“Eh bien?” said Monsieur Vigo.

I shook my head, but in spite of me I felt the tears welling into my eyes and brushed them away shamefully.  At such times of stress some of my paternal Scotch crept into my speech.

“I will no be leaving Colonel Clark and the boys,” I cried, “not for all the money in the world.”

“Congress money?” said Monsieur Vigo, with a queer expression.

It was then I laughed through my tears, and that cemented the friendship between us.  It was a lifelong friendship, though I little suspected it then.

In the days that followed he never met me on the street that he did not stop to pass the time of day, and ask me if I had changed my mind.  He came every morning to headquarters, where he and Colonel Clark sat by the hour with brows knit.  Monsieur Vigo was as good as his word, and took the Congress money, though not at such a value as many would have had him.  I have often thought that we were all children then, and knew nothing of the ingratitude of republics.  Monsieur Vigo took the money, and was all his life many, many thousand dollars the poorer.  Father Gibault advanced his little store, and lived to feel the pangs of want.  And Colonel Clark?  But I must not go beyond the troubles of that summer, and the problems that vexed our commander.  One night I missed him from the room where we slept, and walking into the orchard found him pacing there, where the moon cast filmy shadows on the grass.  By day as he went around among the men his brow was unclouded, though his face was stern.  But now I surprised the man so strangely moved that I yearned to comfort him.  He had taken three turns before he perceived me.

“Davy,” he said, “what are you doing here?”

“I missed you, sir,” I answered, staring at the furrows in his face.

“Come!” he said almost roughly, and seizing my hand, led me back and forth swiftly through the wet grass for I know not how long.  The moon dipped to the uneven line of the ridge-pole and slipped behind the stone chimney.  All at once he stopped, dropped my hand, and smote both of his together.

“I will hold on, by the eternal!” he cried.  “I will let no American read his history and say that I abandoned this land.  Let them desert!  If ten men be found who will stay, I will hold the place for the Republic.”

“Will not Virginia and the Congress send you men, sir?” I asked wonderingly.

He laughed a laugh that was all bitterness.

“Virginia and the Continental Congress know little and care less about me,” he answered.  “Some day you will learn that foresight sometimes comes to men, but never to assemblies.  But it is often given to one man to work out the salvation of a people, and be destroyed for it.  Davy, we have been up too long.”