broad throne, against the background of pillows, and received his salute
+upon her hand. Afterwards he bowed over Angelique's fingers.
+
+"I hope the seven children of monsieur the colonel are well," said
+tante-gra'mere in her tiny scream.
+
+"Four, madame," corrected the visitor. "Thanks, they are very well."
+
+They spoke in French, for although she understood English she never
+condescended to use it. Their conference begun each time by her inquiry
+after his seven children.
+
+"And madame, I hope she is comfortable to-day?"
+
+"I neither sleep nor eat," declared tante-gra'mere. "And with the
+streets full of a shouting rabble, there is no comfort to be had in
+Kaskaskia."
+
+"We are rather noisy to-day. But we are very earnest in this matter. We
+want to be separated from the Indiana Territory and be made an
+independent State."
+
+Tante-gra'mere caught up her whip, and cracked it so suddenly on the
+back of her little page, who was prying into a wall closet, that he
+leaped like a frog, and fell on all fours at the opposite corner of the
+hearth. His grandmother, the black woman, put him behind her, and
+looked steadily at their tyrant. She sat on the floor like an Indian;
+and she was by no means a soft, full-blooded African. High cheek-bones
+and lank coarse hair betrayed the half-breed. Untamed and reticent,
+without the drollery of the black race, she had even a Pottawatomie
+name, Watch-e-kee, which French usage shortened to Wachique.
+
+Tante-gra'mere put this sullen slave in motion and made her bring a
+glass of wine for Colonel Menard. The colonel was too politic to talk to
+Angelique before her elder, though she had not yet answered his
+proposal. He had offered himself through her father, and granted her all
+the time she could require for making up her mind. The colonel knew of
+her sudden decisions against so many Kaskaskians that he particularly
+asked her to take time. Two dimpling grooves were cut in his cheeks by
+the smile which hovered there, as he rose to drink the godmother's
+health, and she said,--
+
+"Angelique, you may leave the room."
+
+Angelique left the room, and he drew his chair toward the autocrat for
+the conference she expected.
+
+"It is very kind of you, madame," said Colonel Menard, "to give me this
+chance of speaking to you alone."
+
+"I do so, monsieur the colonel, because I myself have something to say."
+The little elfin voice disregarded Wachique and the page. They were part
+of the furniture of the room, and did not count as listeners.
+
+"You understand that I wish to propose for mademoiselle?"
+
+Tante-gra'mere nodded. "I understand that you are a man who will make a
+contract and conduct his marriage properly; while these Welsh and
+English, they lean over a gallery rail and whisper, and I am told they
+even come fiddling under the windows after decent people are asleep."
+
+"I am glad to have you on my side, madame."
+
+"I am not on your side, monsieur. I am on nobody's side. And Angelique
+is on nobody's side. Angelique favors no suitor. She is like me: she
+would live a single life to the end of her days, as holy as a nun, with
+never a thought of courtship and weddings, but I have set my face
+against such a life for her. I have seen the folly of it. Here am I, a
+poor old helpless woman, living without respect or consideration, when I
+ought to be looked up to in the Territory."
+
+"You are mistaken, madame. Your name is always mentioned with
+veneration."
+
+"Ah, if I had sons crowding your peltry traffic and taking their share
+of these rich lands, then you would truly see me venerated. I have
+thought of these things many a day; and I am not going to let Angelique
+escape a husband, however such creatures may try a woman's religious
+nature."
+
+"I will make myself as light a trial as possible," suggested Colonel
+Menard.
+
+"You have had one wife."
+
+"Yes, madame."
+
+"But she died." The tiny high voice had the thrust of an insect's
+stinger.
+
+"If she were alive, madame, I could not now have the honor of asking for
+Mademoiselle Angelique's hand."
+
+The dimpling grooves in his cheeks did not escape tante-gra'mere's black
+eyes.
+
+"I do not like widowers," she mused.
+
+"Nor do I," responded the colonel.
+
+"Poor Therese might have been alive to-day, if she had not married you."
+
+"Possibly, madame."
+
+"And you have seven children?"
+
+"Four, madame."
+
+"On the whole, I like young men."
+
+"Then you reject my suit?" observed the unmoved wooer.
+
+"I do not reject it, and I do not accept it, monsieur the colonel. I
+consider it."
+
+This gracious promise of neutrality Colonel Menard carried away with him
+without again seeing Angelique; and he made his way through the streets
+of Kaskaskia, unconscious that his little son was following Rice Jones
+about with the invincible persistence of a Menard.
+
+Young Pierre had been allowed to ride into the capital this thronging
+day under charge of his father's body-servant and Jean Lozier. The
+body-servant he sent out of his way with the ponies. Jean Lozier tramped
+at his young seignior's heels, glad of some duty which would excuse him
+to his conscience.
+
+This was the peasant lad's first taste of Kaskaskia. He could hardly
+believe he was there. The rapture of it at first shook him like a palsy.
+He had risen while the whole peninsula was yet a network of dew, and the
+Mississippi's sheet, reflecting the dawn, threw silver in his eyes. All
+thoughts of his grandfather he put resolutely out of his mind; and such
+thoughts troubled him little, indeed, while that sea of humanity dashed
+around him. The crash of martial music stirred the man in him. And when
+he saw the governor's carriage and the magnates of the Territory,
+heading the long procession; the festooned galleries, on which sat
+girls dressed in white, like angels, sending their slaves out with
+baskets of flowers to strew in the way; when he saw floating tableaux of
+men and scenes in the early history of the Territory,--heroes whose
+exploits he knew by heart; and when he heard the shouting which seemed
+to fill the rivers from bluff to bluff, he was willing to wade through
+purgatory to pay for such a day.
+
+Traffic moved with unusual force. It was the custom for outdwelling men
+who had something to sell or to trade to reserve it until they came to a
+convention in Kasky, when they were certain to meet the best buyers. All
+the up-river towns sent lines of vehicles and fleets of boats to the
+capital. Kickapoo, Pottawatomie, and Kaskaskia Indians were there to see
+the white-man council, scattered immovably along the streets, their
+copper faces glistening in the sun, the buckskin fringes on their
+leggins scarcely stirring as the hours crept by. Squaws stood in the
+full heat, erect and silent, in yellow or dark red garments woven of
+silky buffalo wool, and seamed with roebuck sinews. Few of them had
+taken to civilized finery. Their barbaric and simple splendor was a
+rebuke to poor white women.
+
+Many ease-loving old Frenchmen denied themselves the pleasure of
+following the day's pageant from point to point, and chose the best of
+the vacant seats fronting the empty platform in the common meadow. There
+they waited for speech-making to begin, smoking New Orleans tobacco, and
+stretching their wooden-shod feet in front of them. No kind of covering
+intervened betwixt their gray heads and the sky's fierce light, which
+made the rivers seem to wrinkle with fire. An old Frenchman loved to
+feel heaven's hand laid on his hair. Sometimes they spoke to one
+another; but the most of each man's soul was given to basking. Their
+attitudes said: "This is as far as I have lived. I am not living
+to-morrow or next day. The past has reached this instant as high-water
+mark, and here I rest. Move me if you can. I have arrived."
+
+Booths were set up along the route to the common meadow, where the
+thirsty and hungry might find food and drink; and as the crowd surged
+toward its destination, a babel of cries rose from the venders of these
+wares. Father Baby was as great a huckster as any flatboat man of them
+all. He outscreamed and outsweated Spaniards from Ste. Genevieve; and a
+sorry spectacle was he to Father Olivier when a Protestant circuit-rider
+pointed him out. The itinerant had come to preach at early
+candle-lighting to the crowd of sinners which this occasion drew to
+Kaskaskia. There was a flourishing chapel where this good preacher was
+esteemed, and his infrequent messages were gladly accepted. He hated
+Romish practices, especially the Sunday dancing after mass, which Father
+Olivier allowed his humbler parishioners to indulge in. They were such
+children. When their week's work was over and their prayers were said,
+they could scarcely refrain from kicking up their heels to the sound of
+a fiddle.
+
+But when the preacher saw a friar peddling spirits, he determined to
+denounce Kaskaskia as Sodom and Gomorrah around his whole circuit in the
+American bottom lands. While the fire burned in him he encountered
+Father Olivier, who despised him as a heretic, and respected him as a
+man. Each revered the honest faith that was in the other, though they
+thought it their duty to quarrel.
+
+"My friend," exclaimed the preacher, "do you believe you are going in
+and out before this people in a God-fearing manner, when your colleague
+is yonder selling liquor?"
+
+"Oh, that's only poor half-crazy Father Baby. He has no right even to
+the capote he wears. Nobody minds him here."
+
+"He ought to be brought to his knees and soundly converted," declared
+the evangelist.
+
+"He is on his knees half the time now," said Father Olivier
+mischievously. "He's religious enough, but, like you heretics, he
+perverts the truth to suit himself."
+
+The preacher laughed. He was an unlearned man, but he had the great
+heart of an apostle, and was open to jokes.
+
+"Do you think I am riding the wilderness for the pleasure of perverting
+the truth?"
+
+"My friend," returned Father Olivier, "you have been in our sacristy,
+and seen our parish records kept here by the hands of priests for a
+hundred years. You want to make what you call revivals; I am content
+with survivals, with keeping alive the faith. Yet you think I am the
+devil. As for me, I do not say all heretics ought to be burned."
+
+The preacher laughed again with Father Olivier, but did not fail to
+add,--
+
+"You say what I think better than I could say it myself."
+
+The priest left his Protestant brother with a wave of the hand and a
+smiling shrug, and passed on his way along the array of booths. His
+presence was a check on many a rustic drinker. His glance, dropped here
+and there, saved more than one sheep from the shearer. But his own face
+fell, and he stopped in astonishment, when an awkward figure was pushed
+against him, and he recognized his upland lamb.
+
+"Jean Lozier, what are you doing here?" said Father Olivier.
+
+Jean had dodged him many times. The lad stood still, cap in hand,
+looking down. Nothing could make him sorry he had come to Kaskaskia; but
+he expected to do penance for it.
+
+"Where is your grandfather?"
+
+"He is at home, father."
+
+"Did you leave that blind old man alone, to wander out and fall over the
+bluff?"
+
+"I left him, father, but I tied him to a joist in the ceiling with a
+long rope."
+
+"To hang himself?"
+
+"No, father; it is a very long rope."
+
+"And what will the old man do when he grows hungry?"
+
+"His food for the day is on the table."
+
+"My son, my son!"
+
+"Father," exclaimed the boy with passion, "I was never in Kaskaskia
+before. And Colonel Menard lent me a pony to ride after my young master.
+I have no pleasure but watching the lights of the town at night." The
+great fellow began to sob. "If my grandfather would but come here, I
+could keep him well. I have been watching how they do things in
+Kaskaskia. But no, he will stay on the hills. And when I could stand it
+no more I tied him and came."
+
+Father Olivier had looked into the eyes of soldiers and seen the sick
+longing for some particular place which neither courage nor resolution
+seems able to control. He saw even more than this in Jean Lozier's eyes.
+He saw the anguish of a creature about to be driven back from its
+element to another in which it cannot develop. The priest had hitherto
+used Jean's fondness for the capital as means of moral discipline. But
+the sympathy which gave so many simple natures into his literal keeping
+enlightened him now.
+
+"My son," said Father Olivier, "I see how it is with you better than I
+ever did before. You shall come and live in Kaskaskia. I will myself
+forbid your grandfather to keep you longer on the hills."
+
+"But, father, he says he will die in a great town."
+
+"Then, my son, the crown of a little martyrdom is yours. Will you wear
+it until this old man ends his days, and then come to Kaskaskia as your
+reward? Or will you come trampling down your duty, and perhaps
+shortening the life of your father's father? I will not lay any penance
+on you for following this strong desire."
+
+Jean's spirit moved through his rough features, and responded to the
+priest's touch.
+
+"I will wait, father," he said.
+
+"You do right, my son. Now enjoy the remainder of this day, but do not
+make it too long a trial to the old man dependent on you."
+
+Jean Lozier knew very little about the fierce partisan war raging in
+the Territory over separation and non-separation, and all the
+consequences which lay beyond either. But he took his place in a sea of
+listeners, having a man's object in life to struggle for. He was going
+to live in Kaskaskia, and have a little house of his own, a cart and two
+oxen; and when he had made enough by hauling bales from the wharf, he
+could set up in trade. His breast lifted and fell freely as he looked
+into this large and possible future. The patience and frugality and
+self-confidence of the successful man of affairs were born in him.
+
+Rice Jones was on the speaker's platform, moulding the politics of the
+Territory. His voice reached over the great outdoor audience, compelling
+and convincing; now sinking to penetrating undertones, and now rising in
+thrilling music. His irony was so cutting, his humor so irrepressible.
+Laughter ran in waves across the sea of heads as wind runs across the
+grass. On many a homeward road and in many a cabin would these issues
+be fought over before election day, and Rice Jones's arguments quoted
+and propagated to the territorial limits. The serious long-jawed
+Virginia settler and the easy light-minded French boatman listened side
+by side. One had a homestead at stake, and the other had his possessions
+in the common fields where he labored as little as possible; but both
+were with Rice Jones in that political sympathy which bands unlike men
+together. He could say in bright words what they nebulously thought. He
+was the high development of themselves. They were proud of him, with
+that touching hero worship which is the tribute of unlettered men to
+those who represent their best.
+
+Dr. Dunlap stopped an instant at the edge of the crowd, carrying his
+saddle-bags on his arm. He was so well known to be Rice Jones's
+political and personal enemy that his momentary lingering there drew a
+joke or two from his observers. He was exhorted to notice how the
+speaker could wipe up Kasky with such as he, and he replied in kind.
+But his face was wearing thin in his deeper and silent struggle with
+Rice Jones.
+
+He knew that that judicial mind was fathoming and understanding his past
+relations with Maria upon the evidence he had himself furnished. Every
+day since their encounter in the college the doctor had armed himself.
+If he saw Rice Jones appear suddenly on the street, his hand sought his
+pocket. Sometimes he thought of leaving the Territory; which would be
+giving up the world and branding himself a coward. The sick girl was
+forgotten in this nightmare of a personal encounter. As a physician, he
+knew the danger of mania, and prescribed hard labor to counteract it.
+Dismounting under the bluff and tying his horse, he had many times
+toiled and sweated up the ascent, and let himself down again, bruised
+and scratched by stones and briers.
