Then came my own greatest hour.  All morning I had been polishing and tightening the drum, and my pride was so great as we fell into line that so much as a smile could not be got out of me.  Picture it all:  Vincennes in black and white by reason of the bright day; eaves and gables, stockade line and capped towers, sharply drawn, and straight above these a stark flagstaff waiting for our colors; pigs and fowls straying hither and thither, unmindful that this day is red on the calendar.  Ah! here is a bit of color, too,—­the villagers on the side streets to see the spectacle.  Gay wools and gayer handkerchiefs there, amid the joyous, cheering crowd of thrice-changed nationality.

“Vive les Bostonnais!  Vive les Americains!  Vive Monsieur le Colonel Clark!  Vive le petit tambour!”

“Vive le petit tambour!” That was the drummer boy, stepping proudly behind the Colonel himself, with a soul lifted high above mire and puddle into the blue above.  There was laughter amongst the giants behind me, and Cowan saying softly, as when we left Kaskaskia, “Go it, Davy, my little gamecock!” And the whisper of it was repeated among the ranks drawn up by the gate.

Yes, here was the gate, and now we were in the fort, and an empire was gained, never to be lost again.  The Stars and Stripes climbed the staff, and the folds were caught by an eager breeze.  Thirteen cannon thundered from the blockhouses—­one for each colony that had braved a king.

There, in the miry square within the Vincennes fort, thin and bronzed and travel-stained, were the men who had dared the wilderness in ugliest mood.  And yet none by himself would have done it—­each had come here compelled by a spirit stronger than his own, by a master mind that laughed at the body and its ailments.

Colonel George Rogers Clark stood in the centre of the square, under the flag to whose renown he had added three stars.  Straight he was, and square, and self-contained.  No weakening tremor of exultation softened his face as he looked upon the men by whose endurance he had been able to do this thing.  He waited until the white smoke of the last gun had drifted away on the breeze, until the snapping of the flag and the distant village sounds alone broke the stillness.

“We have not suffered all things for a reward,” he said, “but because a righteous cause may grow.  And though our names may be forgotten, our deeds will be remembered.  We have conquered a vast land that our children and our children’s children may be freed from tyranny, and we have brought a just vengeance upon our enemies.  I thank you, one and all, in the name of the Continental Congress and of that Commonwealth of Virginia for which you have fought.  You are no longer Virginians, Kentuckians, Kaskaskians, and Cahokians—­you are Americans.”

He paused, and we were silent.  Though his words moved us strongly, they were beyond us.

“I mention no deeds of heroism, of unselfishness, of lives saved at the peril of others.  But I am the debtor of every man here for the years to come to see that he and his family have justice from the Commonwealth and the nation.”