the letter while his captains stared in admiration and amazement. What a
stroke was this! There were six hundred men in the town and
fort,--soldiers, inhabitants, and Indians,--while we had but 170, starved
and weakened by their incredible march. But Clark was not to be daunted.
Whipping out his field-glasses, he took a stand on a little mound under
the trees and followed the fast-galloping messenger across the plain; saw
him enter the town; saw the stir in the streets, knots of men riding out
and gazing, hands on foreheads, towards the place where we were. But, as
the minutes rolled into hours, there was no further alarm. No gun, no
beat to quarters or bugle-call from Fort Sackville. What could it mean?

Clark's next move was an enigma, for he set the men to cutting and
trimming tall sapling poles. To these were tied (how reverently!) the
twenty stands of colors which loving Creole hands had stitched. The
boisterous day was reddening to its close as the Colonel lined his little
army in front of the wood, and we covered the space of four thousand.
For the men were twenty feet apart and every tenth carried a standard.
Suddenly we were aghast as the full meaning of the inspiration dawned
upon us. The command was given, and we started on our march toward
Vincennes. But not straight,--zigzagging, always keeping the ridges
between us and the town, and to the watching inhabitants it seemed as if
thousands were coming to crush them. Night fell, the colors were furled
and the saplings dropped, and we pressed into serried ranks and marched
straight over hill and dale for the lights that were beginning to twinkle
ahead of us.

We halted once more, a quarter of a mile away. Clark himself had picked
fourteen men to go under Lieutenant Bayley through the town and take the
fort from the other side. Here was audacity with a vengeance. You may
be sure that Tom and Cowan and Ray were among these, and I trotted after