id Hamilton. "Confine him.
We'll see how long it will take to refresh his mind. We'll puncture the
big windbag."

While this curt scene was passing, the flag of Great Britain rose over
the fort to the lusty cheering of the victorious soldiers.

Hamilton treated Helm and Beverley with extreme courtesy. He was a
soldier, gruff, unscrupulous and cruel to a degree; but he could not
help admiring the daring behavior of these two officers who had wrung
from him the best terms of surrender. He gave them full liberty, on
parole of honor not to attempt escape or to aid in any way an enemy
against him while they were prisoners.

Nor was it long before Helm's genial and sociable disposition won the
Englishman's respect and confidence to such an extent that the two
became almost inseparable companions, playing cards, brewing toddies,
telling stories, and even shooting deer in the woods together, as if
they had always been the best of friends.

Hamilton did not permit his savage allies to enter the town, and he
immediately required the French inhabitants to swear allegiance to
Great Britain, which they did with apparent heartiness, all save M.
Roussillon, who was kept in close confinement and bound like a felon,
chafing lugubriously and wearing the air of a martyr. His prison was a
little log pen in one corner of the stockade, much open to the weather,
its gaping cracks giving him a dreary view of the frozen landscape
through which the Wabash flowed in a broad steel-gray current. Helm,
who really liked him, tried in vain to procure his release; but
Hamilton was inexorable on account of what he regarded as duplicity in
M. Roussillon's conduct.

"No, I'll let him reflect," he said; "there's nothing like a little
tyranny to break up a bad case of self-importance. He'll soon find out
that he has over-rated himself!"

CHAPTER X

M. ROUSSILLON ENTERTAINS COLONEL HAMILTON

A day or two after the arrival of Hamilton the absent garrison of
buffalo hunters straggled back to Vincennes and were duly sworn to
demean themselves as lawful subjects of Great Britain. Rene de Ronville
was among the first to take the oath, and it promptly followed that
Hamilton ordered him pressed into service as a wood-chopper and
log-hauler during the erection of a new blockhouse, large barracks and
the making of some extensive repairs of the stockade. Nothing could
have been more humiliating to the proud young Frenchman. Every day he
had to repor