“Davy, sir,” I answered.

“Ha,” he said, “and a brave soldier, no doubt.”

I was flattered as well as astonished by this attention.  But Monsieur Vigo knew men, and he had given them time to turn around.  By this time Bill Cowan and some of my friends had stooped through the doorway, followed by a prying Kaskaskian brave and as many Creoles as could crowd behind them.  Monsieur Vigo was surprisingly calm.

“It make hot weather, my frens,” said he.  “How can I serve you, messieurs?”

“Hain’t the Congress got authority here?” said one.

“I am happy to say,” answered Monsieur Vigo, rubbing his hands, “for I think much of your principle.”

“Then,” said the man, “we come here to trade with Congress money.  Hain’t that money good in Kaskasky?”

There was an anxious pause.  Then Monsieur Vigo’s eyes twinkled, and he looked at me.

“And what you say, Davy?” he asked.

“The money would be good if you took it, sir,” I said, not knowing what else to answer.

“Sapristi!” exclaimed Monsieur Vigo, looking hard at me.  “Who teach you that?”

“No one, sir,” said I, staring in my turn.

“And if Congress lose, and not pay, where am I, mon petit maitre de la haute finance?” demanded Monsieur Vigo, with the palms of his hands outward.

“You will be in good company, sir,” said I.

At that he threw back his head and laughed, and Bill Cowan and my friends laughed with him.

“Good company—­c’est la plupart de la vie,” said Monsieur Vigo.  “Et quel garcon—­what a boy it is!”

“I never seed his beat fer wisdom, Mister Vigo,” said Bill Cowan, now in good humor once more at the prospect of rum and tobacco.  And I found out later that he and the others had actually given to me the credit of this coup.  “He never failed us yet.  Hain’t that truth, boys?  Hain’t we a-goin’ on to St. Vincent because he seen the Ha’r Buyer sculped on the Ohio?”

The rest assented so heartily but withal so gravely, that I am between laughter and tears over the remembrance of it.

“At noon you come back,” said Monsieur Vigo.  “I think till then about rate of exchange, and talk with your Colonel.  Davy, you stay here.”

I remained, while the others filed out, and at length I was alone with him and Jules, his clerk.

“Davy, how you like to be trader?” asked Monsieur Vigo.

It was a new thought to me, and I turned it over in my mind.  To see the strange places of the world, and the stranger people; to become a man of wealth and influence such as Monsieur Vigo; and (I fear I loved it best) to match my brains with others at a bargain,—­I turned it all over slowly, gravely, in my boyish mind, rubbing the hard dirt on the floor with the toe of my moccasin.  And suddenly the thought came to me that I was a traitor to my friends, a deserter from the little army that loved me so well.