+
+Very trivial in Dr. Dunlap's eyes were the anxieties of some poor
+fellows whom he saw later in the day appealing to Colonel Menard. The
+doctor was returning to a patient. The speeches were over, and the
+common meadow had become a wide picnic ground under the slant of a low
+afternoon sun. Those outdwelling settlers, who had other business to
+transact besides storing political opinions, now began to stir
+themselves; and a dozen needy men drew together and encouraged one
+another to ask Colonel Menard for salt. They were obliged to have salt
+at once, and he was the only great trader who brought it in by the
+flatboat load and kept it stored. He had a covered box in his cellar as
+large as one of their cabins, and it was always kept filled with cured
+meats.
+
+They stood with hands in their pockets and coonskin caps slouching over
+their brows, stating the case to Colonel Menard. But poverty has many
+grades. The quizzical Frenchman detected in some of his clients a
+moneyed ability which raised them above their fellows.
+
+"I have salt," admitted the colonel, speaking English to men who did not
+understand French, "but I have not enough to make brine of de Okaw
+river. I bet you ten dollaire you have not money in your pockets to pay
+for it."
+
+More than half the pockets owned this fact. One man promised to pay when
+he killed his hogs. Another was sure he could settle by election day.
+But the colonel cut these promises short.
+
+"I will settle this matter. De goats that have no money will stand on
+this side, and de sheep that have money will stand on that."
+
+The hopeless majority budged to his right hand, and the confident ones
+to his left. He knew well what comfort or misery hung on his answer, and
+said with decision which no one could turn:--
+
+"Now, messieurs, I am going to lend all my salt to these poor men who
+cannot get it any other way. You fellows who have money in your pockets,
+you may go to Sa' Loui', by gar, and buy yourselves some."
+
+The peninsula of Kaskaskia was glorified by sunset, and even having its
+emerald stretches purpled by the evening shadows of the hills, before
+Rice Jones could go home to his sister. The hundreds thronging him all
+day and hurrahing at his merciless wit saw none of his trouble in his
+face.
+
+He had sat by Maria day after day, wiping the cold dampness from her
+forehead and watching her self-restraining pride. They did not talk
+much, and when they spoke it was to make amusement for each other. This
+young sister growing up over the sea had been a precious image to his
+early manhood. But it was easier to see her die now that the cause of
+Dr. Dunlap's enmity was growing distinct to him.
+
+"No wonder he wanted me shot," thought Rice. "No wonder he took all her
+family as his natural foes at sight."
+
+Sometimes the lawyer dropped his papers and walked his office,
+determining to go out and shoot Dr. Dunlap. The most judicial mind has
+its revolts against concise statement. In these boiling moods Rice did
+not want evidence; he knew enough. But cooler counsel checked him. There
+were plenty of grounds and plenty of days yet to come for a political
+duel, in which no names and no family honor need be mixed.
+
+Rice turned back from the gallery steps with a start at hearing a voice
+behind him. It was only young Pierre Menard at his father's gate. The
+veins on the child's temples were distended by their embarrassed
+throbbing, and his cheeks shone darkly red.
+
+"I want, in fact, to speak to you, Monsieur Zhone," stammered Pierre,
+looking anxiously down the street lest the slave or Jean Lozier should
+appear before he had his say.
+
+"What is it, colonel junior?" said Rice, returning to the gate.
+
+"I want, in fact, to have some talk about our family."
+
+"I hope you haven't any disagreement in your family that the law will
+have to settle?"
+
+"Oh, no, monsieur, we do not quarrel much. And we never should quarrel
+at all if we had a mother to teach us better," said young Pierre
+adroitly.
+
+Rice studied him with a sidelong glance of amusement, and let him
+struggle unhelped to his object.
+
+"Monsieur Zhone, do you intend to get married?"
+
+"Certainly," replied the prompt lawyer.
+
+"But why should you want to get married? You have no children."
+
+"I might have some, if I were married," argued Rice.
+
+"But unless you get some you don't need any mother for them. On the
+contrary, we have great need of a mother in our family."
+
+"I see. You came to take my advice about a stepmother. I have a
+stepmother myself, and I am the very man to advise you. But suppose you
+and I agree on the person for the place, and the colonel refuses her?"
+
+The boy looked at him sharply, but there was no trace of raillery on
+Rice's face.
+
+"You never can tell what the colonel intends to do until he does it,
+monsieur, but I think he will be glad to get her. The girls--all of us,
+in fact, think he ought to be satisfied with her."
+
+"You are quite right. I don't know of a finer young woman in Kaskaskia
+than Miss Peggy Morrison."
+
+"But she isn't the one, Monsieur Zhone. Oh, she wouldn't do at all."
+
+"She wouldn't? I have made a mistake. It's Mademoiselle Vigo."
+
+"Oh, no, she wouldn't do, either. There is only one that would do." The
+boy tried to swallow his tumult of palpitation. "It is Mademoiselle
+Angelique Saucier, monsieur."
+
+Rice looked reproachfully at him over folded arms.
+
+"That's why I came to you about it, monsieur. In the first place, Odile
+picked her out because she is handsome; Berenice and Alzira want her
+because she is good-natured; and I want her because I like to sit in the
+room where she is."
+
+"Young man, this cannot be," said Rice Jones.
+
+"Have you engaged her yourself, monsieur? If you haven't, please don't.
+Nobody else will suit us; and you can take Mademoiselle Peggy Morrison
+that you think is such a fine young woman."
+
+Rice laughed.
+
+"You and I are not the only men in Kaskaskia who admire Mademoiselle
+Saucier, my lad."
+
+"But you are the worst one," said Pierre eagerly. "Odile thinks if you
+let her alone we may get her."
+
+"But I can't let her alone. I see the force of your claims, but human
+nature is so perverse, Pierre, that I want her worse than ever."
+
+Pierre dug with his heel in the grass. His determined countenance
+delighted the rival.
+
+"Monsieur, if you do get her, you have our whole family to beat."
+
+"Yes, I see what odds there are against me," owned Rice.
+
+"We are going to marry her if we can--and my father is willing. He is
+nearly always willing to please us."
+
+"This is fair and open," pronounced Rice, "and the way for gentlemen to
+treat each other. You have done the right thing in coming to talk this
+matter over with me."
+
+"I'm not sure of that, m'sieur."
+
+"I am, for there is nothing better than fair and open rivalry. And after
+all, nobody can settle this but Mademoiselle Saucier herself. She may
+not be willing to take any of us. But, whatever the result, shake hands,
+Pierre."
+
+The boy transferred his riding-whip, and met the lawyer's palm with a
+hearty grasp. They shook hands, laughing, and Pierre felt surprised to
+find how well he liked Rice Jones.
+
+As the wide and capacious Kaskaskia houses were but a single story high,
+Maria's bedroom was almost in the garden. Sweet-brier stretched above
+the foundation and climbed her window; and there were rank flowers,
+such as marigolds and peppery bouncing-betties, which sent her pungent
+odors. Sometimes she could see her stepmother walking the graveled paths
+between the vegetable beds, or her father and Rice strolling back and
+forth together of an evening. Each one was certain to bring her
+something,--a long-stemmed pink, or phlox in a bunch, like a handful of
+honeycomb. The gardener pulled out dead vines and stalks and burned them
+behind a screen of bushes, the thin blue smoke trailing low.
+
+Her father would leave his office to sit beside her, holding the hand
+which grew thinner every day. He had looked forward to his daughter's
+coming as a blossoming-time in his life. Maria had not left her bed
+since the night of her hemorrhage. A mere fortnight in the Territory
+seemed to have wasted half her little body.
+
+When you have strained to bear your burden and keep up with the world's
+march, lightly commiserated by the strong, there is great peace in
+finally giving up and lying down by the roadside. The hour often
+fiercely wished for, and as often repelled with awe, is here. The
+visible is about to become invisible. It is your turn to pass into the
+unknown. You have seen other faces stiffen, and other people carried out
+and forgotten. Your face is now going to chill the touch. You are going
+to be carried out. But, most wonderful of all, you who have been so
+keenly alive are glad to creep close to Death and lay your head in his
+lap.
+
+There are natures to whom suffering is degradation. Sympathy would burn
+them like caustic. They are dumb on the side which seeks promiscuous
+fellowship. They love one person, and live or die by that love.
+
+"I have borne it by myself so far," Maria would think; "I can bear it by
+myself the rest of the way."
+
+Yet the sleepy nurse was often roused at dead of night by her sobbing:
+"Oh, James, that you should be in the same town with me, and never come
+near to see me die! And I love you,--I love you so in spite of
+everything."
+
+Sometimes she resolved to tell her brother the whole story. He would
+perhaps think better of Dr. Dunlap than he now did. Yet, on the
+contrary, his implacable pride and sense of justice might drive him
+directly out to kill the man she loved. And again she would burn with
+rage and shame at Dr. Dunlap's condescension to a legal marriage. He was
+willing.
+
+"You are not willing," she would whisper fiercely at the night candle.
+"You do not love me any more."
+
+The old glamour again covering her, she would lie in a waking dream for
+hours, living over their stolen life together. And she puzzled herself
+trying to fit the jagged pieces of her experience, and to understand why
+all these things should happen. The mystery to come is not greater than
+the mystery which has been, when one lies on a dying bed and counts the
+many diverse individuals that have lived in his skin and been called by
+his name.
+
+At other times, all she had lost of common good flashed through Maria in
+a spark: the deeds to other souls; the enjoyment of nature, which is a
+continual discovery of new worlds; the calm joy of daily life, that best
+prayer of thanks to Almighty God.
+
+Maria always thought of these wholesome things when Angelique came in at
+twilight, a little exhilarated by her escape from the tyrant at home.
+The nurse would give place, and go out to talk with the other negroes,
+while Angelique sat down and held Maria's hand. Perhaps invisible
+streams of health flowed from her, quieting the sick girl. She smiled
+with pure happiness, on account of general good and comfort; her oval
+face and dark hair and eyes having a certain freshness of creation.
+Maria looked at her and wondered what love and sorrow would do to her.
+
+Angelique had one exquisite characteristic which Maria did not at first
+notice, but it grew upon her during these quiet half-hours when she was
+spared the effort of talking or listening. It was a fixed look of
+penetrating sweetness, projecting the girl herself into your nature, and
+making her one with you. No intrusive quality of a stare spoiled it. She
+merely became you for the time being; and this unconscious pretty trick
+had brought down many a long Kaskaskian, for it drove directly through
+the hearts of men.
+
+The provincial girl sometimes puzzled herself about the method of
+education abroad which had produced such a repressed yet such an
+appealing creature as Maria Jones. When she talked to the triangular
+little face on the pillow, she talked about the outdoor world rather
+than its people; so that after Angelique went away Maria often fell
+asleep, fancying herself on the grass, or lying beside the rivers or
+under the cool shadows of rocks.
+
+As Rice Jones entered the house, after his talk about Angelique with
+young Pierre Menard, he met her coming out. It was the first time that
+her twilight visits to his sister had brought them face to face, and
+Rice directly turned off through the garden with her, inquiring how
+Maria had borne the noise of the day.
+
+"She is very quiet," said Angelique. "She was indeed falling asleep when
+I came out."
+
+"I sent my man at noon and at three o'clock to bring me word of her."
+
+There was still a great trampling of horses in the streets. Shouts of
+departing happy voters sounded from the Okaw bridge, mixing with the
+songs of river men. The primrose lights of many candles began to bloom
+all over Kaskaskia. Rice parted the double hedge of currant bushes which
+divided his father's garden from Saucier's, and followed Angelique upon
+her own gravel walk, holding her by his sauntering. They could smell the
+secluded mould in the shadow of the currant roots, which dew was just
+reaching. She went to a corner where a thicket of roses grew. She had
+taken a handful of them to Maria, and now gathered a fresh handful for
+herself, reaching in deftly with mitted arms, holding her gown between
+her knees to keep it back from the briers. Some of them were wild roses,
+with a thin layer of petals and effulgent yellow centres. There was a
+bouquet of garden-breaths from gray-green sage and rosemary leaves and
+the countless herbs and vegetables which every slaveholding Kaskaskian
+cultivated for his large household. Pink and red hollyhocks stood
+sentinel along the paths. The slave cabins, the loom-house, the kitchen,
+and a row of straw beehives were ranged at the back of the lawn, edging
+the garden.
+
+Angelique came back to the main walk, picking her way with slipper toes,
+and offered part of her spoil to Rice. He took some roses, and held the
+hand which gave them. She had come in his way too soon after his mocking
+little talk with young Pierre Menard. He was occupied with other things,
+but that had made him feel a sudden need.
+
+Angelique blushed in the dense twilight, her face taking childlike lines
+of apprehension. Her heart sank, and she suffered for him vicariously
+in advance. Her sensibility to other presences was so keen that she had
+once made it a subject of confession. "Father, I cannot feel any
+separateness from the people around me. Is this a sin?" "Believe that
+you have the saints and holy angels also in your company, and it will be
+no sin," answered Father Olivier.
+
+Though she was used to these queer demonstrations of men, her conscience
+always rebuked her for the number of offers she received. No sooner did
+she feel on terms of excellent friendliness with any man than he began
+to fondle her hand and announce himself her lover. It must be as her
+tante-gra'mere said, that girls had too much liberty in the Territory.
+Jules Vigo and Billy Edgar had both proposed in one day, and Angelique
+hid herself in the loom-house, feeling peculiarly humbled and ashamed to
+face the family, until her godmother had her almost forcibly brought
+back to the usual post.
+
+"I love you," said Rice Jones.
+
+"But please, no, Monsieur Zhone, no."
+
+"I love you," he repeated, compressing his lips. "Why 'no, Monsieur
+Zhone, no'?"
+
+"I do not know." Angelique drew her hand back and arranged her roses
+over and over, looking down at them in blind distress.
+
+"Is it Pierre Menard?"
+
+She glanced up at him reproachfully.
+
+"Oh, monsieur, it is only that I do not want"--She put silence in the
+place of words. "Monsieur," she then appealed, "why do men ask girls who
+do not want them to? If one appeared anxious, then it would be
+reasonable."
+
+"Not to men," said Rice, smiling. "We will have what is hard to be got.
+I shall have you, my Angelique. I will wait."
+
+"Monsieur," said Angelique, thinking of an obstacle which might block
+his way, "I am a Catholic, and you are not."
+
+"Priests don't frighten me. And Father Olivier is too sensible an old
+fellow to object to setting you in the car of my ambition."
+
+They stood in silence.
+
+"Good-night, Monsieur Zhone," said Angelique. "Don't wait."
+
+"But I shall wait," said Rice.
+
+He had bowed and turned away to the currant hedge, and Angelique was
+entering her father's lawn, when he came back impetuously. He framed her
+cheeks in his hands, and she could feel rather than see the power of
+possession in his eyes.
