Then, after Beverley had passed out of the cabin, Oncle Jazon chirruped after him:
"Mebbe ye'd better not tell leetle Alice. The pore leetle gal hev hed worry 'nough."
CHAPTER XXII
CLARK ADVISES ALICE
A few days after the surrender of Hamilton, a large boat, the Willing, arrived from Kaskaskia. It was well manned and heavily armed. Clark fitted it out before beginning his march and expected it to be of great assistance to him in the reduction of the fort, but the high waters and the floating driftwood delayed its progress, so that its disappointed crew saw Alice's flag floating bright and high when their eyes first looked upon the dull little town from far down the swollen river. There was much rejoicing, however, when they came ashore and were enthusiastically greeted by the garrison and populace. A courier whom they picked up on the Ohio came with them. He bore dispatches from Governor Henry of Virginia to Clark and a letter for Beverley from his father. With them appeared also Simon Kenton, greatly to the delight of Oncle Jazon, who had worried much about his friend since their latest fredaine—as he called it—with the Indians. Meantime an expedition under Captain Helm had been sent up the river with the purpose of capturing a British flotilla from Detroit.
Gaspard Roussillon, immediately after Clark's victory, thought he saw a good opening favorable to festivity at the river house, for which he soon began to make some of his most ostentatious preparations. Fate, however, as usual in his case, interfered. Fate seemed to like pulling the big Frenchman's ear now and again, as if to remind him of the fact—which he was apt to forget—that he lacked somewhat of omnipotence.
"Ziff! Je vais donner un banquet a tout le moonde, moi!" he cried, hustling and bustling hither and thither.
A scout from up the river announced the approach of Philip Dejean with his flotilla richly laden, and what little interest may have been gathering in the direction of M. Roussillon's festal proposition vanished like the flame of a lamp in a puff of wind when this news reached Colonel Clark and became known in the town.
Beverley and Alice sat together in the main room of the Roussillon cabin—you could scarcely find them separated during those happy days—and Alice was singing to the soft tinkle of a guitar, a Creole ditty with a merry smack in its scarcely intelligible nonsense. She knew nothing about music beyond what M. Roussillon, a jack of all trades, had been able to teach her,—a few simple chords to accompany her songs, picked up at hap-hazard. But her voice, like her face and form, irradiated witchery. It was sweet, firm, deep, with something haunting in it—the tone of a hermit thrush, marvelously pure and clear, carried through a gay strain like the mocking-bird's. Of course Beverley thought it divine; and when a message came from Colonel Clark bidding him report for duty at once, he felt an impulse toward mutiny of the rankest sort. He did not dream that a military expedition could be on hand; but upon reaching headquarters, the first thing he heard was: