't be scared. Go on with your dance. But
remember that you are dancing under Virginia and not under England."

[Illustration: VIEW IN THE NORTHWESTERN MOUNTAINS.]

As he was speaking, a crowd of men dressed like himself slipped into the
room. They were all armed, and in a minute they spread through the fort,
laying hands on the guns of the soldiers. The fort had been taken
without a blow or a shot.

Rocheblave, the French commandant, was in bed while these events were
taking place, not dreaming that an American was within five hundred
miles. He learned better when the new-comers took him prisoner and began
to search for his papers. The reason they did not find many of these was
on account of their American respect for ladies. The papers were in
Madame Rocheblave's room, which the Americans were too polite to enter,
not knowing that she was shoving them as fast as she could into the
fire, so that there was soon only a heap of ashes. A few were found
outside, enough to show what the Americans wanted to make sure of,--that
the English were doing their best to stir up the Indians against the
settlers. To end this part of our story, we may say that the Americans
got possession of Kaskaskia and its fort, and Rocheblave was sent off,
with his papers, to Virginia. Probably his wide-awake wife went with
him.

Now let us go back a bit and see how all this came to pass. Colonel
Clark was a native of Virginia, but he had gone to Kentucky in his early
manhood, being very fond of life in the woods. Here he became a friend
of Daniel Boone, and no doubt often joined him in hunting excursions;
but his business was that of a surveyor, at which he found plenty to do
in this new country.

Meanwhile, the war for independence came on, and as it proceeded Clark
saw plainly that the English at the forts in the West were stirring up
the Indians to attack the American settlements and kill the settlers. It
is believed that they paid them for this dreadful work and supplied them
with arms and ammunition. All this Clark was sure of and he determined
to try and stop it. So he made his way back to the East and had a talk
with Patrick Henry, who was then governor of Virginia. He asked the
governor to let him have a force to attack the English forts in the
West. He thought he could capture them, and in this way put an end to
the Indian raids.

Patrick Henry was highly pleased with Clark's plan. He gave him orders
to "proceed to the defence of Ke