+
+"Angelique!" he said, and the word rushed through her like flame. She
+recoiled, but Rice Jones was again in his father's garden, moving like a
+shadow toward the house, before she stirred. Whether it was the trick of
+the orator or the irrepressible outburst of passion, that appeal
+continued to ring in her ears and to thrill.
+
+More disturbed than she had ever been before by the tactics of a lover,
+Angelique hurried up the back gallery steps, to find Peggy Morrison
+sitting in her chamber window, cross-legged, leaning over with one palm
+supporting a pointed chin. The swinging sashes were pushed outward, and
+Peggy's white gown hung down from the broad sill.
+
+"Is that you, Peggy?" said Angelique. "I thought you were dancing at
+Vigo's this evening."
+
+"I thought you were, too."
+
+"Mama felt obliged to send our excuses, on account of going to sister's
+baby."
+
+"How beautiful these large French families are!" observed Peggy; "some
+of them are always dying or teething, and the girls are slaves to their
+elders."
+
+"We must be beautiful," said Angelique, "since two of the Morrisons have
+picked wives from us; and I assure you the Morrison babies give us the
+most trouble."
+
+"You might expect that. I never saw any luck go with a red-headed
+Morrison."
+
+Angelique sat down on the sill, also, leaning against the side of the
+window. The garden was becoming a void of dimness, through which a few
+fireflies sowed themselves. Vapor blotted such stars as they might have
+seen from their perch, and the foliage of fruit trees stirred with a
+whisper of wind.
+
+"I am so glad you came to stay with me, Peggy. But you are dressed; why
+did you not go?"
+
+"I am hiding."
+
+"What are you hiding from?"
+
+"Jules Vigo, of course."
+
+"Poor Jules."
+
+"Yes, you are always saying poor this and that, after you set them on by
+rejecting them. They run about like blind, mad oxen till they bump their
+stupid heads against somebody that will have them. I shouldn't wonder if
+I got a second-hand husband one day, taking up with some cast-off of
+yours."
+
+"Peggy, these things do not flatter me; they distress me," said
+Angelique genuinely.
+
+"They wouldn't distress me. If I had your face, and your hands and arms,
+and the way you carry yourself, I'd love to kill men. They have no sense
+at all."
+
+Angelique heard her grind her teeth, and exclaimed,--
+
+"Why, Peggy, what has poor Jules done?"
+
+"Oh, Jules!--he is nothing. I have just engaged myself to him to get rid
+of him, and now I have some right to be let alone. He's only the fourth
+one of your victims that I've accepted, and doctored up, and set on foot
+again. I take them in rotation, and let them easily down to marrying
+some girl of capacity suitable to them. And until you are married off, I
+have no prospect of ever being anything but second choice."
+
+Angelique laughed.
+
+"Your clever tongue so fascinates men that this is all mockery, your
+being second choice. But indeed I like men, Peggy; if they had not the
+foolishness of falling in love."
+
+"Angelique Saucier, when do you intend to settle in life?"
+
+"I do not know," said the French girl slowly. "It is pleasant to be as
+we are."
+
+Peggy glanced at her through the dark.
+
+"Do you intend to be a nun?"
+
+"No, I have no vocation."
+
+"Well, if you don't marry, the time will come when you'll be called an
+old maid."
+
+"That is what mama says. It is a pity to make ugly names for good
+women."
+
+"I'll be drawn and quartered before I'll be called an old maid," said
+Peggy fiercely. "What difference does it make, after all, which of these
+simpletons one takes for a husband? Were you ever in love with one of
+them, Angelique?"
+
+Peggy had the kind of eyes which show a disk of light in the dark, and
+they revealed it as she asked this question.
+
+"No, I think not," answered Angelique.
+
+"You think not. You believe, to the best of your knowledge and
+recollection, that such a thing has never happened to you," mocked
+Peggy. And then she made a sudden pounce at Angelique's arm. "What was
+the matter with you when you ran up the gallery steps, a minute ago?"
+
+The startled girl drew in her breath with surprise, but laughed.
+
+"It was lighter then," hinted Peggy.
+
+"Did you see him?"
+
+"Yes, I saw him. And I saw you coaxing him along with a bunch of roses,
+for all the world like catching a pony with a bunch of grass. And I saw
+him careering back to neigh in your face."
+
+"Oh, Peggy, I wish Monsieur Reece Zhone could but hear what you say. Do
+teach me some of your clever ridicule. It must be that I take suitors
+too seriously."
+
+"Thank you," said Peggy dryly, "I need it all for my second-hand lot. He
+is the worst fool of any of them."
+
+"Take care, Peggy, you rouse me. Why is a man a fool for loving me?"
+
+"He said he loved you, then?"
+
+The Saucier negroes were gathering on doorsteps, excited by the day and
+the bustle of crowds which still hummed in the streets. Now a line of
+song was roared from the farthest cabin, and old and young voices all
+poured themselves into a chorus. A slender young moon showed itself
+under foliage, dipping almost as low as the horizon. Under all other
+sounds of life, but steadily and with sweet monotony, the world of
+little living things in grass and thicket made itself heard. The dewy
+darkness was a pleasure to Angelique, but Peggy moved restlessly, and
+finally clasped her hands behind her neck and leaned against the window
+side, watching as well as she could the queen of hearts opposite. She
+could herself feel Angelique's charm of beautiful health and outreaching
+sympathy. Peggy was a candid girl, and had no self-deceptions. But she
+did have that foreknowledge of herself which lives a germ in some
+unformed girls whose development surprises everybody. She knew she could
+become a woman of strength and influence, the best wife in the Territory
+for an ambitious man who had the wisdom to choose her. Her sharp
+fairness would round out, moreover, and her red head, melting the snows
+which fell in middle age on a Morrison, become a softly golden and
+glorious crown. At an age when Angelique would be faded, Peggy's richest
+bloom would appear. She was like the wild grapes under the bluffs; it
+required frost to ripen her. But women whom nature thus obliges to wait
+for beauty seldom do it graciously; transition is not repose.
+
+"Well, which is it to be, Rice Jones or Pierre Menard? Be candid with
+me, Angelique, as I would be with you. You know you will have to decide
+some time."
+
+"I do not think Monsieur Reece Zhone is for me," said Angelique, with
+intuitive avoidance of Colonel Menard's name; Peggy cared nothing for
+the fate of Colonel Menard. "Indeed, I believe his mind dwells more on
+his sister now than on any one else."
+
+"I hate people's relations!" cried Peggy brutally; "especially their
+sick relations. I couldn't run every evening to pet Maria Jones and feed
+her pap."
+
+"I do not pet her nor feed her pap," declared Angelique, put on the
+defensive. "Don't be a little beast, Peggy," she added in French.
+
+"I see how it is: you are going to take him. The man who needs a bug in
+his ear worse than any other man in the Territory will never be handed
+over to me to get it. But let me tell you, you will have your hands full
+with Rice Jones. This Welsh-English stock is not soft stuff to manage.
+When he makes that line with his lips that looks like a red-hot razor
+edge, his poor wife will wish to leave this earth and take to the
+bluffs."
+
+"You appear to think a great deal about Monsieur Reece Zhone and his
+future wife," said Angelique mischievously.
+
+"I know what you mean," said Peggy defiantly, "and we may as well have
+it out now as any time. If you throw him at me, I shall quarrel with
+you. I detest Rice Jones. He makes me crosser than any other person in
+the world."
+
+"How can you detest a man like that? I am almost afraid of him. He has
+a wonderful force. It is a great thing at his age to be elected to the
+National Assembly as the leader of his party in the Territory."
+
+"I am not afraid of him," said Peggy, with a note of pride.
+
+"No,--for I have sometimes thought, Peggy, that Monsieur Reece Zhone and
+you were made for each other."
+
+Peggy Morrison sneered. Her nervous laughter, however, had a sound of
+jubilation.
+
+The talk stopped there. They could see fog rising like a smoke from the
+earth, gradually making distant indistinct objects an obliterated
+memory, and filling the place where the garden had been.
+
+"We must go in and call for candles," said Angelique.
+
+"No," said Peggy, turning on the broad sill and stretching herself along
+it, "let me lay my head in your lap and watch that lovely mist come up
+like a dream. It makes me feel happy. You are a good girl, Angelique."
+
+
+
+
+PART THIRD.
+
+
+
+
+THE RISING.
+
+
+Father Baby's part in the common fields lay on the Mississippi side of
+the peninsula, quite three miles from town. The common fields as an
+entire tract belonged to the community of Kaskaskia; no individual held
+any purchased or transferable right in them. Each man who wished to
+could claim his proportion of acres and plant any crop he pleased, year
+after year. He paid no rent, but neither did he hold any fee in the
+land.
+
+Early on rainy summer mornings, the friar loved to hoist his capote on
+the cord, and tramp, bare-legged, out to his two-acre farm, leaving his
+slave, with a few small coins in the till, to keep shop should any
+customer forestall his return.
+
+"The fathers of all orders," explained Father Baby, "from their
+earliest foundations, have counted it a worthy mortification of the
+flesh to till the ground. And be ready to refresh me without grinning,
+when I come back muddy from performing the labor to which I might send
+you, if I were a man who loved sinful ease. Monastic habits are above
+the understanding of a black rascal like you.".
+
+The truth was, the friar loved to play in wet dirt. Civilized life and
+the confinement of a shop worked a kind of ferment in his wild spirit,
+which violent dancing somewhat relieved, but which intimate contact with
+the earth cooled and settled. Father Baby sometimes stripped off his
+capote and lay down in the hollow between furrows of corn, like a very
+lean but peaceful pig. He would not have been seen, on any account, and
+lifted an apprehensive head in the darkness of the morning if a bird
+rustled past. This performance he called a mortification of his frame;
+but when this sly churchman slipped up and put on his capote again, his
+thin visage bore the same gratified lines which may be seen on the face
+of a child making mud pies.
+
+It had rained steadily since the political field day which had drawn
+such crowds to Kaskaskia. The waters of the Okaw had risen, and Father
+Baby's way to his work had been across fields of puddles, through which
+he waded before dawn; knowing well that a week's growth of weeds was
+waiting for him in its rankness.
+
+The rain was not over. It barely yet restrained itself, and threatened
+without falling; blotting out distance as the light grew. A damp air
+blew from the northwest. Father Baby found the little avenues between
+his rows of maize and pea vines choked with the liberal growth which no
+man plants, and he fell furiously to work. His greatest pleasure was the
+order and thrift of his little farm, and until these were restored he
+could not even wallow comfortably. When he had hoed and pulled out
+stubborn roots until his back ached, he stood erect, letting his hands
+hang outspread, magnified by their mask of dirt, and rested himself,
+thinking of the winter dinners he would enjoy when this moist land
+should take on a silver coating of frost, and a frozen sward resist the
+tread of his wooden shoe.
+
+"O Lord," said Father Baby, "I confess I am a sinner; we all are. But I
+am a provident sinner who makes good use of the increase Thou dost send
+through the earth. I do Thee to wit that Antoine Lamarche's crop is
+pretty weedy. The lazy dog will have to buy of me, and if I do not skin
+him well--But hold on. My blessed Master, I had forgot that Antoine has
+a sick child in his house. I will set his garden in order for him.
+Perhaps Thou wilt count it to me for righteousness, and let it offset
+some of my iniquities."
+
+So when he had finished his own, the friar put his hoe into his
+neighbor's patch, and worked until the sweat rolled down his thin
+cheeks. Gusts of rain added their moisture. As much light as the world
+was to have that day filtered through sheets of vapor. The bluffs
+bordering the Okaw could not be seen except as a vague bank of forest;
+and as for the lowlands across the great river, they might as well have
+had no existence.
+
+It grew upon Father Baby's observation that the Mississippi had never
+looked so threatening. He stuck to his hoeing until he was nearly
+exhausted, and Antoine Lamarche's ground showed at least enough
+improvement to offset all the cheating he had done that week, and then
+made his way among bushes to the verge of the bank. The strong current
+always bearing down from the northwest against the peninsula had
+increased its velocity to a dizzy sweep. It bit out pieces of the shore
+as large as Father Baby's shop, and far and near these were seen falling
+in with splashes like the spouting of whales.
+
+"At this rate," said Father Baby aloud, "I shall have no part left in
+the common fields by next year."
+
+The river's tremendous rolling roar was also swollen to unusual
+magnitude. He looked afar over a tawny surface at undermined stumps and
+trees racing past one another. The June rise, which the melting of snows
+in those vague regions around its head-waters was called, had been
+considerable, but nothing to terrify the Kaskaskians. One week's rain
+and the drainage of the bottom lands could scarcely have raised the
+river to such a height. "Though Heaven alone can tell," grumbled the
+friar, "what the Mississippi will do for its own amusement. All the able
+slaves in Kaskaskia should be set to work on the levee before this day
+is an hour older."
+
+Carrying the hoe on his shoulder like any laborer, and drawing the hood
+of his garment over his bald crown as the mist of rain increased to a
+driving sheet, Father Baby tramped along the river edge toward an
+unfinished defense against the waters. It was a high dike, beginning on
+a shoulder of the peninsula above the town, but extending barely a mile
+across a marsh where the river had once continuously raveled the shore
+even in dry seasons. The friar was glad to discern a number of figures
+at work carting earth to the most exposed and sunken spots of this dike.
+
+The marsh inside the embankment was now a little lake, and some shouting
+black boys were paddling about there in a canoe which had probably been
+made during the leisure enforced by wet weather. It was a rough and
+clumsy thing, but very strongly put together.
+
+The tavern in Kaskaskia was a common meeting-place. Other guest houses,
+scattered through the town, fed and lodged the humble in an humble way;
+but none of them dared to take the name "tavern," or even to imitate its
+glories. In pleasant weather, its gallery was filled with men
+bargaining, or hiring the labor of other men. It was the gathering and
+distributing point of news, the headquarters of the Assembly when that
+body was in session,--a little hotel de ville, in fact, where municipal
+business was transacted.
+
+The wainscoted dining-room, which had a ceiling traversed by oak beams,
+had been the scene of many a stately banquet. In front of this was the
+bar-room, thirty by forty feet in dimensions, with a great stone
+fireplace built at one end. There was a high carved mantel over this,
+displaying the solid silver candlesticks of the house, and the silver
+snuffers on their tray embossed with dragons. The bar was at the end of
+the room opposite the fireplace, and behind it shone the grandest of
+negro men in white linen, and behind him, tier on tier, an array of
+flasks and flat bottles nearly reaching the low ceiling. Poor
+Kaskaskians who entered there, entered society. They always pulled their
+cappos off their heads, and said "Good-evening, messieurs," to the
+company in general. It was often as good as a feast to smell the spicy
+odors stealing out from the dining-room. It was a gentle community, and
+the tavern bar-room was by no means a resort of noisy drinkers. If any
+indecorum threatened, the host was able to quell it. He sat in his own
+leather chair, at the hearth corner in winter, and on the gallery in
+summer; a gigantic Frenchman, full of accumulated happiness.
+
+It was barely dusk when candles were lighted in the sconces around the
+walls, and on the mantel and bar. The host had his chair by a crackling
+fire, for continual dampness made the July night raw; and the crane was
+swung over the blaze with a steaming tea-kettle on one of its hooks.
+Several Indians also sat by the stone flags, opposite the host, moving
+nothing but their small restless eyes; aboriginal America watching
+transplanted Europe, and detecting the incompatible qualities of French
+and English blood.
+
+The bar-room had its orchestra of three banjos, making it a hall of
+music every night in the year. And herein Africa added itself to the
+civilization of the New World. Three coal-black slaves of the host's sat
+on a bench sacred to them, and softly twanged their instruments,
+breaking out at intervals into the wild chants of their people;
+improvising, and stimulating each other by musical hints and
+exclamations. It was evident that they esteemed their office; and the
+male public of Kaskaskia showed them consideration. While the volume of
+talk was never lessened during their glees, the talkers all listened
+with at least one ear. There was no loud brawling, and the laughter
+raised by argument rarely drowned the banjos. Sometimes a Frenchman was
+inspired to cut a pigeon wing; and Father Baby had tripped it over every
+inch of this oak floor, when the frenzy for dancing seized him and the
+tunes were particularly irresistible. The bar-room gave him his only
+taste of Kaskaskia society, and he took it with zest. Little wizened
+black-eyed fellows clapped their hands, delighting, while their priest
+was not by, in the antics of a disreputable churchman; but the bigger
+and colder race paid little attention to him.
+
+Various as were the home backgrounds of the lives converging at the
+tavern, there were but two topics before that little public while the
+cosy fire roared and the banjos rattled. A rumor of coming high water
+was running down the Mississippi valley like the wind which is driven
+before a rush of rain; and the non-separation party had suffered some
+local defeat in the Indiana Territory. The first item of news took
+greatest hold on those serious Anglo-Americans who had come from the
+Atlantic coast to found estates in this valley. On the contrary, the
+peasant tenant gave his mind to politics. It was still an intoxicating
+privilege for him to have a say in the government.
+
+"Dese Indiana Territory fellers," piped a grasshopper of a Frenchman,
+springing from his chair in excitement, "dey want our slaves, dey want
+our Territory,--dey want de hide off our backs."
+
+"Tony Lamarche," drawled a Virginian, "you don't know what you're
+talking about. You haven't e'er a slave to your name; and you don't own
+a foot of the Territory. As for your hide, it wouldn't make a drumhead
+nohow. So what are you dancin' about?"
+
+"If I got no land, I got some of dose rights of a citizen, eh?" snorted
+Antoine, planting himself in front of the Virginian, and bending forward
+until they almost touched noses.
+
+"I reckon you have, and I reckon you better use them. You git your
+family over on to the bluff before your house is sucked into the Okaw."
+
+"And go and hoe the weeds out of your maize patch, Antoine," exhorted
+Father Baby, setting an empty glass back on the bar. "I cleaned part of
+them out for you myself, with the rain streaming down my back, thinking
+only of your breadless children. And what do I find when I come home to
+my shop but that Antoine Lamarche has been in and carried off six
+dog-leg twists of tobacco on credit! I say nothing about it. I am a
+childless old friar; but I have never seen children eat tobacco."
+
+The baited Frenchman turned on Father Baby; but, like a skittish girl,
+the friar hopped across the room, shook off his wooden shoes, picked up
+the skirt of his habit, and began to dance. The exhilarating drink, the
+ruddiness of the fire, the discomfort outside, the smoothness of the oak
+boards,--these were conditions of happiness for Father Baby. This was
+perhaps the crowning instant of his experience. He was a butterfly man.
+He saw his lodger, Dr. Dunlap, appear at the door as haggard as the
+dead. The friar's first thought was:--
+
+      "That fellow has proposed for Mademoiselle Saucier and been
+      rejected. I'm glad I'm a churchman, and not yoked up to draw a
+      family, like these fools, and like he wants to be. This bowing
+      down and worshiping another human being,--crazy if you don't get
+      her, and crazed by her if you do,--I'll have none of it."
+
+Dr. Dunlap raised his arms and shouted to the company in the bar-room.
+What he said no one could hear. Hissing and roaring filled the world,
+submerging the crackling of the fire, the banjo tunes, and human voices.
+Men looked at each other, stupefied, holding their pipes from their
+mouths. Then a wave struck the solid old tavern, hissed across its
+gallery, and sprawled through the hall upon the bar-room floor. Not a
+person in the house could understand what had happened to Kaskaskia
+peninsula; but Jean Lozier stood on the bluff and saw it.
+
+Jean was watching the lights of Kaskaskia while his sick grandfather
+slept. The moon was nearly full, but on such a night one forgot there
+was a moon. The bushes dripped on Jean, and the valley below him was a
+blur pierced by those rows of lights. A great darkness was coming out of
+the northwest, whistling as it came. He saw the sky and the turbid
+Mississippi meet and strangely become one. There were waters over the
+heavens, and waters under the heavens. A wall like a moving dam swept
+across the world and filled it. The boy found himself sitting on the
+ground holding to a sapling, drenched and half drowned by the spray
+which dashed up the bluffs. The darkness and hissing went over him, and
+he thought he was dying without absolution, at the end of the world. He
+lay down and gasped and shuddered until the great Thing was gone,--the
+incredible Thing, in which no one believes except him who has seen it,
+and which no name can name; that awful spirit of Deluge, which lives in
+the traditions of every race. Jean had never heard of waterspout or
+cloudburst or any modern name given to the Force whenever its leash is
+slipped for a few minutes. He felt himself as trivial a thing in chaos
+as the ant which clung on his hand and bit him because it was drowning.
+
+The blind downpour being gone, though rain still fell and the wind
+whistled in his ears, Jean climbed across bent or broken saplings nearer
+the bluff's edge to look at Kaskaskia. The rows of lights were partially
+blotted; and lightning, by its swift unrollings, showed him a town
+standing in a lake. The Mississippi and the Okaw had become one water,
+spreading as far as the eye could see. Now bells began to clamor from
+that valley of foam. The bell of the Immaculate Conception, cast in
+France a hundred years before, which had tolled for D'Artaguette, and
+made jubilee over weddings and christenings, and almost lived the life
+of the people, sent out the alarm cry of smitten metal; and a tinkling
+appeal from the convent supplemented it.
+
+There was no need of the bells to rouse Kaskaskia; they served rather as
+sounding buoys in a suddenly created waterway. Peggy Morrison had come
+to stay all night with Angelique Saucier. The two girls were shut in
+their bedroom, and Angelique's black maid was taking the pins from
+Peggy's hair, when the stone house received its shock, and shuddered
+like a ship. Screams were heard from the cabins. Angelique threw the
+sashes open, and looked into storm and darkness; yet the lightning
+showed her a driving current of water combed by pickets of the garden
+fence. It washed over the log steps, down which some of her father's
+slaves were plunging from their doors, to recoil and scramble and mix
+their despairing cries with the wakening clamor of bells.
+
+Their master shouted encouragement to them from the back gallery.
+Angelique's candles were blown out by the wind when she and Peggy tried
+to hold them for her father. The terrified maid crouched down in a
+helpless bunch on the hall floor, and Madame Saucier herself brought the
+lantern from the attic. The perforated tin beacon, spreading its bits of
+light like a circular shower of silver on the gallery floor, was held
+high for the struggling slaves. Heads as grotesque as the waterspouts on
+old cathedrals craned through the darkness and up to the gallery posts.
+The men breasted the deepening water first, and howling little blacks
+rode on their fathers' shoulders. Captain Saucier pulled the trembling
+creatures in, standing waist-deep at the foot of the steps. The
+shrieking women balanced light bundles of dry clothes on their heads,
+and the cook brought useless kettles and pans, not realizing that all
+the food of the house was lost in a water-filled cellar.
+
+The entire white-eyed colony were landed, but scarcely before it was
+time to close the doors of the ark. A far-off roar and a swell like that
+of the ocean came across the submerged country. No slave had a chance to
+stand whimpering and dripping in the hall. Captain Saucier put up the
+bars, and started a black line of men and women, with pieces of
+furniture, loads of clothing and linen, bedding and pewter and silver,
+and precious baskets of china, or tiers of books, upon their heads, up
+the attic stairs. Angelique's harp went up between two stout fellows,
+tingling with little sighs as they bumped it on the steps.
+Tante-gra'mere's room was invaded, and her treasures were transferred
+before she had a chance to prohibit it. The children were taken from
+their beds by the nurse, and carried to beds made for them in the
+attic, where they gazed awhile at their rude dark canopy of rafters, and
+fell asleep again in luxury, sure of protection, and expecting much of
+such novel times.
+
+The attic, like the house under it, had dignity of space, in which
+another large family might have found shelter. Over rawhide trunks and
+the disused cradle and still-crib was now piled the salvage of a wealthy
+household. Two dormer windows pierced the roof fronting the street, and
+there was also one in the west gable, extending like a hallway toward
+the treetops, but none in the roof at the back.
+
+The timbers of the house creaked, and at every blow of the water the
+inmates could hear it splashing to the chimneys on one side, and running
+down on the other.
+
+"Now," said Captain Saucier desperately, "tante-gra'mere must be roused
+and carried up."
+
+"Yes, the feather beds are all piled together for her, with fresh linen
+sheets and all her cushions; but," gasped madame his wife, "she has
+never before been waked in the night. Is it not better to send Angelique
+to bring her by degrees into a frame of mind for being removed?"
+
+"There is no time. I have left her till the last minute, hoping she
+might wake."
+
+They made a procession into her chamber, Angelique and Peggy carrying
+candles, the grand-nephew and grand-niece ready for a conflict. Waters
+booming against the house, and already making river coves of familiar
+rooms, were scarcely more to be dreaded than the obstinate will of a
+creature as small as a child.
+
+Angelique lifted a ruffle of tante-gra'mere's nightcap and whispered in
+her ear. She stirred, and struck out with one hand, encountering the
+candle flame. That brought her upright, staring with indignant black
+eyes at the conclave.
+
+"Dear tante-gra'mere, we are in danger. There is a great overflow of the
+rivers."
+
+The autocrat felt for her whip in its accustomed place, and armed
+herself with it.
+
+"Pardon us for disturbing you, tante-gra'mere," said her grand-nephew,
+"but I am obliged to carry you into the attic."
+
+"Is the sun up?" cried the little voice.
+
+"The water is, madame," answered Peggy.
+
+"If you wait for the sun, tante-gra'mere," urged her grand-nephew's
+wife, "you will drown here."
+
+"Do you tell me I will drown in my own bed? I will not drown. Where is
+Wachique?"
+
+"She is carrying your chairs into the attic, tante-gra'mere."
+
+"My chairs gone to the attic in my lifetime? And who has claimed my
+dower chest and my linen?"
+
+"All your things are safely removed except this bedstead, madame,"
+declared Angelique's mother. "They were set down more carefully than my
+china."
+
+"How long have I been asleep?"
+
+"Only a few hours, tante-gra'mere. It is early in the night."
+
+Her withered face was quite wrathful.
+
+"The water is all over the floor, madame. We are standing to our ankles.
+In a few minutes we shall be standing to our knees. Look at it. Do you
+hear the roaring and the wash outside? Kaskaskia is under water, and the
+people have to climb to the roofs."
+
+The aged woman always listened incredulously to Peggy. She now craned
+over the side of the bed, and examined for herself streams like
+quicksilver slipping along the dark boards.
+
+"Why did you not do something to prevent this, instead of coming in here
+to break my rest?" she inquired.
+
+Captain Saucier extended his hands to lift her, but she lay down again,
+holding the whip bolt upright.
+
+"If I go to the attic, Captain Saucier, my bed goes with me."
+
+"There is not time to move it."
+
+"And there is such a beautiful bed up there, quite ready, with all your
+cushions."
+
+"My bed goes with me," repeated tante-gra'mere.
+
+"There will soon be water enough to carry it," remarked Peggy, "if it
+will float."
+
+Waves crashing across the gallery broke against tante-gra'mere's closed
+shutters and spurted between the sashes. This freak of the storm
+devastating Kaskaskia she regarded with sidelong scrutiny, such as a
+crow gives to the dubious figure set to frighten it. The majesty of the
+terror which was abroad drove back into their littleness those sticks
+and pieces of cloth which she had valued so long. Again came the crash
+of water, and this time the shutters bowed themselves and a sash blew
+in, and the Mississippi burst into the room.
+
+The candles were out, but Captain Saucier had caught up his relative as
+the water struck. Angelique groped for her mother, and she and Peggy led
+that dazed woman through the hall, laughing at their own shudders and
+splashes, and Captain Saucier waded after them. So the last vestige of
+human life forsook this home, taking to the shelter of the attic; and
+ripples drove into the fireplaces and frothed at the wainscots.
+
+The jangling of the bells, to which the family had scarcely listened in
+their nearer tumult and frantic haste, became very distinct in the
+attic. So did the wind which was driving that foaming sea. All the
+windows were closed, but moisture was blown through the tiniest
+crevices. There were two rooms in the attic. In the first one the slaves
+huddled among piles of furniture. The west room held the children's
+pallets and tante-gra'mere's lowly substitute for her leviathan bed. She
+sat up among pillows, blinking resentfully. Angelique at once had a pair
+of bedroom screens brought in, and stretched a wall of privacy across
+the corner thus occupied; but tante-gra'mere as promptly had them
+rearranged to give her a tunnel for observation. In chaotic anger and
+terror she snapped her whip at intervals.
+
+"What is it, dear tante-gra'mere?" Angelique would inquire.
+
+"Send Wachique down to bring up my bedstead."
+
+"But, dear tante-gra'mere, Wachique would drown. The water is already
+half way up the attic stairs."
+
+"Am I to lie here on the floor like a slave?"
+
+"Dear, there are six feather beds under you."
+
+"How long is this to last?"
+
+"Not long, I hope."
+
+Peggy stood at the gable window and looked out at the seething night. To
+her the peninsula seemed sinking. She could not see anything distinctly.
+Foam specked the panes. The bells kept up their alarm. Father Olivier
+was probably standing on the belfry ladder cheering his black ringer,
+and the sisters took turns at their rope with that determined calmness
+which was the rule of their lives. Peggy tried to see even the roof of
+her home. She was a grateful daughter; but her most anxious thoughts
+were not of the father and mother whose most anxious thoughts would be
+of her.
