lands.  He was a very quiet, dignified, and unobtrusive gentleman, and in point of common sense and intelligence much above the average of the race to which he belonged; but, like all the rest of the French stock, woefully wanting in energy and never in a hurry.  He was a splendid fiddler, and consequently a favorite with all, especially the young folks, who easily pressed him into service on all occasions to play for their numerous dances.  He died at Prairie du Pont, in 1863, at the age of eighty-one years.  His mother, Manette Le Compt, then a young girl, was one of the bridesmaids of the kidnaped bride.”)

Yes, the marshes were then in a chain along the foot of the bluffs:  Grand Marais, Marais de Bois Coupe, Marais de l’Ourse, Marais Perdu; with a rigole here and there, straight as a canal, to carry the water into the Mississippi.  You do not see Cahokia beautiful as it was when Monsieur St. Ange de Bellerive was acting as governor of the Illinois Territory, and waiting at Fort Chartres for the British to take possession after the conquest.  Some people had indeed gone off to Ste. Grenevieve, and to Pain Court, that you now call Sah Loui’, where Pontiac was afterwards buried under sweetbrier, and is to-day trampled under pavements.  An Indian killed Pontiac between Cahokia and Prairie du Pont.  When he rose from his body and saw it was not a British knife, but a red man’s tomahawk, he was not a chief who would lie still and bear it in silence.  Yes, I have heard that he has been seen walking through the grapevine tangle, all bleached as if the bad redness was burned out of him.  But the priest will tell you better, my son.  Do not believe such tales.

Besides, no two stories are alike.  Pontiac was killed in his French officer’s uniform, which Monsieur de Montcalm gave him, and half the people who saw him walking declared he wore that, while the rest swore he was in buckskins and a blanket.  You see how it is.  A veritable ghost would always appear the same, and not keep changing its clothes like a vain girl.  Paul Le Page had a fit one night from seeing the dead chief with feathers in his hair, standing like stone in the white French uniform.  But do not credit such things.

It was half a dozen years before Pontiac’s death that Celeste Barbeau was kidnaped on her wedding day.  She lived at Prairie du Pont; and though Prairie du Pont is but a mile and a half south of Cahokia, the road was not as safe then as it now is.  My mother was one of the bridesmaids; she has told it over to me a score of times.  The wedding was to be in the church; the same church that now stands on the east side of the square.  And on the south side of the square was the old auberge.  Claudis Beauvois said you could get as good wines at that tavern as you could in New Orleans.  But the court-house was not built until 1795.  The people did not need a court-house.  They had no quarrels among themselves which the priest could not settle, and