Lazarre

ARRIVING

Even when a year had passed I said of my escape from the Tuileries: "It was a dream. How could it have happened?" For the adventures of my wandering fell from me like a garment, leaving the one changeless passion.

Skenedonk and I met on the ship a New England minister, who looked upon and considered us from day to day. I used to sit in the stern, the miles stretching me as a rack stretches flesh and tendons. The minister regarded me as prostrated by the spider bite of that wicked Paris; out of which he learned I had come, by talking to my Oneida.

The Indian and I were a queer pair that interested him, and when he discovered that I bore the name of Eleazar Williams his friendship was sealed to us. Eunice Williams of Deerfield, the grandmother of Thomas Williams, was a traditional brand never snatched from the burning, in the minister's town of Longmeadow, where nearly every inhabitant was descended from or espoused to a Williams. Though he himself was born Storrs, his wife was born Williams; and I could have lain at his feet and cried, so open was the heart of this good man to a wanderer rebounding from a family that disowned the pretender. He was my welcome back to America. The breath of eastern pines, and the resinous sweetness of western plains I had not yet seen, but which drew me so that I could scarcely wait to land, came to me with that man. Before the voyage ended I had told him my whole history as far as I knew it, except the story of Madame de Ferrier; and the beginning of it was by no means new to him. The New England Williamses kept a prayerful eye on that branch descending through the Iroquois. This transplanted Briton, returning from his one memorable visit to the England of his forefathers, despised my Bourbon claims, and even the French contraction of my name.

"What are you going to do now, Eleazar?" he inquired.

Hugging my old dream to myself, feeling my heart leap toward that western empire which must fascinate a young man as long as there remain any western lands to possess, I told him I intended to educate our Iroquois as soon as I could prepare myself to do it, and settle them where they could grow into a greater nation.

The man of God kindled in the face. He was a dark-eyed, square-browed, serious man, with black hair falling below his white band. His mouth had a sweet benign expression, even when he quizzed me about my dauphinhood. A New England pastor was a flame that burned for the enlightenment of the nations. From that hour it was settled that I should be his pupil, and go with him to Longmeadow to finish my education.

When we landed he helped me to sell my Babylonish clothes, except the white court dress, to which I clung with tenacity displeasing to him, and garb myself in more befitting raiment. By Skenedonk's hand I sent some of the remaining gold coins to my mother Marianne and the chief, when he rejoined the tribe and went to pass the winter at St. Regis. And by no means did I forget to tell him to bring me letters from De Chaumont's manor in the spring, if any arrived there for me.

How near to heaven the New England village seemed, with Mount Tom on the horizon glorious as Mount Zion, the mighty sweep of meadow land, the Connecticut river flowing in great peace, the broad street of elms like some gigantic cathedral nave, and in its very midst a shrine—the meetinghouse, double-decked with fan-topped windows.

Religion and education were the mainsprings of its life. Pastor Storrs worked in his study nearly nine hours a day, and spent the remaining hours in what he called visitation of his flock.

This being lifted out of Paris and plunged into Longmeadow was the pouring of white hot metal into chill moulds. It cast me. With a seething and a roar of loosened forces, the boy passed to the man.

Nearly every night during all those years of changing, for even faithfulness has its tides, I put the snuffbox under my pillow, and Madame de Ferrier's key spoke to my ear. I would say to myself: "The one I love gave me this key. Did I ever sit beside her on a ledge of stone overlooking a sunken garden?—so near that I might have touched her! Does she ever think of the dauphin Louis? Where is she? Does she know that Lazarre has become Eleazar Williams?"

The pastor's house was fronted with huge white fluted pillars of wood, upholding a porch roof which shaded the second floor windows. The doors in that house had a short-waisted effect with little panels above and long panels below. I had a chamber so clean and small that I called it in my mind the Monk's Cell, nearly filled with the high posted bed, the austere table and chairs. The whitewashed walls were bare of pictures, except a painted portrait of Stephen Williams, pastor of Longmeadow from 1718 to 1783. Daily his laughing eyes watched me as if he found my pretensions a great joke. He had a long nose, and a high forehead. His black hair crinkled, and a merry crease drew its half circle from one cheek around under his chin to the other.

Longmeadow did not receive me without much question and debate. There were Williamses in every direction; disguised, perhaps, for that generation, under the names of Cooley, Stebbins, Colter, Ely, Hole, and so on. A stately Sarah Williams, as Mrs. Storrs, sat at the head of the pastor's table. Her disapproval was a force, though it never manifested itself except in withdrawal. If Mrs. Storrs had drawn back from me while I lived under her roof, I should have felt an outcast indeed. The subtle refinement of those Longmeadow women was like the hinted sweetness of arbutus flower. Breeding passed from generation to generation. They had not mixed their blood with the blood of any outsiders; and their forbears were English yeomen.

