Hamilton treated Helm and Beverley with extreme courtesy. He was a soldier, gruff, unscrupulous and cruel to a degree; but he could not help admiring the daring behavior of these two officers who had wrung from him the best terms of surrender. He gave them full liberty, on parole of honor not to attempt escape or to aid in any way an enemy against him while they were prisoners.
Nor was it long before Helm's genial and sociable disposition won the Englishman's respect and confidence to such an extent that the two became almost inseparable companions, playing cards, brewing toddies, telling stories, and even shooting deer in the woods together, as if they had always been the best of friends.
Hamilton did not permit his savage allies to enter the town, and he immediately required the French inhabitants to swear allegiance to Great Britain, which they did with apparent heartiness, all save M. Roussillon, who was kept in close confinement and bound like a felon, chafing lugubriously and wearing the air of a martyr. His prison was a little log pen in one corner of the stockade, much open to the weather, its gaping cracks giving him a dreary view of the frozen landscape through which the Wabash flowed in a broad steel-gray current. Helm, who really liked him, tried in vain to procure his release; but Hamilton was inexorable on account of what he regarded as duplicity in M. Roussillon's conduct.
"No, I'll let him reflect," he said; "there's nothing like a little tyranny to break up a bad case of self-importance. He'll soon find out that he has over-rated himself!"
CHAPTER X
M. ROUSSILLON ENTERTAINS COLONEL HAMILTON
A day or two after the arrival of Hamilton the absent garrison of buffalo hunters straggled back to Vincennes and were duly sworn to demean themselves as lawful subjects of Great Britain. Rene de Ronville was among the first to take the oath, and it promptly followed that Hamilton ordered him pressed into service as a wood-chopper and log-hauler during the erection of a new blockhouse, large barracks and the making of some extensive repairs of the stockade. Nothing could have been more humiliating to the proud young Frenchman. Every day he had to report bright and early to a burly Irish Corporal and be ordered about, as if he had been a slave, cursed at, threatened and forced to work until his hands were blistered and his muscles sore. The bitterest part of it all was that he had to trudge past both Roussillon place and the Bourcier cabin with the eyes of Alice and Adrienne upon him.
Hamilton did not forget M. Roussillon in this connection. The giant orator soon found himself face to face with a greater trial even than Rene's. He was calmly told by the English commander that he could choose between death and telling who it was that stole the flag.
"I'll have you shot, sir, to-morrow morning if you prevaricate about this thing any longer," said Hamilton, with a right deadly strain in his voice. "You told me that you knew every man, woman and child in Vincennes at sight. I know that you saw that girl take the flag—lying does not serve your turn. I give you until this evening to tell me who she is; if you fail, you die at sunrise to-morrow."