Things began to happen in Kaskaskia. It would have been strange indeed
if things had not happened. One hundred and seventy-five men had marched
into that territory out of which now are carved the great states of Ohio,
Indiana, and Illinois, and to most of them the thing was a picnic, a
jaunt which would soon be finished. Many had left families in the
frontier forts without protection. The time of their enlistment had
almost expired.

There was a store in the village kept by a great citizen,--not a citizen
of Kaskaskia alone, but a citizen of the world. This, I am aware, sounds
like fiction, like an attempt to get an effect which was not there. But
it is true as gospel. The owner of this store had many others scattered
about in this foreign country: at Vincennes, at St. Louis, where he
resided, at Cahokia. He knew Michilimackinac and Quebec and New Orleans.
He had been born some thirty-one years before in Sardinia, had served in
the Spanish army, and was still a Spanish subject. The name of this
famous gentleman was Monsieur Francois Vigo, and he was the Rothschild of
the country north of the Ohio. Monsieur Vigo, though he merited it, I
had not room to mention in the last chapter. Clark had routed him from
his bed on the morning of our arrival, and whether or not he had been in
the secret of frightening the inhabitants into making their wills, and
then throwing them into transports of joy, I know not.

Monsieur Vigo's store was the village club. It had neither glass in the
window nor an attractive display of goods; it was merely a log cabin set
down on a weedy, sun-baked plot. The stuffy smell of skins and furs came
out of the doorway. Within, when he was in Kaskaskia, Monsieur Vigo was
wont to sit behind his rough walnut table, writing with a fine quill, or
dispensing the news of the villages to the priest and other prominent