“Have the men called in by detachments,” he said, “and fed.  God knows they must be hungry,—­and you.”

Suddenly I remembered that he himself had had nothing.  Running around the commandant’s house to the kitchen door, I came unexpectedly upon Swein Poulsson, who was face to face with the linsey-woolsey-clad figure of Monsieur Rocheblave’s negro cook.  The early sun cast long shadows of them on the ground.

“By tam,” my friend was saying, “so I vill eat.  I am choost like an ox for three days, und chew grass.  Prairie grass, is it?”

“Mo pas capab’, Michie,” said the cook, with a terrified roll of his white eyes.

“Herr Gott!” cried Swein Poulsson, “I am red face.  Aber Herr Gott, I thank thee I am not a nigger.  Und my hair is bristles, yes.  Davy” (spying me), “I thank Herr Gott it is not vool.  Let us in the kitchen go.”

“I am come to get something for the Colonel’s breakfast,” said I, pushing past the slave, through the open doorway.  Swein Poulsson followed, and here I struck another contradiction in his strange nature.  He helped me light the fire in the great stone chimney-place, and we soon had a pot of hominy on the crane, and turning on the spit a piece of buffalo steak which we found in the larder.  Nor did a mouthful pass his lips until I had sped away with a steaming portion to find the Colonel.  By this time the men had broken into the storehouse, and the open place was dotted with their breakfast fires.  Clark was standing alone by the flagstaff, his face careworn.  But he smiled as he saw me coming.

“What’s this?” says he.

“Your breakfast, sir,” I answered.  I set down the plate and the pot before him and pressed the pewter spoon into his hand.

“Davy,” said he.

“Sir?” said I.

“What did you have for your breakfast?”

My lip trembled, for I was very hungry, and the rich steam from the hominy was as much as I could stand.  Then the Colonel took me by the arms, as gently as a woman might, set me down on the ground beside him, and taking a spoonful of the hominy forced it between my lips.  I was near to fainting at the taste of it.  Then he took a bit himself, and divided the buffalo steak with his own hands.  And when from the camp-fires they perceived the Colonel and the drummer boy eating together in plain sight of all, they gave a rousing cheer.

“Swein Poulsson helped get your breakfast, sir, and would eat nothing either,” I ventured.

“Davy,” said Colonel Clark, gravely, “I hope you will be younger when you are twenty.”

“I hope I shall be bigger, sir,” I answered gravely.

CHAPTER XIV

HOW THE KASKASKEIANS WERE MADE CITIZENS

Never before had such a day dawned upon Kaskaskia.  With July fierceness the sun beat down upon the village, but man nor woman nor child stirred from the darkened houses.  What they awaited at the hands of the Long Knives they knew not,—­captivity, torture, death perhaps.  Through the deserted streets stalked a squad of backwoodsmen headed by John Duff and two American traders found in the town, who were bestirring themselves in our behalf, knocking now at this door and anon at that.