I threw myself into books as I had done during my first months at De Chaumont's, before I grew to think of Madame de Ferrier. One of those seven years I spent at Dartmouth. But the greater part of my knowledge I owe to Pastor Storrs. Greek and Hebrew he gave me to add to the languages I was beginning to own; and he unlocked all his accumulations of learning. It was a monk's life that I lived; austere and without incident, but bracing as the air of the hills. The whole system was monastic, though abomination alighted on that word in Longmeadow. I took the discipline into my blood. It will go down to those after me.

There a man had to walk with God whether he wanted to or not.

Living was inexpensive, each item being gaged by careful housekeeping. It was a sin to gorge the body, and godly conversation was better than abundance. Yet the pastor's tea-table arises with a halo around it. The rye and Indian bread, the doughnuts fragrant as flowers, the sparing tea, the prim mats which saved the cloth, the wire screen covering sponge cake—how sacred they seem!

The autumn that I came to Longmeadow, Napoleon Bonaparte was beaten on the sea by the English, but won the battle of Austerlitz, defeating the Russian coalition and changing the map of Europe.

I felt sometimes a puppet while this man played his great part. It was no comfort that others of my house were nothing to France. Though I did not see Louis Philippe again, he wandered in America two or three years, and went back to privacy.

During my early novitiate at Longmeadow, Aaron Burr's conspiracy went to pieces, dragging down with it that pleasant gentleman, Harmon Blennerhassett, startling men like Jackson, who had best befriended him unawares. But this in nowise affected my own plans of empire. The solidarity of a nation of Indians on a remote tract could be no menace to the general government.

Skenedonk came and went, and I made journeys to my people with him. But there was never any letter waiting at De Chaumont's for me. After some years indeed, the count having returned to Castorland, to occupy his new manor at Le Rayville, the mansion I had known was torn down and the stone converted to other uses. Skenedonk brought me word early that Mademoiselle de Chaumont had been married to an officer of the Empire, and would remain in France.

The door between my past and me was sealed. Madame de Ferrier stood on the other side of it, and no news from her penetrated its dense barrier. I tried to write letters to her. But nothing that I could write was fit to send, and I knew not whether she was yet at Mont-Louis. Forever she was holding the door against me.

Skenedonk, coming and going at his caprice, stayed a month in every year at Longmeadow, where the townspeople, having had a surfeit of aboriginal names, called him John. He raised no objection, for that with half a dozen other Christian titles had been bestowed on him in baptism; and he entered the godly list of Williamses as John Williams.

The first summer I spent in Longmeadow there was an eclipse of the sun about the middle of June. I remember lying on open land, my book on its face beside me, and watching it through my eyelashes; until the weird and awful twilight of a blotted sun in mid-heaven sent birds and beasts to shelter as from wrath. When there was but a hairy shining around the orbed blackness, and stars trembled out and trembled back, as if they said: "We are here. The old order will return," and the earth held its breath at threat of eternal darkness, the one I loved seemed to approach in the long shadows. It was a sign that out of the worst comes the best. But it was a terror to the unprepared; and Pastor Storrs preached about it the following Sunday.

The missionary spirit of Longmeadow stirred among the Williamses, and many of them brought what they called their mites to Pastor Storrs for my education. If I were made a king no revenue could be half so sweet as that. The village was richer than many a stonier New England place, but men were struggling then all over the wide states and territories for material existence.

The pension no longer came from Europe. It ceased when I returned from France. Its former payment was considered apocryphal by Longmeadow, whose very maids—too white, with a pink spot in each cheek—smiled with reserved amusement at a student who thought it possible he could ever be a king. I spoke to nobody but Pastor Storrs about my own convictions. But local newspapers, with their omniscient grip on what is in the air, bandied the subject back and forth.

We sometimes walked in the burying ground among dead Williamses, while he argued down my claims, leaving them without a leg to stand on. Reversing the usual ministerial formula, "If what has been said is true, then it follows, first, secondly," and so on, he used to say:

"Eleazar, you were brought up among the Indians, conscious only of bodily existence, and unconscious of your origin; granted. Money was sent—let us say from Europe—for your support; granted. Several persons, among them one who testified strongly against his will, told you that you resembled the Bourbons; granted. You bear on your person marks like those which were inflicted on the unfortunate dauphin of France; granted. You were malignantly pursued while abroad; granted. But what does it all prove? Nothing. It amounts simply to this: you know nothing about your early years; some foreign person—perhaps an English Williams—kindly interested himself in your upbringing; you were probably scalded in the camps; you have some accidental traits of the Bourbons; a man who heard you had a larger pension than the idiot he was tending, disliked you. You can prove nothing more."

I never attempted to prove anything more to Pastor Storrs. It would have been most ungrateful to persuade him I was an alien. At the same time he prophesied his hopes of me, and many a judicious person blamed him for treating me as something out of the ordinary, and cockering up pride.

A blunter Williams used to take me by the button on the street.

"Eleazar Williams," he would say, "do you pretend to be the son of the French king? I tell you what! I will not let the name of Williams be disgraced by any relationship to any French monarch! You must do one of two things: you must either renounce Williamsism or renounce Bourbonism!"

