d Helm. Must stop."

"To Colonel Clark."

Having completed this task, the letter shows under what a nervous
strain, Helm turned to his lieutenant and said:

"Fire a swivel with a blank charge. We'll give these weak-kneed
parly-voos one more call to duty. Of course not a frog-eater of them
all will come. But I said that a gun should be the signal. Possibly
they didn't hear the first one, the damned, deaf, cowardly hounds!"

Beverley wheeled forth the swivel and rammed a charge of powder home.
But when he fired it, the effect was far from what it should have been.
Instead of calling in a fresh body of militia, it actually drove out
the few who up to that moment had remained as a garrison; so that
Captain Helm and his Lieutenant found themselves quite alone in the
fort, while out before the gate, deployed in fine open order, a strong
line of British soldiers approached with sturdy steps, led by a tall,
erect, ruddy-faced young officer.

CHAPTER IX

THE HONORS OF WAR

Gaspard Roussillon was thoroughly acquainted with savage warfare, and
he knew all the pacific means so successfully and so long used by
French missionaries and traders to control savage character; but the
emergency now upon him was startling. It confused him. The fact that he
had taken a solemn oath of allegiance to the American government could
have been pushed aside lightly enough upon pressing occasion, but he
knew that certain confidential agents left in Vincennes by Governor
Abbott had, upon the arrival of Helm, gone to Detroit, and of course
they had carried thither a full report of all that happened in the
church of St. Xavier, when Father Gibault called the people together,
and at the fort, when the British flag was hauled down and la banniere
d'Alice Roussillon run up in its place. His expansive imagination did
full credit to itself in exaggerating the importance of his part in
handing the post over to the rebels. And what would Hamilton think of
this? Would he consider it treason? The question certainly bore a
tragic suggestion.

M. Roussillon lacked everything of being a coward, and treachery had no
rightful place in his nature. He was, however, so in the habit of
fighting windmills and making mountains of molehills that he could not
at first glance see any sudden presentment with a normal vision. He had
no love for Englishmen and he did like Americans, but he naturally
thought that Helm's talk of fighting Hamilton was, as his own