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.