the east, bringing the scent of
rain-washed earth and foliage and sweet mints. There was no other wind;
and the boat shot easily on its course alongside a thicket made by
orchard treetops. Some birds, maybe proprietors of drowned nests, were
already complaining over these, or toppling experimentally down on
branch tips.

Kaskaskia had become a strange half-town, cut off around its middle. It
affected one like a man standing on his armpits. The capital of the
Territory was composed chiefly of roofs and dormer windows, of squatty
wooden islands in a boundless sea. The Church of the Immaculate
Conception was a laughable tent of masonry, top-heavy with its square
tower. As for cultivated fields and the pastures where the cattle
grazed, such vanished realities were forgotten. And what was washing
over the marble tombs and slate crosses in the churchyard?

The flood strangely lifted and forced skyward the plane of life, yet
lowered all life's functions. An open and liberal sky, dappling with a
promise from the east, bent over and mocked paralyzed humanity.

The noble bluffs had become a sunken ridge, water meeting the forests a
little below their waists. From their coverts boats could now be seen
putting out in every direction, and, though the morning star was paling,
each carried a light. They were like a party of belated fireflies
escaping from daylight. Faces in dormer windows waited for them. Down by
the Jesuit College weak hurrahs arose from people on roofs.

"The governor has come with help for us," said Pierre Menard.

In this dead world of Kaskaskia not a dog barked; not one of the
shortened chimney-stacks smoked. Some of the houses had their casements
closed in terrible silence; but out of others neighbors looked and
greeted Angelique in the abashed way peculiar to people who have not got
used to an amputation, and are sensitive about their new appearance in
the world. Heads leaned out, also, firing jokes after the boat, and
offering the colonel large shares in the common fields and entire crops
for a seat in his conveyance.

Drift of rotten wood stuck to the house sides, and broken trees or
stumps, jammed under gallery roofs, resented the current, and broke the
surface as they rose and dipped. Strange craft, large and small, rode
down the turgid sweep. Straw beehives rolled along like gigantic pine
cones, and rustic hencoops of bottom-land settlers kept their balance as
they moved. Far off, a cart could be ou