"Vive le petit tambour!" That was the drummer boy, stepping proudly
behind the Colonel himself, with a soul lifted high above mire and puddle
into the blue above. There was laughter amongst the giants behind me,
and Cowan saying softly, as when we left Kaskaskia, "Go it, Davy, my
little gamecock!" And the whisper of it was repeated among the ranks
drawn up by the gate.

Yes, here was the gate, and now we were in the fort, and an empire was
gained, never to be lost again. The Stars and Stripes climbed the staff,
and the folds were caught by an eager breeze. Thirteen cannon thundered
from the blockhouses--one for each colony that had braved a king.

There, in the miry square within the Vincennes fort, thin and bronzed and
travel-stained, were the men who had dared the wilderness in ugliest
mood. And yet none by himself would have done it--each had come here
compelled by a spirit stronger than his own, by a master mind that
laughed at the body and its ailments.

Colonel George Rogers Clark stood in the centre of the square, under the
flag to whose renown he had added three stars. Straight he was, and
square, and self-contained. No weakening tremor of exultation softened
his face as he looked upon the men by whose endurance he had been able to
do this thing. He waited until the white smoke of the last gun had
drifted away on the breeze, until the snapping of the flag and the
distant village sounds alone broke the stillness.

"We have not suffered all things for a reward," he said, "but because a
righteous cause may grow. And though our names may be forgotten, our
deeds will be remembered. We have conquered a vast land that our