Though there was liberty of conscience to criticise the pastor, he was autocrat of Longmeadow. One who preceded Pastor Storrs had it told about him that two of his deacons wanted him to appoint Ruling Elders. He appointed them; and asked them what they thought the duties were. They said he knew best.

"Well," said the pastor, "one of the Ruling Elders may come to my house before meeting, saddle my horse, and hold the stirrup while I get on. The other may wait at the church door and hold him while I get off, and after meeting bring him to the steps. This is all of my work that I can consent to let Ruling Elders do for me."

The Longmeadow love of disputation was fostered by bouts which Ruling Elders might have made it their business to preserve, if any Ruling Elders were willing to accept their appointment. The pastor once went to the next town to enjoy argument with a scientific doctor. When he mounted his horse to ride home before nightfall the two friends kept up their debate. The doctor stood by the horse, or walked a few steps as the horse moved. Presently both men noticed a fire in the east; and it was sunrise. They had argued all night.

In Longmeadow a man could not help practicing argument. I also practiced oratory. And all the time I practiced the Iroquois tongue as well as English and French, and began the translation of books into the language of the nation I hoped to build. That Indians made unstable material for the white man to handle I would not believe. Skenedonk was not unstable. His faithfulness was a rock.

For some reason, and I think it was the reach of Pastor Storrs, men in other places began to seek me. The vital currents of life indeed sped through us on the Hartford and Springfield stage road. It happened that Skenedonk and I were making my annual journey to St. Regis when the first steamboat accomplished its trip on the Hudson river. About the time that the Wisconsin country was included in Illinois Territory, I decided to write a letter to Madame Tank at Green Bay, and insist on knowing my story as she believed she knew it. Yet I hesitated; and finally did not do it. I found afterwards that there was no post-office at Green Bay. A carrier, sent by the officers of the fort and villagers, brought mail from Chicago. He had two hundred miles of wilderness to traverse, and his blankets and provisions as well as the mail to carry; and he did this at the risk of his life among wild men and beasts.

The form of religion was always a trivial matter to me. I never ceased to love the sacrifice of the mass, which was an abomination and an idolatrous practice to Pastor Storrs. The pageantry of the Roman Church that first mothered and nurtured me touches me to this day. I love the Protestant prayers of the English Church. And I love the stern and knotty argument, the sermon with heads and sequences, of the New England Congregationalist. For this catholicity Catholics have upbraided me, churchmen rebuked me, and dissenters denied that I had any religion at all.

When the Episcopal Bishop of New York showed me kindness, and Pastor Storrs warned me against being proselyted, I could not tell him the charm in the form of worship practiced by the woman I loved. There was not a conscious minute when I forgot her. Yet nobody in Longmeadow knew of her existence. In my most remorseful days, comparing myself with Pastor Storrs, I was never sorry I had clung to her and begged her not to let me go alone. For some of our sins are so honestly the expression of nature that justification breaks through them.

On the western border there was trouble with dissatisfied Indians, and on the sea there was trouble with the British, so that people began to talk of war long before it was declared, and to blame President Madison for his over-caution in affairs. A battle was fought at Tippecanoe in the Indiana Territory, which silenced the Indians for a while. But every one knew that the English stood behind them. Militia was mustered, the army recruited, and embargo laid upon shipping in the ports, and all things were put forward in April of that year, before war was declared in June.

I had influence with our tribes. The Government offered me a well paid commission to act as its secret agent. Pastor Storrs and the Williamses, who had been nurturing a missionary, were smitten with grief to see him rise and leap into camps and fields, eager for the open world, the wilderness smell; the council, where the red man's mind, a trembling balance, could be turned by vivid language; eager, in fact, to live where history was being made.

The pastor had clothed me in his mind with ministerial gown and band, and the martial blood that quickened he counted an Iroquois strain. Yet so inconsistent is human nature, so given to forms which it calls creeds, that when I afterwards put on the surplice and read prayers to my adopted people, he counted it as great a defection as taking to saddle and spur. We cannot leave the expression of our lives to those better qualified than we are, however dear they may be. I had to pack my saddlebags and be gone, loving Longmeadow none the less because I grieved it, knowing that it would not approve of me more if I stayed and failed to do my natural part.

The snuffbox and the missal which had belonged to my family in France I always carried with me. And very little could be transported on the road we took.

John Williams, who came to Longmeadow in deerskins, and paraded his burnished red poll among the hatted Williamses, abetted me in turning from the missionary field to the arena of war, and never left me. It was Skenedonk who served the United States with brawn and endurance, while I put such policy and color into my harangues as I could command. We shared our meals, our camps, our beds of leaves together. The life at Longmeadow had knit me to good use. I could fast or feast, ride or march, take the buckskins, or the soldier's uniform.

Of this service I shall write down only what goes to the making of the story. The Government was pleased to commend it, and it may be found written in other annals than mine.

Great latitude was permitted us in our orders. We spent a year in the north. My skin darkened and toughened under exposure until I said to Skenedonk, "I am turning an Indian;" and he, jealous of my French blood, denied it.

In July we had to thread trails he knew by the lake toward Sandusky. There was no horse path wide enough for us to ride abreast. Brush swished along our legs, and green walls shut our view on each side. The land dipped towards its basin. Buckeye and gigantic chestnut trees, maple and oak, passed us from rank to rank of endless forest. Skenedonk rode ahead, watching for every sign and change, as a pilot now watches the shifting of the current. So we had done all day, and so we were doing when fading light warned us to camp.

A voice literally cried out of the wilderness, startling the horses and ringing among the tree trunks:

"The spirit of the Lord is upon me, and He hath anointed me to blow the trumpet in the wilderness, and sound an alarm in the forest; for behold the tribes of the heathen are round about your doors, and a devouring flame followeth after them!"

"That's Johnny Appleseed," said Skenedonk, turning in his saddle.

"What is Johnny Appleseed?"

"He is a man that God has touched," said Skenedonk, using the aboriginal phrase that signified a man clouded in mind.

God had hidden him, too. I could see no one. The voice echo still went off among the trees.

"Where is he?"

"Maybe one side, maybe the other."

"Does he never show himself?"

"Oh, yes," Skenedonk said. "He goes to all the settlements. I have often seen him when I was hunting on these grounds. He came to our camp. He loves to sleep outdoors better than in a cabin."

"Why does he shout at us like a prophet?"

"To warn us that Indians are on the warpath."

"He might have thought we were on the warpath ourselves."

"Johnny Appleseed knows Shawanoes and Tecumseh's men."

The trees, lichened on their north sides, massed rank behind rank without betraying any face in their glooms. The Ohio and Indiana forests had a nameless quality. They might have been called home-forests, such invitations issued from them to man seeking a spot of his own. Nor can I make clear what this invitation was. It produced thoughts different from those that men were conscious of in the rugged northwest.

"I think myself," said Skenedonk, as we moved farther from the invisible voice, "that he is under a vow. But nobody told me that."

"Why do you think so?"

"He plants orchards in every fine open spot; or clears the land for planting where he thinks the soil is right."

"Don't other men plant orchards?"

"No. They have not time, or seed. They plant bread. He does nothing but plant orchards."

"He must have a great many."

"They are not for himself. The apples are for any one who may pass by when they are ripe. He wants to give apples to everybody. Animals often nibble the bark, or break down his young trees. It takes long for them to grow. But he keeps on planting."

"If other men have no seeds to plant, how does he get them?"

"He makes journeys to the old settlements, where many orchards have grown, and brings the seeds from ciderpresses. He carries them from Pennsylvania on his back, in leather bags, a bag for each kind of seed."

"Doesn't he ever sell them?"

"Not often. Johnny Appleseed cares nothing for money. I believe he is under a vow of poverty. No one laughs at him. The tribes on these grounds would not hurt a hair of his head, not only because God has touched him, but because he plants apples. I have eaten his apples myself."

"Johnny Appleseed!" I repeated, and Skenedonk hastened to tell me:

"He has another name, but I forget it. He is called Johnny Appleseed."

The slim and scarcely perceptible tunnel, among trees, piled with fallen logs and newly sprung growths, let us into a wide clearing as suddenly as a stream finds its lake. We could not see even the usual cow tracks. A cabin shedding light from its hearth surprised us in the midst of stumps.

The door stood wide. A woman walked back and forth over a puncheon floor, tending supper. Dogs rushed to meet us, and the playing of children could be heard. A man, gun in hand, stepped to his door, a sentinel. He lowered its muzzle, and made us welcome, and helped us put our horses under shelter with his own.

It was not often we had a woman's handiwork in corn bread and game to feed ourselves upon, or a bed covered with homespun sheets.

I slept as the children slept, until a voice rang in the clearing:

"The spirit of the Lord is upon me, and He hath anointed me to blow the trumpet in the wilderness, and sound an alarm in the forest; for behold the tribes of the heathen are round about your doors, and a devouring flame followeth after them!"

Every sleeper in the cabin sat upright or stirred. We said in whispered chorus:

"Johnny Appleseed!"

A tapping, light and regular, on the window, followed. The man was on the floor in a breath. I heard the mother groping among the children, and whispering:

"Don't wake the baby!"

The fire had died upon the hearth, and they lighted no candle. When Johnny Appleseed gave his warning cry in the clearing, and his cautious tap on the window, and was instantly gone to other clearings and other windows, it meant that the Indians were near.

Skenedonk and I, used to the night alarm and boots and saddle in a hurry, put ourselves in readiness to help the family. I groped for clothing, and shoved small legs and arms into it. The little creatures, obedient and silent, made no whimper at being roused out of dreams, but keenly lent themselves to the march.

We brought the horses, and put the woman and children upon them. The very dogs understood, and slunk around our legs without giving mouth. The cabin door was shut after us without noise, closing in what that family called home; a few pots and pans; patchwork quilts; a spinning-wheel; some benches; perhaps a child's store of acorn cups and broken yellow ware in a log corner. In a few hours it might be smoking a heap of ashes; and the world offered no other place so dear. What we suffer for is enriched by our suffering until it becomes priceless.

