“The Colonel bids you come to the fort,” he said, and was gone.

The church bell rang with slow, ominous strokes, far different from its gentle vesper peal of yesterday.  Two companies were drawn up in the sun before the old Jesuit house, and presently through the gate a procession came, grave and mournful.  The tone of it was sombre in the white glare, for men had donned their best (as they thought) for the last time,—­cloth of camlet and Cadiz and Limbourg, white cotton stockings, and brass-buckled shoes.  They came like captives led to execution.  But at their head a figure held our eye,—­a figure that spoke of dignity and courage, of trials borne for others.  It was the village priest in his robes.  He had a receding forehead and a strong, pointed chin; but benevolence was in the curve of his great nose.  I have many times since seen his type of face in the French prints.  He and his flock halted before our young Colonel, even as the citizens of Calais in a bygone century must have stood before the English king.

The scene comes back to me.  On the one side, not the warriors of a nation that has made its mark in war, but peaceful peasants who had sought this place for its remoteness from persecution, to live and die in harmony with all mankind.  On the other, the sinewy advance guard of a race that knows not peace, whose goddess of liberty carries in her hand a sword.  The plough might have been graven on our arms, but always the rifle.

The silence of the trackless wilds reigned while Clark gazed at them sternly.  And when he spoke it was with the voice of a conqueror, and they listened as the conquered listen, with heads bowed—­all save the priest.

Clark told them first that they had been given a false and a wicked notion of the American cause, and he spoke of the tyranny of the English king, which had become past endurance to a free people.  As for ourselves, the Long Knives, we came in truth to conquer, and because of their hasty judgment the Kaskaskians were at our mercy.  The British had told them that the Kentuckians were a barbarous people, and they had believed.

He paused that John Duff might translate and the gist of what he had said sink in.  But suddenly the priest had stepped out from the ranks, faced his people, and was himself translating in a strong voice.  When he had finished a tremor shook the group.  But he turned calmly and faced Clark once more.

“Citizens of Kaskaskia,” Colonel Clark went on, “the king whom you renounced when the English conquered you, the great King of France, has judged for you and the French people.  Knowing that the American cause is just, he is sending his fleets and regiments to fight for it against the British King, who until now has been your sovereign.”

Again he paused, and when the priest had told them this, a murmur of astonishment came from the boldest.