+
+When the fury of the cloudburst had passed over, and the lightning no
+longer flickered in their faces, and the thunder growled away in the
+southeast, the risen water began to show its rolling surface. A little
+moonlight leaked abroad through cloudy crevices. Angelique was bathing
+her mother's face with camphor; for Madame Saucier sat down and fainted
+comfortably, when nothing else could be done. Something bumped against
+the side of the house, and crept crunching and bumping along, and a
+voice hailed them.
+
+"That is Colonel Menard!" cried Angelique.
+
+Her father opened one of the dormer windows and held the lantern out of
+it. Below the steep roof a boat was dashed by the swell, and Colonel
+Menard and his oarsman were trying to hold it off from the eaves. A
+lantern was fastened in the prow.
+
+"How do you make a landing at this port?"
+
+"The saints know, colonel. But we will land you. How dared you venture
+out in the trail of such a storm?"
+
+"I do not like to wait on weather, Captain Saucier. Besides, I am a good
+swimmer. Are you all safe?"
+
+"Safe, thank Heaven," called Madame Saucier, reviving at the hint of
+such early rescue, and pressing to the window beside her husband. "But
+here are twenty people, counting our slaves, driven to the roof almost
+without warning; and who can say where the water will stop?"
+
+"On that account, madame, I came out with the boat as soon as I could.
+But we shall be stove in here. Monsieur the captain, can you let the
+family down the roof to me?"
+
+Captain Saucier thought he could, and he saw it would have to be done
+quickly. By dim lantern light the Saucier children were hurried into
+their clothing, and Wachique brought a wrap of fur and wool for
+tante-gra'mere. Three of the slave men were called in, and they rigged a
+rope around their master's waist, by which they could hold and guide him
+in his attempt to carry living freight down the slippery roof.
+
+"How many can you carry?" he inquired.
+
+"Six at a time," answered Colonel Menard. "To try to do more would
+hardly be safe, in this rough water."
+
+"Were the boats at the wharf swept away?"
+
+"It is not now easy to tell where the wharf was. But some of the large
+craft seem wedged among trees along the bluff. By daylight we shall get
+some out. And I have sent to the governor for all the boats he can
+muster for us."
+
+Angelique came to the dormer window and touched her father's shoulder.
+
+"Are you all ready?" he asked.
+
+"Tante-gra'mere will not go into the boat."
+
+"But she must. There will be six of you, with Peggy; and Colonel Menard
+cannot much longer hang by the eaves."
+
+"Perhaps if you pick her up and run with her, papa, as you did from the
+danger below, she may allow it."
+
+"She must go into the boat directly," said Captain Saucier; and the
+negroes paid out the rope as he stalked to the screened corner.
+
+Angelique leaned over the sill and the chill wilderness of waters. The
+wind sung in her ears. She could not distinctly see Colonel Menard, and
+there was such a sound of waves that she was not sure it was best to try
+her voice against them. His man had an oar thrust into the broken window
+below, and was thereby able to hold the boat against the current.
+
+"Monsieur the colonel!" called Angelique; and she saw the swift removal
+of his hat.
+
+"Mademoiselle, have you been alarmed?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur. Even my father was unable to do anything for the family
+until you came. But it seems when we find one relief we get another
+anxiety with it."
+
+"What other anxiety have you now?"
+
+"I am afraid you will be drowned trying to carry us out."
+
+"My bel-o-ved, would you care?" said Pierre Menard, speaking English,
+which his slave could not understand, and accenting on the first
+syllable the name he gave her.
+
+"Yes; it would be a serious inconvenience to me," replied Angelique.
+
+"Now that is worth coming here for. De northwest wind, I do not feel it
+since you say that."
+
+"I was thinking before you came, monsieur, what if I should never see
+you again? And if I saw you plainly now I could not talk so much. But
+something may happen. It is so strange, and like another world, this
+water."
+
+Tante-gra'mere screamed, and Angelique disappeared from the window-sill.
+It was not the mere outcry of a frightened woman. The keen small shriek
+was so terrible in its helplessness and appeal to Heaven that Captain
+Saucier was made limp by it.
+
+"What shall I do?" he asked his family.
+
+"I cannot force her into the boat when she cries out like that."
+
+"Perhaps she will go at dawn," suggested Angelique. "The wind may sink.
+The howling and the darkness terrify her more than the water."
+
+"But Colonel Menard cannot wait until dawn. We shall all be drowned here
+before she will budge," lamented Madame Saucier.
+
+"Leave her with me," urged Peggy Morrison, "and the rest of you go with
+Colonel Menard. I'll manage her. She will be ready to jump out of the
+window into the next boat that comes along."
+
+"We cannot leave her, Peggy, and we cannot leave you. I am responsible
+to your father for your safety. I will put you and my family into the
+boat, and stay with her myself."
+
+"Angelique will not leave me!" cried the little voice among the screens.
+
+"Are you ready to lower them?" called Colonel Menard.
+
+Captain Saucier went again to the window, his wife and daughter and
+Peggy with him.
+
+"I could not leave her," said Angelique to Peggy. They stood behind the
+father and mother, who told their trouble across the sill.
+
+"That spoiled old woman needs a good shaking," declared Peggy.
+
+"Poor little tante-gra'mere. It is a dreadful thing, Peggy, to be a
+child when you are too old for discipline."
+
+"Give my compliments to madame, and coax her," urged Colonel Menard.
+"Tell her, if she will let herself be lowered to me, I will pledge my
+life for her safety."
+
+The two children stood huddled together, waiting, large-eyed and silent,
+while their elders kneeled around the immovable invalid. Peggy laughed
+at the expectant attitudes of the pleaders.
+
+"Tante-gra'mere has now quite made up her mind to go," Madame Saucier
+announced over and over to her family and to Peggy, and to the slaves at
+the partition door, all of whom were waiting for the rescue barred from
+them by one obstinate little mummy.
+
+But these hopeful assertions were wasted. Tante-gra'mere had made up her
+mind to stay. She held to her whip, and refused to be touched. Her fixed
+decree was announced to Colonel Menard. He asked for the women and
+children of the family in haste. He and his man were wasting time and
+strength holding the boat against the waves. It was in danger of being
+swamped.
+
+Angelique stood deferentially before her father and asked his permission
+to stay with his grand-aunt. In the same deferential manner she asked
+permission of her mother. Madame Saucier leaned on her husband's
+shoulder and wept. It was plain that the mother must go with her two
+young children only. Peggy said she would not leave Angelique.
+
+"Monsieur the colonel," spoke Angelique again into the windy darkness,
+"we are not worth half the trouble you are taking for us. I wonder you
+do not leave such ridiculous people to drown or get out as we can. But
+my tante-gra'mere is so old; please forgive her. My mother and the
+children are quite ready. I wish poor Mademoiselle Zhone were with you,
+too."
+
+"I will fetch Mademoiselle Zhone out of her house before madame and the
+children get in," said Pierre Menard promptly. "As for the delay, it is
+nothing, mademoiselle; we must get you all to land as we can."
+
+"Monsieur, will it not be dangerous? I thought of her because she is so
+sick. But there is foam everywhere; and the trees are in your way."
+
+"We can find a track," answered the colonel. "Push off, boy."
+
+The boat labored out, and the click of oars in rowlocks became presently
+a distant thumping, and then all sound was lost in the wash of water.
+
+Angelique went to the dormer window in the gable. As she threw the
+sashes wide she was partly drenched by a wave, and tante-gra'mere sent
+from the screens a shrill mandate against wind which cut to the bone.
+Captain Saucier fastened the sashes again. He was a crestfallen man. He
+had fought Indians with credit, but he was not equal to the weakest
+member of his household.
+
+Occasionally the rafters creaked from a blow, and a wave rushed up the
+roof.
+
+"It is rising higher," said Peggy.
+
+Angelique wished she had not mentioned Mademoiselle Zhone. Perhaps, when
+the colonel had risked his life to bring the sick girl out of a swamped
+house, her family might prefer to wait until morning to putting her in
+the boat now.
+
+The bells kept ringing, now filling the attic with their vibrations, and
+then receding to a faint and far-off clamor as the wind swept by. They
+called to all the bluff-dwellers within miles of Kaskaskia.
+
+The children sat down, and leaned their heads against their mother's
+knee. The others waited in drawing-room chairs; feeling the weariness of
+anxiety and broken domestic habits. Captain Saucier watched for the
+return of the boat; but before it seemed possible the little voyage
+could be made they felt a jar under the gable window, and Rice Jones's
+voice called.
+
+The gable of the house had a sloping roof, its window being on a level
+with the other windows. Captain Saucier leaned far out. The wind had
+extinguished the boat's lantern. The rowers were trying to hold the boat
+broadside to the house, but it rose and fell on waves which became
+breakers and threatened to capsize it. All Kaskaskia men were acquainted
+with water. Pierre Menard had made many a river journey. But the
+Mississippi in this wild aspect was new to them all.
+
+"Can you take her in?" shouted Rice. "My sister thinks she cannot be got
+ashore alive."
+
+"Can you lift her to me?"
+
+"When the next wave comes," said Rice.
+
+He steadied himself and lifted Maria. As the swell again tossed the boat
+upward, he rose on a bench and lifted her as high as he could. Captain
+Saucier caught the frail bundle and drew the sick girl into the attic.
+He laid her down on the children's bed, leaving her to Angelique, while
+he prepared to put them and their mother into the boat. Rice crept over
+the wet strip of gable roof, and entered the window after his sister. By
+lantern light he was a strong living figure. His austerely white face
+was full of amusement at the Kaskaskian situation. His hat had blown
+away. The water had sleeked down his hair to a satin skullcap on his
+full head.
+
+"This is a wet night, madame and mesdemoiselles," he observed.
+
+"Oh, Monsieur Zhone," lamented Madame Saucier, "how can you laugh? We
+are all ruined."
+
+"No, madame. There is no such word as 'ruin' in the Territory."
+
+"And I must take my two little children, and leave Angelique here in the
+midst of this water."
+
+Rice had directly knelt down by his sister and put his hand on her
+forehead. Maria was quite still, and evidently gathering her little
+strength together.
+
+"But why do you remain?" said Rice to Angelique. She was at Maria's
+opposite side, and she merely indicated the presence behind the screens;
+but Peggy explained aloud,--
+
+"She can't go because tante-gra'mere won't be moved."
+
+"Put that limb of a Morrison girl out of the house," came an unexpected
+mandate from amongst the screens.
+
+"I would gladly put her out," said Captain Saucier anxiously. "Peggy, my
+child, now that Mademoiselle Zhone is with Angelique, be persuaded to go
+with madame and the children."
+
+Peggy shook her head, laughing. A keen new delight in delay and danger
+made her sparkle.
+
+"Go yourself, Captain Saucier. One gentleman is enough to take care of
+us."
+
+"I think you ought to go, Captain Saucier," said Rice. "You will be
+needed. The boat may be swamped by some of those large waves. I am
+ashamed of leaving my stepmother behind; but she would not leave my
+father, and Maria clung to me. We dared not fill the boat too full."
+
+Angelique ran and kissed the children before her father put them into
+the boat, and offered her cheeks to her mother. Madame Saucier was a fat
+woman. She clung appalled to her husband, as he let her over the
+slippery roof. Two slave men braced themselves and held the ropes which
+steadied him, the whites of their eyes showing. Their mistress was
+landed with a plunge, but steadied on her seat by Colonel Menard.
+
+"Oh," she cried out, "I have left the house without saying adieu to
+tante-gra'mere. My mind is distracted. She will as long as she lives
+remember this discourtesy."
+
+"It could be easily remedied, madame," suggested Colonel Menard,
+panting as he braced his oar, "if she would step into the boat herself,
+as we all wish her to do."
+
+"Oh, monsieur the colonel, you are the best of men. If you had only had
+the training of her instead of my poor gentle Francis, she might not be
+so hard to manage now."
+
+"We must not flatter ourselves, madame. But Mademoiselle Angelique must
+not remain here much longer for anybody's whim."
+
+"Do you think the water is rising?"
+
+"It is certainly rising."
+
+Madame Saucier uttered a shriek as a great swell rolled the boat. The
+searching wind penetrated all her garments and blew back loose ends of
+her hair. There was now a partially clear sky, and the moon sent forth a
+little lustre as a hint of what she might do when she had entirely freed
+herself from clouds.
+
+The children were lowered, and after them their black nurse.
+
+"There is room for at least one more!" called Pierre Menard.
+
+Captain Saucier stood irresolute.
+
+"Can you not trust me with these fragments of our families?" said Rice.
+
+"Certainly, Monsieur Reece, certainly. It is not that. But you see the
+water is still rising."
+
+"I was testing the rise of the water when Colonel Menard reached us. The
+wind makes it seem higher than it really is. You can go and return,
+captain, while you are hesitating."
+
+"I am torn in two," declared the Indian fighter. "It makes a child of me
+to leave Angelique behind."
+
+"Francis Saucier," came in shrill French from the screens, "get into
+that boat, and leave my godchild alone."
+
+The captain laughed. He also kissed the cheeks of tante-gra'mere's
+godchild and let himself slide down the roof, and the boat was off
+directly.
+
+The slaves, before returning to their own room, again fastened the
+sashes of the dormer window. The clamor of bells which seemed to pour
+through the open window was thus partly silenced. The lantern made its
+dim illumination with specks of light, swinging from a nail over the
+window alcove. Maria had not yet unclosed her eyes. Her wasted hand made
+a network around one of Rice's fingers, and as the coughing spasm seized
+her she tightened it.
+
+"She wants air," he said hastily, and Angelique again spread wide the
+window in the gable, when the thin cry of her tante-gra'mere forbade it.
+
+"But, dear tante-gra'mere, Mademoiselle Zhone must have air."
+
+"And must she selfishly give me rheumatism in order to give herself
+air?"
+
+"But, dear tante-gra'mere"--
+
+"Shut that window."
+
+"I dare not, indeed."
+
+Rice seized two corners of the feather pallet, and made it travel in a
+swift swish across the attic boards to the window at the front, which he
+opened. Supporting Maria in his arms, he signaled Angelique, with an
+amused face, to obey her tyrant; and she did so. But Peggy stalked
+behind the screens, and put her face close to the black eyes in the
+great soft lair built up of so many beds.
+
+"You and I are nice people, madame," said Peggy through her teeth. "We
+don't care who suffers, if we are happy. We ought to have been twins;
+the same little beast lives in us both."
+
+Tante-gra'mere's eyes snapped.
+
+"You are a limb," she responded in shrill French.