So far on the frontier was this cabin that no community block-house stood near enough to give its inmates shelter. They were obliged to go with us to Fort Stephenson.

Skenedonk pioneered the all-night struggle on an obscure trail; and he went astray sometimes, through blackness of woods that roofed out the stars. We floundered in swales sponging full of dead leaves, and drew back, scratching ourselves on low-hung foliage.

By dawn the way became easier and the danger greater. Then we paused and lifted our rifles if a twig broke near by, or a fox barked, or wind rushed among leaves as a patter of moccasins might come. Skenedonk and I, sure of the northern Indians, were making a venture in the west. We knew nothing of Tecumseh's swift red warriors, except that scarcely a year had passed since his allies had tomahawked women and children of the garrison on the sand teach at Chicago.

Without kindling any fire we stopped once that day to eat, and by good luck and following the river, reached that Lower Sandusky which was called Fort Stephenson, about nightfall.

The place was merely a high stockade with blockhouses at the angles, and a gate opening toward the river. Within, besides the garrison of a hundred and sixty men, were various refugees, driven like our family to the fort. And there, coming heartily from the commandant's quarters to receive me, was George Croghan, still a boy in appearance, though intrusted with this dangerous post. His long face had darkened like mine. We looked each other over with the quick and critical scrutiny of men who have not met since boyhood, and laughed as we grasped hands.

"You are as welcome to the inside of this bear-pen," said Major Croghan, "as you made me to the outside of the one in the wilderness."

"I hope you'll not give me such another tramp after shelter for the night as I gave you," I said.

"The best in Fort Stephenson is yours. But your rest depends on the enemy. A runner has just come in from the General warning me Proctor and Tecumsch are turning their attention this way. I'm ordered to evacuate, for the post is considered too weak to hold."

"How soon do you march?"

"I don't march at all. I stay here. I'm going to disobey orders."

"If you're going to disobey orders, you have good reason for doing so."

"I have. It was too late to retreat. I'm going to fight. I hear, Lazarre, you know how to handle Indians in the French way."

"My dear Croghan, you insinuate the American way may be better."

"It is, on the western border. It may not be on the northern."

"Then you would not have advised my attempting the Indians here?"

"I shouldn't have discouraged it. When I got the secret order, I said: 'Bring the French—bring the missionaries—bring anything that will cut the comb of Tecumseh!'"

"The missionaries and the French like being classed with—anything," I said.

"We're Americans here," Croghan laughed. "The dauphin may have to fight in the ditch with the rest of us."

"The dauphin is an American too, and used to scars, as you know. Can you give me any news from Green Bay in the Wisconsin country?"

"I was ordered to Green Bay last year to see if anything could be done with old Fort Edward Augustus."

"Does my Holland court-lady live there?"

"Not now," he answered soberly. "She's dead."

"That's bad," I said, thinking of lost opportunities.

"Is pretty Annabel de Chaumont ever coming back from France?"

"Not now, she's married."

"That's worse," he sighed. "I was very silly about her when I was a boy."

We had our supper in his quarters, and he busied himself until late in the night with preparations for defense. The whole place was full of cheer and plenty of game, and swarmed like a little fair with moving figures. A camp-fire was built at dark in the center of the parade ground, heaped logs sending their glow as far as the dark pickets. Heads of families drew towards it while the women were putting their children to bed; and soldiers off duty lounged there, the front of the body in light, the back in darkness.

Cool forest night air flowed over the stockade, swaying smoke this way and that. As the fire was stirred, and smoke turned to flame, it showed more and more distinctly what dimness had screened.

A man rose up on the other side of it, clothed in a coffee sack, in which holes were cut for his head and arms. His hat was a tin kettle with the handle sticking out behind like a stiff queue.

Indifferent to his grotesqueness, he took it off and put it on the ground beside him, standing ready to command attention.

He was a small, dark, wiry man, barefooted and barelegged, whose black eyes sparkled, and whose scanty hair and beard hung down over shoulders and breast. Some pokes of leather, much scratched, hung bulging from the rope which girded his coffee sack. From one of these he took a few unbound leaves, the fragment of a book, spread them open, and began to read in a chanting, prophetic key, something about the love of the Lord and the mysteries of angels. His listeners kept their eyes on him, giving an indulgent ear to spiritual messages that made less demand on them than the violent earthly ones to which they were accustomed.

"It's Johnny Appleseed," a man at my side told me, as if the name explained anything he might do.

"Where did you get this?" I heard myself asking, a strange voice sounding far down the throat.

"From an Indian," the mystic told me quietly. "He said it was bad medicine to him. He never had any luck in hunting after it fell to his share, so he was glad to give it to me."

"Where did he get it?"

"His tribe took it from some prisoners they killed."

I was running blindly around in a circle to find relief from the news he dealt me, when the absurdity of such news overtook me. I stood and laughed.

"Who were the prisoners?"

"I don't know," answered Johnny Appleseed.

"How do you know the Indians killed them?"

"The one that gave me this book told me so."

