"Yes, Sieur Joliet," and Anthony, hastily gathering up the skirts of his service gown, ran forward, jumped to the nearest stump-top, and threw out his arms in the form of the cross. The roots of his curls stirred oddly. He fancied he could feel them standing up. Yet he faced the mob with keen delight. He wanted to be in the thick of things.
With what beating hearts under their calm appearance at the post of duty the priest and the soldier of fortune watched the boy it would be hard to tell. Each was thinking: "To-day we begin the big work of our lives. Is our fortune to be lost for a song?"
Then a long melodious note, keyed high and sharp, struck like a sword across the confusion of noise and motion and color. Its very fineness cut its way. One exquisite boyish soprano rose above dozens of rough barytones and coarse basses.
The Indians threw up their heads at that clarion call.
For many weeks, under the good priest's guidance, the boy had tutored them in Church music. They had learned to listen for his keynote and to follow his instructions. His yellow pate, his wide gray eyes, his young grace and confidence, his white angelic gown, all so different from their own swarthy gorgeousness, arrested their attention as nothing else could do. For a surprised and shuffling moment their custom of harkening to him struggled with their instinct for a spring orgy.
Sweet and clear—as compelling as a bugle summons—that long note came again.
They hesitated in the song. They stumbled in the dance. Confusion threw them out of tune and out of time. Then in the same key his voice took up the scalp-song. In an obbligato of purest quality he intoned each note. Their faltering and irresolution had broken their chorus. Their music dwindled away. He was left singing almost alone.
By surprising them he had overborne them.
He repeated the strain. Artfully he retarded it. He shaped his syllables into words. On their bewildered ears fell the prehistoric strains absolutely true and charming. But in perfect measures, familiar and desirable, came the Huron phrases which he sang each morning with them. He was fitting the music of the scalp-song to a Huron translation of a Catholic hymn. It was the Jubilate, "Oh, be joyful in the Lord, all ye lands!"
Their dancing feet, all ready for any motion, gradually fell into the time which his nodding head and his ringing tones marked for them— the slower measures of the Church. And behold, they were walking, not dancing. The words of every day came back readily to their lips as he pronounced them distinctly and with reverence, "Serve the Lord with gladness!"