+
+"Yes; we know each other," said Peggy.
+
+"When you are old, there will come a little wretch to revile you."
+
+"I don't revile you, madame. I dote on you."
+
+"Your mother should box your ears, mademoiselle."
+
+"It would do me no good, madame."
+
+"I should like to try it," said tante-gra'mere, without humor.
+
+Angelique did not hear this little quarrel. She was helping Rice with
+his sister. His pockets were full of Maria's medicines. He set the
+bottles out, and Angelique arranged them ready for use. They gave her a
+spoonful and raised her on pillows, and she rested drowsily again,
+grateful for the damp wind which made the others shiver. Angelique's
+sweet fixed gaze, with an unconscious focus of vital power, dwelt on the
+sick girl; she felt the yearning pity which mothers feel. And this, or
+the glamour of dim light, made her oval face and dark hair so beautiful
+that Rice looked at her; and Peggy, coming from the screens, resented
+that look.
+
+Peggy sat down in the window, facing them, the dormer alcove making a
+tunnel through which she could watch like a spider; though she lounged
+indifferently against the frame, and turned toward the water streets and
+storm-drenched half houses which the moon now plainly revealed. The
+northwest wind set her teeth with its chill, and ripples of froth chased
+each other up the roof at her.
+
+"The water is still rising," remarked Peggy.
+
+"Look, Peggy," begged Angelique, "and see if Colonel Menard and my
+father are coming back with the boat."
+
+"It is too soon," said Rice.
+
+"Perhaps Colonel Menard will never come back," suggested Peggy. "It was
+a bad sign when the screech-owl screeched in the old Jesuit College."
+
+"But the storm is over now. The water is not washing over the house."
+
+"The moon shows plenty of whitecaps. It is rough."
+
+"As long as this wind lasts the water will be boisterous," said Rice.
+"But Colonel Menard no more minds rough weather than a priest carrying
+the sacrament. He is used to the rivers."
+
+"Hear a Protestant catering to a papist," observed Peggy. "But it is
+lost on Angelique. She is as good as engaged to Colonel Menard. She
+accepted him through the window before all of us, when he came to the
+rescue."
+
+"Must I congratulate him?" Rice inquired of Angelique. "He certainly
+deserves his good luck."
+
+"Peggy has no right to announce it so!" exclaimed Angelique, feeling
+invaded and despoiled of family privacy. "It is not yet called an
+engagement."
+
+Peggy glanced at Rice Jones, and felt grateful to Heaven for the flood.
+She admired him with keen appreciation. He took his disappointment as he
+would have taken an offered flower, considered it without changing a
+muscle, and complimented the giver.
+
+Guns began to be heard from the bluffs in answer to the bells. Peggy
+leaned out to look across the tossing waste at a dim ridge of shadow
+which she knew to be the bluffs. The sound bounded over the water. From
+this front window of the attic some arches of the bridge were always
+visible. She could not now guess where it crossed, or feel sure that any
+of its masonry withstood the enormous pressure.
+
+The negroes were leaning out of their dormer window, also, and watching
+the nightmare world into which the sunny peninsula was changed. When a
+particularly high swell threw foam in their faces they started back, but
+others as anxious took their places.
+
+"Boats will be putting out from the bluffs plentifully, soon," said
+Rice. "Before to-morrow sunset all Kaskaskia and its goods and chattels
+will be moved to the uplands."
+
+"I wonder what became of the poor cows," mused Angelique. "They were
+turned out to the common pasture before the storm."
+
+"Some of them were carried down by the rivers, and some swam out to the
+uplands. It is a strange predicament for the capital of a great
+Territory. But these rich lowlands were made by water, and if they can
+survive overflow they must be profited by it."
+
+"What effect will this have on the election?" inquired Peggy, and Rice
+laughed.
+
+"You can't put us back on our ordinary level, Miss Peggy. We are lifted
+above elections for the present."
+
+"Here is a boat!" she exclaimed, and the slaves at the other window
+hailed Father Olivier as he tried to steady himself at the angle formed
+by the roofs.
+
+Angelique looked out, but Rice sat still beside his sister.
+
+"Are you all quite safe?" shouted the priest.
+
+"Quite, father. The slaves were brought in, and we are all in the
+attic."
+
+"Keep up your courage and your prayers. As soon as this strong wind dies
+away they will put out from shore for you."
+
+"Colonel Menard has already been here and taken part of the family."
+
+"Has he?"
+
+"Yes, father; though tante-gra'mere is afraid to venture yet, so we
+remain with her."
+
+They could see the priest, indistinctly, sitting in a small skiff, which
+he tried to keep off the roof with a rough paddle.
+
+"Where did you find a boat, father?"
+
+"I think it is one the negroes had on the marsh by the levee. It lodged
+in my gallery, and by the help of the saints I am trying to voyage from
+house to house, as far as I can, and carry a little encouragement. I
+have the parish records here with me; and if this vessel capsizes, their
+loss would be worse for this parish than the loss of me."
+
+"But, father, you are not trying to reach the land in that frail canoe?"
+
+"Not yet, my daughter; not until some of the people are taken out. I did
+intend to venture for help, but the ringing of the bells has been of
+service to us. The sexton will stay in the belfry all night. I was able
+to get him there by means of this boat."
+
+"Come up here until the wind dies down, Monsieur Olivier," urged Peggy.
+"That little tub is not strong enough to carry you. I have seen it. The
+slaves made it, with scarcely any tools, of some boards from the old
+Jesuit College."
+
+"The little tub has done good service to-night, mademoiselle; and I must
+get as far as the tavern, at least, to carry news of their families to
+men there. Antoine Lamarche's child is dead, and his family are on the
+roof. I was able to minister to its parting soul; and I set the others,
+for safety, astride the roof-pole, promising them heavy penance if they
+moved before help came. He ought now to take this boat and go to them,
+if I can put him in heart to do it."
+
+"A Protestant hardly caters to a papist when he puts some faith in the
+courage of a man like Father Olivier," said Rice to Peggy.
+
+"Did I hint that you would cater to any one?" she responded, with a lift
+of her slender chin. The wind had blown out a long tress of Peggy's
+hair, which trailed to the floor. Rice seldom looked at her; but he
+noticed this sweep of living redness with something like approval; in
+shadow it shone softened to bronze.
+
+"I think my father and Colonel Menard are coming back," said Angelique.
+"I see a light moving out from the bluffs."
+
+"Oh, no; they are only picking their way among trees to a landing."
+
+"They have gone with the current and the wind," said Rice. "It will take
+a longer time to make their way back against the current and the wind."
+
+"Let us begin to bind and gag madame now, anyhow," Peggy suggested
+recklessly. "It's what the colonel will do, if he is forced to it. She
+will never of her own will go into the boat."
+
+"Poor tante-gra'mere. I should have asked Father Olivier to urge her.
+But this is such a time of confusion one thinks of nothing."
+
+Angelique bent to watch Maria's stupor. Rice had put the skeleton hand
+under a coverlet which was drawn to the sick girl's chin. He sat beside
+her on one of the brocaded drawing-room chairs, his head resting against
+the high back and his crossed feet stretched toward the window, in an
+attitude of his own which expressed quiescent power. Peggy went directly
+behind the screens, determined to pounce upon the woman who prolonged
+their stay in a flooded house, and deal with her as there would not be
+opportunity to do later. Tante-gra'mere was asleep.
+
+Angelique sat down with Peggy on the floor, a little way from the pile
+of feather beds. They were very weary. The tonic of excitement, and even
+of Rice Jones's presence, failed in their effect on Peggy. It was past
+midnight. The girls heard cocks crowing along the bluffs. Angelique took
+the red head upon her shoulder, saying,--
+
+"It would be better if we slept until they call, since there is nothing
+else to do."
+
+"You might coquette over Maria Jones. I won't tell."
+
+"What a thorn you are, Peggy! If I did not know the rose that goes with
+it"--Angelique did not state her alternative.
+
+"A red rose," scoffed Peggy; and she felt herself drowsing in the mother
+arms.
+
+Rice was keenly awake, and when the girls went into the privacy of the
+screens he sat looking out of the window at the oblong of darkly blue
+night sky which it shaped for him. His temples throbbed. Though the
+strange conditions around him were not able to vary his usual habits of
+thought, something exhilarated him; and he wondered at that, when Peggy
+had told him Angelique's decision against him. He felt at peace with the
+world, and for the first time even with Dr. Dunlap.
+
+"We are here such a little time," thought Rice, "and are all such poor
+wretches. What does it matter, the damage we do one another in our
+groping about? God forgive me! I would have killed that man, and maybe
+added another pang to the suffering of this dying girl."
+
+Maria stirred. The snoring of the sleeping negroes penetrated the
+dividing wall. He thought he heard a rasping on the shingles outside
+which could not be accounted for by wind or water, and rose to his feet,
+that instant facing Dr. Dunlap in the window.
+
+Dr. Dunlap had one leg across the low sill. The two men stood
+breathless. Maria saw the intruder. She sat up, articulating his name.
+At that piteous sound, betraying him to her brother, the cowardly
+impulse of many days' growth carried Dr. Dunlap's hand like a flash to
+his pocket. He fired his pistol directly into Rice's breast, and dropped
+back through the window to the boat he had taken from the priest.
+
+The screams of women and the terrified outcry of slaves filled the
+attic. Rice threw his arms above his head, and sunk downward. In the
+midst of the smoke Peggy knelt by him, and lifted his head and
+shoulders. The night wind blew upon them, and she could discern his
+dilated eyes and piteous amazement.
+
+"Dr. Dunlap has shot me," he said to her. "I don't know why he did it."
+And his face fell against her bosom as he died.
+
+
+
+
+PART FOURTH.
+
+
+
+
+THE FLOOD.
+
+
+The moonlight shone in through both windows and the lantern glimmered.
+The choking smell of gunpowder spread from room to room. Two of the
+slave men sprung across the sill to pursue Dr. Dunlap, but they could do
+nothing. They could see him paddling away from the house, and giving
+himself up to the current; a desperate man, whose fate was from that
+hour unknown. Night and the paralysis which the flood laid upon human
+action favored him. Did a still pitying soul bend above his wild-eyed
+and reckless plunging through whirls of water, comprehending that he had
+been startled into assassination; that the deed was, like the result of
+his marriage, a tragedy he did not foresee? Some men are made for
+strong domestic ties, yet run with brutal precipitation into the
+loneliness of evil.
+
+A desire to get out of the flood-bound tavern, an unreasonable impulse
+to see Angelique Saucier and perhaps be of use to her, a mistakenly
+silent entering of the house which he hardly knew how to
+approach,--these were the conditions which put him in the way of his
+crime. The old journey of Cain was already begun while Angelique was
+robbing her great-grand-aunt's bed of pillows to put under Rice Jones.
+The aged woman had gone into her shell of sleep, and the muffled shot,
+the confusion and wailing, did not wake her. Wachique and another slave
+lifted the body and laid it on the quickly spread couch of pillows.
+
+Nobody thought of Maria. She lay quite still, and made no sound in that
+flurry of terror.
+
+"He is badly hurt," said Angelique. "Lizette, bring linen, the first
+your hand touches; and you, Achille, open his vest and find the wound
+quickly."
+
+"But it's no use, ma'amselle," whispered Wachique, lifting her eyes.
+
+"Do not be afraid, poor Achille. I will show you how myself. We cannot
+wait for any one to help us. What would my father and Colonel Menard
+say, if they found Monsieur Reece Zhone killed in our house?"
+
+In her panic Angelique tore the vest wide, and found the great stain
+over the place where the heart should be. She was kneeling, and she
+turned back to Peggy, who stood behind her.
+
+Death is great or it is a piteous change, like the slaughter of brutes,
+according as we bear ourselves in its presence. How mighty an experience
+it is to wait where world overlaps the edge of world, and feel the
+vastness of eternity around us! A moment ago--or was it many ages?--he
+spoke. Now he is gone, leaving a strange visible image lying there to
+awe us. The dead take sudden majesty. They become as gods. We think they
+hear us when we speak of them, and their good becomes sacred. A dead
+face has all human faults wiped from it; and that Shape, that Presence,
+whose passiveness seems infinite, how it fills the house, the town, the
+whole world, while it stays!
+
+The hardest problem we have to face here is the waste of our best
+things,--of hopes, of patience, of love, of days, of agonizing labor, of
+lives which promise most. Rice's astonishment at the brutal waste of
+himself had already passed off his countenance. The open eyes saw
+nothing, but the lips were closed in sublime peace.
+
+"And his sister," wept Angelique. "Look at Mademoiselle Zhone, also."
+
+The dozen negroes, old and young, led by Achille, began to sob in music
+one of those sweet undertone chants for the dead which no race but
+theirs can master. They sung the power of the man and the tenderness of
+the young sister whose soul followed her brother's, and they called from
+that ark on the waters for saints and angels to come down and bless the
+beds of the two. The bells intoned with them, and a sinking wind
+carried a lighter ripple against the house.
+
+"Send them out," spoke Peggy Morrison, with an imperious sweep of the
+arm; and the half-breed authoritatively hurried the other slaves back to
+their doorway. The submissive race understood and obeyed, anxiously
+watching Peggy as she wavered in her erectness and groped with the
+fingers of both hands.
+
+"Put camphor under Ma'amselle Peggy's nose, Wachique," whispered
+Achille.
+
+Peggy found Rice's chair, and sat down; but as soon as she returned to a
+consciousness of the bottle under her nose and an arm around her, she
+said,--
+
+"Go away. A Morrison never faints."
+
+Angelique was kneeling like a nun. She felt the push of a foot.
+
+"Stop that crying," said Peggy fiercely. "I hate to hear it. What right
+have you to cry?"
+
+"No right at all. But the whole Territory will weep over this."
+
+"What right has the Territory in him now? The Territory will soon find
+another brilliant man."
+
+"And this poor tiny girl, Peggy, so near her death, what had she done to
+deserve that it should come in this form? Are men gone mad in this
+flood, that Dr. Dunlap, for a mere political feud, should seek out
+Monsieur Reece Zhone in my father's house, and shoot him down before our
+eyes? I am dazed. It is like a nightmare."
+
+Peggy set her mouth and looked abroad into the brightening night.
+
+Angelique dropped her face in her hands and shook with sobbing. The
+three girlish figures, one rigid on the bed, another rigid in the chair,
+and the third bending in vicarious suffering between them, were made
+suddenly clear by an illumination of the moon as it began to find the
+western window. Wachique had busied herself seeking among piles of
+furniture for candles, which she considered a necessity for the dead.