"There are plenty of padlocked books in the world," I said jauntily. "At least there must be more than one. How long ago did it happen?"

"Not very long ago, I think; for the book was clean."

"Give it to me," I said, as if I cursed him.

"It's a sacred book," he answered, hesitating.

"Maybe it's sacred. Let me see."

"There may be holy mysteries in it, to be read only of him who has the key."

"I have a key!"

I took it out of the snuffbox. Johnny Appleseed fixed his rapt eyes on the little object in my fingers.

"Mebby you are the one appointed to open and read what is sealed!"

"No, I'm not! How could my key fit a padlocked book that belonged to prisoners killed by the Indians?"

He held it out to me and I took hold of the padlock. It was a small steel padlock, and the hole looked dangerously the size of my key.

"I can't do it!" I said.

"Let me try," said Johnny Appleseed.

"No! You might break my key in a strange padlock! Hold it still, Johnny. Please don't shake it."

"I'm not shaking it," Johnny Appleseed answered tenderly.

"There's only one way of proving that my key doesn't fit," I said, and thrust it in. The ward turned easily, and the padlock came away in my hand. I dropped it and opened the book. Within the lid a name was written which I had copied a thousand times—"Eagle Madeleine Marie de Ferrier."

Still I did not believe it. Nature protects us in our uttermost losses by a density through which conviction is slow to penetrate. In some mysterious way the padlocked book had fallen into strange hands, and had been carried to America.

"If Eagle were in America, I should know it. For De Chaumont would know it, and Skenedonk would find it out."

I stooped for the padlock, hooked it in place, and locked the book again.

"Is the message to you alone?" inquired Johnny Appleseed.

"Did you ever care for a woman?" I asked him.

Restless misery came into his eyes, and I noticed for the first time that he was not an old man; he could not have been above thirty-five. He made no answer; shifting from one bare foot to the other, his body settling and losing its Indian lightness.

"A woman gave me the key to this book. Her name is written inside the lid. I was to read it if it ever fell into my hands, after a number of years. Somebody has stolen it, and carried it among the Indians. But it's mine. Every shilling in my wallet, the clothes off my back you're welcome to—"

"I don't want your money or your clothes."

"But let me give you something in exchange for it."

"What do I need? I always have as much as I want. This is a serviceable coat, as good as any man need wish for; and the ravens feed me. And if I needed anything, could I take it for carrying a message? I carry good tidings of great joy among the people all the time. This is yours. Put it in your pocket."

I hid the padlocked book in the breast of my coat, and seized his wrist and his hand.

"Be of good courage, white double-man," said Johnny Appleseed. "The Lord lift up the light of His countenance upon you, the Lord make His face to shine upon you and give you peace!"

He returned to his side of the fire and stretched himself under the stars, and I went to Croghan's quarters and lay down with my clothes on in the bunk assigned to me.

The book which I would have rent open at twenty, I now carried unsealed. The suspense of it was so sweet, and drew my thoughts from the other suspense which could not be endured. It was not likely that any person about Mont-Louis had stolen the book, and wandered so far. Small as the volume was, the boards indented my breast and made me increasingly conscious of its presence. I waked in the night and held it.

Next morning Johnny Appleseed was gone from the fort, unafraid of war, bent only on carrying the apple of civilization into the wilderness. Nobody spoke about his absence, for shells began to fall around us. The British and Indians were in sight; and General Proctor sent a flag of truce demanding surrender.

Major Croghan's ensign approached the messenger with a flag in reply.

The women gathered their children as chickens under shelter. All in the fort were cheerful, and the men joked with the gush of humor which danger starts in Americans. I saw then the ready laugh that faced in its season what was called Indian summer, because the Indian took then advantage of the last pleasant weather to make raids. Such pioneers could speak lightly even of powwowing time—the first pleasant February days, when savages held councils before descending on the settlements.

Major Croghan and I watched the parley from one of the blockhouses that bastioned the place. Before it ended a Shawanoe sprang out of a ravine and snatched the ensign's sword. He gave it back reluctantly, and the British flag bearer hurried the American within the gates.

General Proctor regretted that so fine a young man as Major Croghan should fall into the hands of savages, who were not to be restrained.

"When this fort is taken," said Croghan on hearing the message, "there will be nobody left in it to kill."

British gunboats drawn up on the Sandusky river, and a howitzer on the shore, opened fire, and cannonaded all day with the poor execution of long range artillery. The northwestern angle of the fort was their target. Croghan foresaw that the enemy's intention was to make a breach and enter there. When night came again, his one six-pounder was moved with much labor from that angle into the southwest blockhouse, as noiselessly as possible. He masked the embrasure and had the piece loaded with a double charge of slugs and grape shot and half a charge of powder. Perhaps the British thought him unprovided with any heavy artillery.

They were busy themselves, bringing three of the ineffectual six-pounders and the howitzer, under darkness, within two hundred and fifty yards of the fort; giving a background of woods to their battery. About dawn we saw what they had been doing. They concentrated on the northwest angle; and still Croghan replied only with muskets, waiting for them to storm.

