came, grave and mournful. The tone of it was sombre in the white glare,
for men had donned their best (as they thought) for the last time,--cloth
of camlet and Cadiz and Limbourg, white cotton stockings, and
brass-buckled shoes. They came like captives led to execution. But at
their head a figure held our eye,--a figure that spoke of dignity and
courage, of trials borne for others. It was the village priest in his
robes. He had a receding forehead and a strong, pointed chin; but
benevolence was in the curve of his great nose. I have many times since
seen his type of face in the French prints. He and his flock halted
before our young Colonel, even as the citizens of Calais in a bygone
century must have stood before the English king.

The scene comes back to me. On the one side, not the warriors of a
nation that has made its mark in war, but peaceful peasants who had
sought this place for its remoteness from persecution, to live and die in
harmony with all mankind. On the other, the sinewy advance guard of a
race that knows not peace, whose goddess of liberty carries in her hand a
sword. The plough might have been graven on our arms, but always the
rifle.

The silence of the trackless wilds reigned while Clark gazed at them
sternly. And when he spoke it was with the voice of a conqueror, and
they listened as the conquered listen, with heads bowed--all save the
priest.

Clark told them first that they had been given a false and a wicked
notion of the American cause, and he spoke of the tyranny of the English
king, which had become past endurance to a free people. As for
ourselves, the Long Knives, we came in truth to conquer, and because of
their hasty judgment the Kaskaskians were at our mercy. The British had