+The house supply of wax tapers was in the submerged cellar. So she took
+the lantern from its nail and set it on the floor at the head of the two
+pallets, and it threw scattered spots of lustre on Rice's white forehead
+and Maria's hair. This humble shrouded torch, impertinent as it looked
+when the lily-white moonlight lay across it, yet reminded beholders of a
+stable, and a Child born in a stable who had taught the race to turn
+every sorrow into glory.
+
+The night sent its quiet through the attic, though the bells which had
+clamored so over the destruction of verdure and homes appeared now to
+clamor louder over the destruction of youth.
+
+"Do you understand this, Peggy? They died heretic and unblessed, yet I
+want to know what they now know until it seems to me I cannot wait. When
+I have been playing the harp to tante-gra'mere, and thinking so much,
+long, long afternoons, such a strange homesickness has grown in me. I
+could not make anybody believe it if I told it. These two have found out
+what is beyond. They have found out the great secret. Oh, Peggy, I do
+want to know it, also. There will be an awful mourning over them; and
+when they go into their little earthen cellars, people will pity that,
+and say, 'Poor things.' But they know the mystery of the ages now, and
+we know nothing. Do you think they are yet very far away? Monsieur
+Reece? Mademoiselle?"
+
+Angelique's low interrogating call, made while she keenly listened with
+lifted face, had its only response in a mutter from Wachique, who feared
+any invocation of spirits. Peggy sat looking straight ahead of her
+without a word. She could not wash her face soft with tears, and she
+felt no reaching out towards disembodiment. What she wanted was love in
+this world, and pride in her love; long years of glad living on the
+verdure of earth in the light of the sun. One presence could make the
+common old world celestial enough for her. She had missed her desire.
+But Rice had turned his face to her as he died.
+
+Two boats moved to the eaves and rested there, shaken only by a ripple
+of the quieting water. The overflowed rivers would lie calm when the
+wind allowed it, excepting where a boiling current drove. The dazed
+girls yet seemed to dream through the strong indignation and the inquiry
+and fruitless plans of arriving men. It was a dream when Captain Saucier
+sat down and stared haggardly at the two who had perished under his
+roof, and Colonel Menard stood with his hat over his face. It was a
+dream when the brother and sister were lowered and placed on one pallet
+in a boat. The hollow of the rafters, the walls on which one might mark
+with his nail, the waiting black faces, the figures toiling down the
+roof with those loads,--were any of these sights real?
+
+"Wrap yourselves," said Captain Saucier to Peggy and Angelique. "The
+other boat is quite ready for you."
+
+"But, papa, are Monsieur Reece and his sister going alone with the
+rowers?"
+
+"I am myself going with them."
+
+"Papa," urged Angelique, "Mademoiselle Zhone was a young girl. If I
+were in her place, would you not like to have some young girl sit by my
+head?"
+
+"But you cannot go."
+
+"No, but Peggy can."
+
+"Peggy would rather go with you."
+
+"I am sure she will do it."
+
+"Will you, Peggy?"
+
+"Yes, I will."
+
+So Angelique wrapped Peggy first, and went with her as far as the
+window. It was the window through which Dr. Dunlap had stepped.
+
+"Good-by, dear Peggy," whispered Angelique; for the other seemed
+starting on the main journey of her life.
+
+"Good-by, dear Angelique."
+
+Peggy's eyes were tearless still, but she looked and looked at
+Angelique, and looked back mutely again when she sat at Rice's head in
+the boat. She had him to herself. Between the water and the sky, and
+within the dim horizon band, she could be alone with him. He was her own
+while the boat felt its way across the waste. The rowers sat on a bench
+over the foot of the pallet. Captain Saucier was obliged to steer. Peggy
+sat in the prow, and while they struggled against the rivers, she looked
+with the proud courage of a Morrison at her dead whom she must never
+claim again.
+
+The colonel put Angelique first into the waiting boat. Wachique was set
+in front of her, to receive tante-gra'mere when the potentate's
+chrysalid should be lowered. For the first time in her life Angelique
+leaned back, letting slip from herself all responsibility. Colonel
+Menard could bring her great-grand-aunt out. The sense of moving in a
+picture, of not feeling what she handled, and of being cut off from the
+realities of life followed Angelique into the boat. She was worn to
+exhaustion. Her torpid pulses owned the chill upon the waters.
+
+There was room in which a few of the little blacks might be stowed
+without annoying tante-gra'mere, but their mothers begged to keep them
+until all could go together.
+
+"Now, my children," said Colonel Menard, "have patience for another hour
+or two, when the boats shall return and bring you all off. The house is
+safe; there is no longer a strong wind driving waves over it. A few
+people in Kaskaskia have had to sit on their roofs since the water
+rose."
+
+Achille promised to take charge of his master's household. But one of
+the women pointed to the stain on the floor. The lantern yet burned at
+the head of Rice's deserted pillows. Superstition began to rise from
+that spot. They no longer had Angelique among them, with her atmosphere
+of invisible angels.
+
+"That is the blood of the best man in the Territory," said Colonel
+Menard. "I would give much more of my own to bring back the man who
+spilled it. Are you afraid of a mere blood-spot in the gray of the
+morning? Go into the other room and fasten the door, then. Achille will
+show you that he can stay here alone."
+
+"If mo'sieu' the colonel would let me go into that room, too"--
+
+"Go in, Achille," said the colonel indulgently.
+
+Colonel Menard made short work of embarking tante-gra'mere. In
+emergencies, he was deft and delicate with his hands. She never knew who
+caught her in coverlets and did her up like a papoose, with a pillow
+under her head.
+
+"Pull westward to the next street," he gave orders to his oarsmen. "We
+found it easy going with the current that way. It will double the
+distance, but give us less trouble to get into dead water the other side
+of the Okaw."
+
+Early summer dawn was breaking over that deluged world, a whiter light
+than moonshine giving increasing distinctness to every object. This hint
+of day gave rest to the tired ringers in church tower and convent
+belfry. The bells died away, and stillness brooded on the water plain.
+Hoarse roaring of the yellow current became a mere monotonous background
+for other sounds. A breath stole from the east, bringing the scent of
+rain-washed earth and foliage and sweet mints. There was no other wind;
+and the boat shot easily on its course alongside a thicket made by
+orchard treetops. Some birds, maybe proprietors of drowned nests, were
+already complaining over these, or toppling experimentally down on
+branch tips.
+
+Kaskaskia had become a strange half-town, cut off around its middle. It
+affected one like a man standing on his armpits. The capital of the
+Territory was composed chiefly of roofs and dormer windows, of squatty
+wooden islands in a boundless sea. The Church of the Immaculate
+Conception was a laughable tent of masonry, top-heavy with its square
+tower. As for cultivated fields and the pastures where the cattle
+grazed, such vanished realities were forgotten. And what was washing
+over the marble tombs and slate crosses in the churchyard?
+
+The flood strangely lifted and forced skyward the plane of life, yet
+lowered all life's functions. An open and liberal sky, dappling with a
+promise from the east, bent over and mocked paralyzed humanity.
+
+The noble bluffs had become a sunken ridge, water meeting the forests a
+little below their waists. From their coverts boats could now be seen
+putting out in every direction, and, though the morning star was paling,
+each carried a light. They were like a party of belated fireflies
+escaping from daylight. Faces in dormer windows waited for them. Down by
+the Jesuit College weak hurrahs arose from people on roofs.
+
+"The governor has come with help for us," said Pierre Menard.
+
+In this dead world of Kaskaskia not a dog barked; not one of the
+shortened chimney-stacks smoked. Some of the houses had their casements
+closed in terrible silence; but out of others neighbors looked and
+greeted Angelique in the abashed way peculiar to people who have not got
+used to an amputation, and are sensitive about their new appearance in
+the world. Heads leaned out, also, firing jokes after the boat, and
+offering the colonel large shares in the common fields and entire crops
+for a seat in his conveyance.
+
+Drift of rotten wood stuck to the house sides, and broken trees or
+stumps, jammed under gallery roofs, resented the current, and broke the
+surface as they rose and dipped. Strange craft, large and small, rode
+down the turgid sweep. Straw beehives rolled along like gigantic pine
+cones, and rustic hencoops of bottom-land settlers kept their balance as
+they moved. Far off, a cart could be outlined making a hopeless ford.
+The current was so broad that its sweep extended beyond the reach of
+sight; and perhaps the strangest object carried by this tremendous force
+was a small clapboarded house. Its back and front doors stood open, and
+in the middle of the floor stood a solitary chair. One expected to see a
+figure emerge from a hidden corner and sit down forlornly in the chair.
+
+The slender voice of a violin stole across the water,--an exorcism of
+the spell that had fallen on Kaskaskia. As the boat reached the tavern
+corner, this thread of melody was easily followed to the ballroom on the
+second floor of the tavern, where the Assembly balls were danced. A
+slave, who had nothing but his daily bread to lose, and who would be
+assured of that by the hand of charity when his master could no longer
+maintain him, might take up the bow and touch the fiddle gayly in such a
+time of general calamity. But there was also dancing in the ballroom.
+The boat turned south and shot down a canal bordered by trunkless shade
+trees, which had been one of the principal streets of Kaskaskia. At the
+instant of turning, however, Father Baby could be seen as he whirled,
+though his skinny head and gray capote need not have added their
+evidence to the exact sound of his foot which came so distinctly across
+the water. His little shop, his goods, his secret stocking-leg of
+coin,--for Father Baby was his own banker,--were buried out of sight.
+His crop in the common fields and provision for winter lay also under
+the Mississippi. His late lodger had taken to the river, and was
+probably drowned. He had no warrant except in the nimbleness of his
+slave's legs that he even had a slave left. Yet he had never in his life
+felt so full of dance. The flood mounted to his head like wine. Father
+Olivier was in the tavern without forbidding it. Doubtless he thought
+the example an exhilarating one, when a grown-up child could dance over
+material loss, remembering only the joy of life.
+
+Wachique had felt her bundle squirm from the moment it was given to her.
+She enlarged on the hint Colonel Menard had given, and held the drapery
+bound tightly around the prisoner. The boat shot past the church, and
+over the spot where St. John's bonfire had so recently burnt out, and
+across that street through which the girls had scampered on their
+Midsummer Night errand.
+
+"But stop," said Colonel Menard; and he pointed out to the rowers an
+obstruction which none of them had seen in the night. From the Jesuit
+College across the true bed of the Okaw a dam had formed, probably
+having for its base part of the bridge masonry. Whole trees were swept
+into the barricade. "We cannot now cross diagonally and come back
+through the dead water at our leisure, for there is that dam to be
+passed. Pull for the old college."
+
+The boat was therefore turned, and thus took the same course that the
+girls had taken. The current was at right angles with its advance,
+though the houses on the north somewhat broke that force. The roofless
+building, ridiculously shortened in its height, had more the look of a
+fortress than when it was used as one. The walls had been washed out
+above both great entrances, making spacious jagged arches through which
+larger craft than theirs could pass. Colonel Menard was quick to see
+this; he steered and directed his men accordingly. The Jesuit College
+was too well built to crumble on the heads of chance passers, though
+the wind and the flood had battered it; to row through it would shorten
+their course.
+
+Angelique did not say a word about the changed aspect of her world. A
+warmth in the pearly light over the bluffs promised a clear day: and how
+Kaskaskia would look with the sun shining on her predicament! The boat
+cut through braiding and twisting water, and shot into the college. Part
+of the building's upper floor remained; everything else was gone.
+
+The walls threw a shadow upon them, and the green flicker, dancing up
+and down as they disturbed the inclosure, played curiously on their
+faces. The stones suddenly echoed a slap. Tante-gra'mere's struggling
+wrath, which Wachique had tried to keep bound in the coverlet, having
+found an outlet, was swift as lightning in its reprisal. The stings of
+the whiplash had exhilaration and dignity compared to this attack. It
+was the climax of her midget rages. She forgot the breeding of a
+gentlewoman, and furiously struck her slave in the face.
+
+Wachique started up, her Pottawatomie blood painting her cheek bones.
+That instant she was an Indian, not a slave. She remembered everything
+this petted despot had done to her, and, lifting her bundle, threw it as
+far as her arms could send it across the water floor of the college. The
+pitiful little weight sunk with a gurgling sound.
+
+"Sit down, woman!" shouted Colonel Menard.
+
+Wachique cowered, and tried to obey. But the motion she had given the
+boat was not to be overcome. It careened, and the water rushed over
+their knees, filled it full, and became a whirlpool of grasping hands
+and choking heads.
+
+The overturned boat, wedged partially under the flooring, lodged against
+the eastern wall. Both negro rowers came up from their plunge and
+climbed like cats upon this platform, smearing a mire of sodden
+plastering over their homespun trousers as they crawled. One of them
+reached down and caught the half-breed by the hair, as she rose at the
+edge of the flooring. Between them they were able to draw her up.
+
+The shock of a cold flood around Angelique's ears sent life as vivid as
+fire through her brain. The exhaustion and stupor of the night were
+gone. She felt her body swallowed. It went down to the floor where the
+girls had walked when they chanted, "Hempseed, I sow thee." It rose, and
+all the rapturous advantage which there was in continuing to inhabit it
+took mighty possession of her. She was so healthily, so happily lodged.
+It was a sin to say she was longing for the mystery hereafter, when all
+the beautiful mysteries here were unknown to her. Then Colonel Menard
+was holding her up, and she was dragged to sight and breathing once
+more, and to a solid support under her melting life. She lay on the
+floor, seeing the open sky above her, conscious that streams of water
+poured from her clothes and her hair, ran down her face, and dripped
+from her ears. A slow terror which had underlain all these physical
+perceptions now burst from her thoughts like flame. Her
+great-grand-aunt, the infant of the house, was all this time lying at
+the bottom of the old college. It was really not a minute, but minutes
+are long to the drowning. Angelique caught her breath, saying,
+"Tante-gra'mere!" She heard a plunge, and knew that Colonel Menard had
+stood on the platform only long enough to cast aside his coat and shoes
+before he dived.
+
+The slaves, supporting themselves on their palms, stretched forward,
+open-mouthed. There was the rippling surface, carrying the shadow of the
+walls. Nothing came up. A cow could be heard lowing on the bluffs to her
+lost calf. The morning twitter of birds became an aggressive and
+sickening sound.
+
+"Where is he?" demanded Angelique, creeping also to her trembling knees.
+"Where is monsieur the colonel?"
+
+Both men gave her the silent, frightened testimony of their rolling
+eyes, but Wachique lay along the floor with hidden face. Not a bubble
+broke the yellow sheet smothering and keeping him down.