So it went on all day, the gun-proof blockhouse enduring its bombardment, and smoke thickening until it filled the stockade as water fills a well, and settled like fog between us and the enemy. An attack was made on the southern angle where the cannon was masked.

"This is nothing but a feint," Croghan said to the younger officers.

While that corner replied with musketry, he kept a sharp lookout for the safety of the northwest blockhouse.

One soldier was brought down the ladder and carried through the murky pall to the surgeon, who could do nothing for him. Another turned from a loophole with blood upon him, laughing at his mishap. For the grotesqueness and inconvenience of a wound are sometimes more swiftly felt than its pain. He came back presently with his shoulder bandaged and resumed his place at the loophole.

The exhilaration of that powder atmosphere and its heat made soldiers throw off their coats, as if the expanding human body was not to be confined in wrappings.

In such twilight of war the twilight of Nature overtook us. Another feint was made to draw attention from a heavy force of assailants creeping within twenty paces, under cover of smoke, to surprise the northwest blockhouse.

Musketry was directed against them: they hesitated. The commander led a charge, and himself sprang first into the ditch. We saw the fine fellows leaping to carry the blockhouse, every man determined to be first in making a breach. They filled the ditch.

This was the instant for which Croghan had waited. He opened the porthole and unmasked his exactly trained cannon. It enfiladed the assailants, sweeping them at a distance of thirty feet; slugs and grapeshot hissed, spreading fan rays of death! By the flash of the re-loaded six-pounder, we saw the trench filled with dead and wounded.

The besiegers turned.

Croghan's sweating gunners swabbed and loaded and fired, roaring like lions.

The Indians, of whom there were nearly a thousand, were not in the charge, and when retreat began they went in panic. We could hear calls and yells, the clatter of arms, and a thumping of the earth; the strain of men tugging cannon ropes; the swift withdrawal of a routed force.

Two thousand more Indians approaching under Tecumseh, were turned back by refugees.

Croghan remarked, as we listened to the uproar, "Fort Stephenson can hardly be called untenable against heavy artillery."

Then arose cries in the ditch, which penetrated to women's ears. Neither side was able to help the wounded there. But before the rout was complete, Croghan had water let down in buckets to relieve their thirst, and ordered a trench cut under the pickets of the stockade. Through this the poor wretches who were able to crawl came in and surrendered themselves and had their wounds dressed.

By three o'clock in the morning not a British uniform glimmered red through the dawn. The noise of retreat ended. Pistols and muskets strewed the ground. Even a sailboat was abandoned on the river, holding military stores and the clothing of officers.

"They thought General Harrison was coming," laughed Croghan, as he sat down to an early breakfast, having relieved all the living in the trench and detailed men to bury the dead. "We have lost one man, and have another under the surgeon's hands. Now I'm ready to appear before a court-martial for disobeying orders."

"You mean you're ready for your immortal page in history."

"Paragraph," said Croghan; "and the dislike of poor little boys and girls who will stick their fists in their eyes when they have to learn it at school."

Intense manhood ennobled his long, animated face. The President afterwards made him a lieutenant-colonel, and women and his superior officers praised him; but he was never more gallant than when he said:

"My uncle, George Rogers Clark, would have undertaken to hold this fort; and by heavens, we were bound to try it!"

The other young officers sat at mess with him, hilarious over the outcome, picturing General Proctor's state of mind when he learned the age of his conqueror.

None of them cared a rap that Daniel Webster was opposing the war in the House of Representatives at Washington, and declaring that on land it was a failure.

A subaltern came to the mess room door, touching his cap and asking to speak with Major Croghan.

"The men working outside at the trenches saw a boy come up from the ravine, sir, and fall every few steps, so they've brought him in."

"Does he carry a dispatch?"

"No, sir. He isn't more than nine or ten years old. I think he was a prisoner."

"Is he a white boy?"

"Yes, sir, but he's dressed like an Indian."

"I think it unlikely the British would allow the Shawanoes to burden their march with any prisoners."

"Somebody had him, and I'm afraid he's been shot either during the action or in the retreat. He was hid in the ravine."

"Bring him here," said Croghan.

A boy with blue eyes set wide apart, hair clinging brightly and moistly to his pallid forehead, and mouth corners turning up in a courageous smile, entered and stood erect before the officer. He was a well made little fellow. His tiny buckskin hunting shirt was draped with a sash in the Indian fashion, showing the curve of his naked hip. Down this a narrow line of blood was moving. Children of refugees, full of pity, looked through the open door behind him.

"Go to him, Shipp," said Croghan, as the boy staggered. But he waved the ensign back.

"Who are you, my man?" asked the Major.

"I believe," he answered, "I am the Marquis de Ferrier."

He pitched forward, and I was quicker than Ensign Shipp. I set him on my knees, and the surgeon poured a little watered brandy clown his throat.

"Paul!" I said to him.

"Stand back," ordered the surgeon, as women followed their children, crowding the room.

"Do you know him, Lazarre?" asked Croghan.

"It's Madame de Ferrier's child."

