all the men of his calling in that day, a self-effacing and modest
hero, apparently quite unaware that he deserved attention. He and
Father Gibault, whose name is so beautifully and nobly connected
with the stirring achievements of Colonel George Rogers Clark,
were close friends and often companions. Probably Father Gibault
himself, whose fame will never fade, would have been to-day as
obscure as Father Beret, but for the opportunity given him by
Clark to fix his name in the list of heroic patriots who assisted
in winning the great Northwest from the English.

Vincennes, even in the earliest days of its history, somehow kept
up communication and, considering the circumstances, close
relations with New Orleans. It was much nearer Detroit; but the
Louisiana colony stood next to France in the imagination and
longing of priests, voyageurs, coureurs de bois and reckless
adventurers who had Latin blood in their veins. Father Beret first
came to Vincennes from New Orleans, the voyage up the Mississippi,
Ohio, and Wabash, in a pirogue, lasting through a whole summer and
far into the autumn. Since his arrival the post had experienced
many vicissitudes, and at the time in which our story opens the
British government claimed right of dominion over the great
territory drained by the Wabash, and, indeed, over a large,
indefinitely outlined part of the North American continent lying
above Mexico; a claim just then being vigorously questioned,
flintlock in hand, by the Anglo-American colonies.

Of course the handful of French people at Vincennes, so far away
from every center of information, and wholly occupied with their
trading, trapping and missionary work, were late finding out that
war existed between England and her colonies. Nor did it really