+
+As the driving of steel it went through Angelique that the aching and
+passion and ferocity which rose in her were love. She loved that man
+under the water; she so loved him that she must go down after him; for
+what was life, with him there? She must have loved him when she was a
+child, and he used to take off his hat to her, saying, "Good-day,
+mademoiselle." She must have felt a childish jealousy of the woman
+called Madame Menard, who had once owned him,--had owned the very
+coloring of his face, the laugh in his eye, the mastery of his presence
+among men. She loved Colonel Menard--and he was gone.
+
+"Turn over the boat!" screamed Angelique. "He is caught in the cellars
+of this old house,--the floors are broken. We must find him. He will
+never come up."
+
+The men, ready to do anything which was suggested to their slow minds,
+made haste to creep along the weakened flooring, which shook as they
+moved, and to push the boat from its lodgment. The oars were fast in the
+rowlocks, and stuck against beams or stones, and made hard work of
+getting the boat righted.
+
+"Why does he not come up? Does any one stay under water as long as this?
+Oh, be quick! Turn it,--turn it over!" Angelique reached down with the
+men to grasp the slippery boat, her vivid will giving their clumsiness
+direction and force. They got it free and turned it, dipping a little
+water as they did so; but she let herself into its wet hollow and bailed
+that out with her hands. The two dropped directly after her, and with
+one push of the oars sent the boat over the spot where Colonel Menard
+had gone down.
+
+"Which of you will go in?"
+
+"Ma'amselle, I can't swim," piteously declared the older negro.
+
+"Neither can I, ma'amselle," pleaded the other.
+
+"Then I shall have to go in myself. I cannot swim, either, and I shall
+die, but I cannot help it."
+
+The desperate and useless impulse which so often perishes in words
+returned upon her with its absurdity as she stared down, trying to part
+the muddy atoms of the Mississippi. The men held the boat in a scarcely
+visible stream moving from west to east through the gaps in the
+building. They eyed her, waiting the motions of the Caucasian mind, but
+dumbly certain it was their duty to seize her if she tried to throw
+herself in.
+
+They waited until Angelique hid her face upon a bench, shivering in her
+clinging garments with a chill which was colder than any the river gave.
+A ghostly shadow of themselves and the boat and the collapsed figure of
+the girl began to grow upon the water. More stones in the moist walls
+showed glistening surfaces as the light mounted. The fact that they had
+lost their master, that his household was without a head, that the
+calamity of Kaskaskia involved their future, then took possession of
+both poor fellows, and the great heart of Africa shook the boat with
+sobs and groans and useless cries for help.
+
+"Come out here, you black rascals!" called a voice from the log dam.
+
+Angelique lifted her head. Colonel Menard was in plain sight, resting
+his arms across a tree, and propping a sodden bundle on branches.
+Neither Angelique nor his men had turned a glance through the eastern
+gap, or thought of the stream sweeping to the dam. The spot where he
+sank, the broken floor, the inclosing walls, were their absorbing
+boundaries as to his fate. As the slaves saw him, a droll and sheepish
+look came on their faces at having wailed his death in his living ears.
+They shot through the door vigorously, and brought the boat with care
+alongside the trunk supporting him.
+
+The colonel let them take tante-gra'mere in. He was exhausted. One arm
+and his cheek sunk on the side of the boat, and they drew him across it,
+steadying themselves by the foliage upreared by the tree.
+
+He opened his eyes, and saw rose and pearl streaks in the sky. The sun
+was mounting behind the bluffs. Then a canopy of leaves intervened, and
+a whir of bird wings came to his ears. The boat had reached dead water,
+and was moving over the submerged roadbed, and groping betwixt the stems
+of great pecan-trees,--the great pecan-trees which stood sentinel on the
+river borders of his estate. He noticed how the broken limbs flourished
+in the water, every leaf satisfied with the moisture it drew.
+
+The colonel realized that he was lying flat in a boat which had not been
+bailed dry, and that his head rested on wet homespun, by its odor
+belonging to Louis or Jacques; and he saw their black naked arms
+paddling with the oars. Beyond them he saw Wachique holding her mistress
+carefully and unrestrained; and the negro in her quailed before him at
+the deed the Indian had done, scarcely comforted by the twinkle in the
+colonel's eye. Tante-gra'mere was sitting up meekly, less affected by
+dampness than anybody else in the boat. She had a fresh and toughened
+look. Her baptism in the rivers had perhaps renewed her for another
+century.
+
+"Madame, you are certainly the most remarkable woman in this Territory.
+You have borne this night marvelously well, and the accident of the boat
+even better."
+
+"Not at all, monsieur the colonel."
+
+She spoke as children do when effectually punished for ill temper.
+
+"Are you cold?"
+
+"I am wet, monsieur. We are all wet. It is indeed a time of flood."
+
+"We shall soon see a blazing fire and a hot breakfast, and all the
+garments in the country will be ours without asking."
+
+The colonel raised himself on his elbow and looked around. Angelique sat
+beside his head; so close that they both blushed.
+
+They were not wet nor chilled nor hungry. They had not looked on death
+nor felt the shadow of eternity. The sweet mystery of continued life was
+before them. The flood, like a sea of glass, spread itself to the
+thousand footsteps of the sun.
+
+Tante-gra'mere kept her eyes upon them. But it is not easy to hear what
+people say when you are riding among treetops and bird's-nests in the
+early morning.
+
+"Mademoiselle, we are nearly home."
+
+"Yes, monsieur."
+
+"It has been to me a great night."
+
+"I can understand that, monsieur."
+
+"The children will be dancing when they see you. Odile and Pierre were
+awake, and they both cried when the first boat came home last night
+without you."
+
+"Monsieur the colonel, you are too good to us."
+
+"Angelique, do you love me?"
+
+"It is true, monsieur."
+
+"But it must be owned I am a dozen years older than you, and I have
+loved before."
+
+"I never have."
+
+"Does it not seem a pity, then, that you who have had the pick of the
+Territory should become the second wife of Pierre Menard?"
+
+"I should rather be the second choice with you, monsieur, than the first
+choice of any other man in the Territory."
+
+"Mademoiselle, I adore you."
+
+"That remains to be seen, monsieur."
+
+"What did you think when I was under water?"
+
+"I did not think, monsieur. I perished. It was then you conquered me."
+
+"Good. I will take to the water whenever any little difference arises
+between us. It is a lucky thing for me that I am a practiced river man."
+
+"I do not say it could be done again. Never will there be such another
+night and morning."
+
+"Now see how it is with nature, Angelique. Life is always rising out of
+death. This affair of ours,--I call it a lily growing out of the water.
+Does it trouble you that your old home is out there standing almost to
+its eaves in the Mississippi?"
+
+"Papa cannot now give me so good a dower." The girl's lowered eyes
+laughed into his.
+
+"We will not have any settlements or any dower. We will be married in
+this new American way. Everything I have left from this flood will be
+yours and the children's, anyhow. But while there is game in the woods,
+or bacon in the cellar, or flour in the bin, or wine to be tapped, or a
+cup of milk left, not a child or woman or man shall go hungry. I was not
+unprepared for this. My fur storehouse there on the bank of the Okaw is
+empty. At the first rumor of high water I had the skins carried to the
+strong-house on the hill."
+
+Angelique's wet hair still clung to her forehead, but her warmth had
+returned with a glow. The colonel was a compact man, who had passed
+through water as his own element. To be dripping was no hindrance to his
+courtship.
+
+"When may we celebrate the marriage?"
+
+"Is it a time to speak of marriage when two are lying dead in the
+house?"
+
+His countenance changed at the rebuke, and, as all fortunate people do
+when they have passed the selfish fury of youth, he apologized for
+success.
+
+"It is true. And Reece Zhone was the only man in the Territory whom I
+feared as a rival. As soon as he is laid low I forget him. He would not
+so soon forget me. Yet I do not forget him. The whole Illinois Territory
+will remember him. But Reece Zhone himself would not blame me, when I am
+bringing you home to my house, for hinting that I hope to keep you
+there."
+
+"To keep me there, monsieur the colonel! No, I am not to be married in a
+hurry."
+
+"But I made my proposals months ago, Angelique. The children and I have
+long had our secrets about bringing you home. Two of them sit on my knee
+and two of them climb my back, and we talk it over. They will not let
+you leave the house alive, mademoiselle. Father Olivier will still
+celebrate the sacraments among us. Kaskaskia will have the consolations
+of religion for this flood; but I may not have the consolation of
+knowing my own wedding-day."
+
+"The church is now half full of water."
+
+"Must I first bail out the church?"
+
+"I draw the line there, monsieur the colonel. You are a prevailing man.
+You will doubtless wind me around your thumb as you do the Indians. But
+when I am married, I will be married in church, and sign the register in
+the old way. What, monsieur, do you think the water will never go down?"
+
+"It will go down, yes, and the common fields will be the better for it.
+But it is hard a man should have to watch a rivergauge to find out the
+date of his own wedding."
+
+"Yet one would rather do that than never have a wedding at all."
+
+"I kiss your hand on that, mademoiselle."
+
+"What are those little rings around the base of the trees, monsieur the
+colonel?"
+
+"They are marks which show that the water is already falling. It must be
+two inches lower than last night on the Church of the Immaculate
+Conception. I am one sixth of a foot on my way toward matrimony."
+
+A tent like a white blossom showed through the woods; then many more.
+The bluffs all about Pierre Menard's house were dotted with them. Boats
+could be seen coming back from the town, full of people. Two or three
+sails were tacking northward on that smooth and glistening fresh-water
+sea. Music came across it, meeting the rising sun; the nuns sang their
+matin service as they were rowed.
+
+Angelique closed her eyes over tears. It seemed to her like floating
+into the next world,--in music, in soft shadow, in keen rapture,--seeing
+the light on the hills beyond while her beloved held her by the hand.
+
+All day boats passed back and forth between the tented bluffs and the
+roofs of Kaskaskia, carrying the goods of a temporarily houseless
+people. At dusk, some jaded men came back--among them Captain Saucier
+and Colonel Menard--from searching overflow and uplands for Dr. Dunlap.
+
+At dusk, also, the fireflies again scattered over the lake, without
+waiting for a belated moon. Jean Lozier stood at the top of the bluff,
+on his old mount of vision, and watched these boats finishing the work
+of the day. They carried the only lights now to be seen in Kaskaskia.
+
+He was not excited by the swarming life just below him. His idea of
+Kaskaskia was not a buzzing encampment around a glittering seigniory
+house, with the governor's presence giving it grandeur, and Rice Jones
+and his sister, waiting their temporary burial on the uplands, giving it
+awe. Old Kaskaskia had been over yonder, the place of his desires, his
+love. The glamour and beauty and story were on the smothered valley, and
+for him they could never be anywhere else.
+
+Father Olivier came out on the bluff, and Jean at once pulled his cap
+off, and looked at the ground instead of at the pale green and
+wild-rose tints at the farther side of the world. They heard the soft
+wash of the flood. The priest bared his head to the evening air.
+
+"My son, I am sorry your grandfather died last night, while I was unable
+to reach him."
+
+"Yes, father."
+
+"You have been a good son. Your conscience acquits you. And now the time
+has come when you are free to go anywhere you please."
+
+Jean looked over the flood.
+
+"But there's no place to go to now, father. I was waiting for Kaskaskia,
+and Kaskaskia is gone."
+
+"Not gone, my son. The water will soon recede. The people will return to
+their homes. Kaskaskia will be the capital of the new State yet."
+
+"Yes, father," said Jean dejectedly. He waited until the priest
+sauntered away. It was not for him to contradict a priest. But watching
+humid darkness grow over the place where Kaskaskia had been, he told
+himself in repeated whispers,--
+
+"It'll never be the same again. Old Kaskaskia is gone. Just when I am
+ready to go there, there is no Kaskaskia to go to."
+
+Jean sat down, and propped his elbows on his knees and his face in his
+hands, as tender a spirit as ever brooded over ruin. He thought he could
+bear the bereavement better if battle and fire had swept it away; but to
+see it lying drowned before him made his heart a clod.
+
+Singly and in bunches the lantern-bearing boats came home to their
+shelter in the pecan-trees, leaving the engulfed plain to starlight. No
+lamp was seen, no music tinkled there; in the water streets the evening
+wind made tiny tracks, and then it also deserted the town, leaving the
+liquid sheet drawn and fitted smoothly to place. Nothing but water,
+north, west, and south; a vast plain reflecting stars, and here and
+there showing spots like burnished shields. The grotesque halves of
+buildings in its foreground became as insignificant as flecks of shadow.
+The sky was a clear blue dome, the vaporous folds of the Milky Way
+seeming to drift across it in indistinct light.
+
+Now, above the flowing whisper of the inland sea, Jean Lozier could hear
+other sounds. Thunder began in the north, and rolled with its cloud
+toward the point where Okaw and Mississippi met; shaggy lowered heads
+and flying tails and a thousand hoofs swept past him; and after them
+fleet naked men, who made themselves one with the horses they rode. The
+buffalo herds were flying before their hunters. He heard bowstrings
+twang, and saw great creatures stagger and fall headlong, and lie
+panting in the long grass.
+
+Then pale blue wood smoke unfolded itself upward, and the lodges were
+spread, and there was Cascasquia of the Illinois. Black gowns came down
+the northern trail, and a cross was set up.
+
+The lodges passed into wide dormered homesteads, and bowers of foliage
+promised the fruits of Europe among old forest trees. Jean heard the
+drum, and saw white uniforms moving back and forth, and gun barrels
+glistening, and the lilies of France floating over expeditions which put
+out to the south. This was Kaskaskia. The traffic of the West gathered
+to it. Men and women crossed the wilderness to find the charm of life
+there; the waterways and a north trail as firm as a Roman road bringing
+them easily in. Neyon de Villiers lifted the hat from his fine gray head
+and saluted society there; and the sulky figure of Pontiac stalked
+abroad. Fort Gage, and the scarlet uniform of Great Britain, and a new
+flag bearing thirteen stripes swam past Jean's eyes. The old French days
+were gone, but the new American days, blending the gathered races into
+one, were better still. Kaskaskia was a seat of government, a Western
+republic, rich and merry and generous and eloquent, with the great river
+and the world at her feet. The hum of traffic came up to Jean. He saw
+the beautiful children of gently nurtured mothers; he saw the men who
+moulded public opinion; he saw brawny white-clothed slaves; he saw the
+crowded wharf, the bridge with long rays of motes stretching across it
+from the low-lying sun.
+
+Now it disappeared. The weird, lonesome flood spread where that city of
+his desires had been.
+
+"Kaskaskia is gone. 'But the glory remains when the light fades away.'"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Old Kaskaskia, by Mary Hartwell Catherwood
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD KASKASKIA ***
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #18423 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18423)