I could not help thinking of a man who had not been wont to speak of his intentions, who had kept his counsel for a year before Kaskaskia.

“I need my drummer boy, Davy,” he said, his face lighting up, “but he will not be a drummer boy now.  He will be a trusted officer of high rank, mind you.  Come,” he cried, seizing me by the arm, “I will write the commission this instant.  But hold! you read French,—­I remember the day Father Gibault gave you your first lesson.”  He fumbled in his pocket, drew out a letter, and handed it to me.  “This is from Citizen Michaux, the famous naturalist, the political agent of the French Republic.  Read what he has written me.”

I read, I fear in a faltering voice:—­

“Citoyen General: 

“Un homme qui a donne des preuves de son amour pour la Liberte et de sa haine pour le despotisme ne devait pas s’adresser en vain au ministre de la Republique francaise.  General, il est temps que les Americains libres de l’Ouest soient debarasses d’un ennemie aussi injuste que meprisable.”

When I had finished I glanced at the General, but he seemed not to be heeding me.  The sun was setting above the ragged line of forest, and a blue veil was spreading over the tumbling waters.  He took me by the arm and led me into the house, into a bare room that was all awry.  Maps hung on the wall, beside them the General’s new commission, rudely framed.  Among the littered papers on the table were two whiskey bottles and several glasses, and strewn about were a number of chairs, the arms of which had been whittled by the General’s guests.  Across the rough mantel-shelf was draped the French tricolor, and before the fireplace on the puncheons lay a huge bearskin which undoubtedly had not been shaken for a year.  Picking up a bottle, the General poured out generous helpings in two of the glasses, and handed one to me.

“The mists are bad, Davy,” said he “I—­I cannot afford to get the fever now.  Let us drink success to the army of the glorious Republic, France.”

“Let us drink first, General,” I said, “to the old friendship between us.”

“Good!” he cried.  Tossing off his liquor, he set down the glass and began what seemed a fruitless search among the thousand papers on the table.  But at length, with a grunt of satisfaction, he produced a form and held it under my eyes.  At the top of the sheet was that much-abused and calumniated lady, the Goddess of Liberty.

“Now,” he said, drawing up a chair and dipping his quill into an almost depleted ink-pot, “I have decided to make you, David Ritchie, with full confidence in your ability and loyalty to the rights of liberty and mankind, a captain in the Legion on the Mississippi.”

I crossed the room swiftly, and as he put his pen to paper I laid my hand on his arm.

“General, I cannot,” I said.  I had seen from the first the futility of trying to dissuade him from the expedition, and I knew now that it would never come off.  I was willing to make almost any sacrifice rather than offend him, but this I could not allow.  The General drew himself up in his chair and stared at me with a flash of his old look.