“A soldier must be dignified,” I answered.

“The saints bar that wurrd from hiven,” said Terence, trying to pronounce it.  “Come, we’ll go to mass, or me mother will be visitin’ me this night.”

We crossed the square and went into the darkened church, where the candles were burning.  It was the first church I had ever entered, and I heard with awe the voice of the priest and the fervent responses, but I understood not a word of what was said.  Afterwards Father Gibault mounted to the pulpit and stood for a moment with his hand raised above his flock, and then began to speak.  What he told them I have learned since.  And this I know, that when they came out again into the sunlit square they were Americans.  It matters not when they took the oath.

As we walked back towards the fort we came to a little house with a flower garden in front of it, and there stood Colonel Clark himself by the gate.  He stopped us with a motion of his hand.

“Davy,” said he, “we are to live here for a while, you and I. What do you think of our headquarters?” He did not wait for me to reply, but continued, “Can you suggest any improvement?”

“You will be needing a soldier to be on guard in front, sir,” said I.

“Ah,” said the Colonel, “McChesney is too valuable a man.  I am sending him with Captain Bowman to take Cahokia.”

“Would you have Terence, sir?” I ventured, while Terence grinned.  Whereupon Colonel Clark sent him to report to his captain that he was detailed for orderly duty to the commanding officer.  And within half an hour he was standing guard in the flower garden, making grimaces at the children in the street.  Colonel Clark sat at a table in the little front room, and while two of Monsieur Rocheblave’s negroes cooked his dinner, he was busy with a score of visitors, organizing, advising, planning, and commanding.  There were disputes to settle now that alarm had subsided, and at noon three excitable gentlemen came in to inform against a certain Monsieur Cerre, merchant and trader, then absent at St. Louis.  When at length the Colonel had succeeded in bringing their denunciations to an end and they had departed, he looked at me comically as I stood in the doorway.

“Davy,” said he, “all I ask of the good Lord is that He will frighten me incontinently for a month before I die.”

“I think He would find that difficult, sir,” I answered.

“Then there’s no hope for me,” he answered, laughing, “for I have observed that fright alone brings a man into a fit spiritual state to enter heaven.  What would you say of those slanderers of Monsieur Cerre?”

Not expecting an answer, he dipped his quill into the ink-pot and turned to his papers.

“I should say that they owed Monsieur Cerre money,” I replied.

The Colonel dropped his quill and stared.  As for me, I was puzzled to know why.

“Egad,” said Colonel Clark, “most of us get by hard knocks what you seem to have been born with.”  He fell to musing, a worried look coming on his face that was no stranger to me later, and his hand fell heavily on the loose pile of paper before him.  “Davy,” says he, “I need a commissary-general.”