Seeing him relapse into silence, I did not speak. For the space of half
an hour he stared down the river, and I knew that he was looking vainly
for the Willing.

At noon we crossed, piecemeal, a deep lake in the canoes, and marching
awhile came to a timber-covered rise which our French prisoners named as
the Warriors' Island. And from the shelter of its trees we saw the
steely lines of a score of low ponds, and over the tops of as many ridges
a huddle of brown houses on the higher ground.

And this was the place we had all but sold our lives to behold! This was
Vincennes at last! We were on the heights behind the town,--we were at
the back door, as it were. At the far side, on the Wabash River, was the
front door, or Fort Sackville, where the banner of England snapped in the
February breeze.

We stood there, looking, as the afternoon light flooded the plain.
Suddenly the silence was broken.

"Hooray for Clark!" cried a man at the edge of the copse.

"Hooray for Clark!"--it was the whole regiment this time. From
execration to exaltation was but a step, after all. And the Creoles fell
to scoffing at their sufferings and even forgot their hunger in staring
at the goal. The backwoodsmen took matters more stolidly, having
acquired long since the art of waiting. They lounged about, cleaning
their guns, watching the myriad flocks of wild ducks and geese casting
blue-black shadows on the ponds.

"Arrah, McChesney," said Terence, as he watched the circling birds,