"Not the baby I used to see at De Chaumont's? What's he doing at Fort Stephenson?"

The women made up my bunk for Paul, and I laid him in it. Each wanted to take him to her care. The surgeon sent them to the cook-house to brew messes for him, and stripped the child, finding a bullet wound in his side. Probing brought nothing out, and I did not ask a single question. The child should live. There could be no thought of anything else. While the surgeon dressed and bandaged that small hole like a sucked-in mouth, I saw the boy sitting on saddle-bags behind me, his arms clipping my waist, while we threaded bowers of horse paths. I had not known how I wanted a boy to sit behind me! No wonder pioneer men were so confident and full of jokes: they had children behind them!

He was burning with fever. His eyes swam in it as he looked at me. He could not eat when food was brought to him, but begged for water, and the surgeon allowed him what the women considered reckless quantities. Over stockades came the August rustle of the forest. Morning bird voices succeeded to the cannon's reverberations.

The surgeon turned everybody out but me, and looked in by times from his hospital of British wounded. I wiped the boy's forehead and gave him his medicine, fanning him all day long. He lay in stupor, and the surgeon said he was going comfortably, and would suffer little. Once in awhile he turned up the corners of his mouth and smiled at me, as if the opiate gave him blessed sensations. I asked the surgeon what I should do in the night if he came out of it and wanted to talk.

"Let him talk," said the doctor briefly.

Unlike the night before, this was a night of silence. Everybody slept, but the sentinels, and the men whose wounds kept them awake; and I was both a sentinel, and a man whose wounds kept him awake.

Paul's little hands were scratched; and there was a stone bruise on the heel he pushed from cover of the blankets. His small body, compact of so much manliness, was fine and sweet. Though he bore no resemblance to his mother, it seemed to me that she lay there for me to tend; and the change was no more an astounding miracle than the change of baby to boy.

I had him all that night for my own, putting every other thought out of mind and absorbing his presence. His forehead and his face lost their burning heat with the coolness of dawn, which blew our shaded candle, flowing from miles of fragrant oaks.

He awoke and looked all around the cabin. I tried to put his opiate into his mouth; but something restrained me. I held his hand to my cheek.

"I like you," he spoke out. "Don't you think my mother is pretty?"

I said I thought his mother was the most beautiful woman in the world. He curled up his mouth corners and gave me a blue-eyed smile.

"My father is not pretty. But he is a gentleman of France."

"Where are they, Paul?"

He turned a look upon me without answering.

"Paul," I said brutally, "tell me where your father and mother are."

He was so far gone that my voice recalled him. He simply knew me as a voice and a presence that he liked.

"With poor old Ernestine," he answered.

"And where is poor old Ernestine?"

He began to shake as if struck with a chill. I drew the blanket closer.

"Paul, you must tell me!"

He shook his head. His mouth worked, and his little breast went into convulsions.

He shrieked and threw himself toward me. "My pretty little mother!"

I held him still in a tight grip. "My darling—don't start your wound!"

I could have beaten myself, but the surgeon afterwards told me the child was dying when he came into the fort. About dawn, when men's lives sink to their lowest ebb with night, his sank away, I smoothed his head and kissed and quieted him. Once he looked into space with blurred eyes, and curled up his mouth corners when I am sure he no longer saw me.

Thus swiftly ended Paul's unaccountable appearance at the fort. It was like the falling of a slain bird out of the sky at my feet. The women were tender with his little body. They cried over him as they washed him for burial. The children went outside the stockade and brought green boughs and August wild flowers, bearing the early autumn colors of gold and scarlet. With these they bedded the child in his plank coffin, unafraid of his waxen sleep.

Before Croghan went to report to his General, he asked me where we should bury the little fellow.

"In the fort, by the southern blockhouse," I answered. "Let Fort Stephenson be his monument. It will stand here forever. The woods around it will be trampled by prowling savages, and later on by prowling white men. Within, nothing will obliterate the place. Give a little fellow a bed here, who died between two countries, and will never be a citizen of either."

"I don't want to make a graveyard of the fort," said Croghan. But he looked at Paul, bent low over him, and allowed him to be buried near the southwest angle.

There the child's bones rest to this day. The town of Fremont in the commonwealth of Ohio has grown up around them. Young children who climb the grassy bastion, may walk above his head, never guessing that a little gentleman of France, who died like a soldier of his wound, lies deeply cradled there.

Before throwing myself down in the dead heaviness which results from continual loss of sleep, I questioned the wounded British soldiers about Paul. None of them had seen him. Straggling bands of Indians continually joined their force. Captives were always a possibility in the savage camp. Paul might have been taken hundreds of miles away.

But I had the padlocked book, which might tell the whole story. With desperate haste that could hardly wait to open the lids, I took it out, wondering at the patience which long self-restraint had bred in me. I was very tired, and stretched my arms across the pillow where Paul's head had lain, to rest one instant. But I must have slept. My hand woke first, and feeling itself empty, grasped at the book. It was gone, and so was the sun.

I got a light and searched, thrusting my arm between the bunk and the log wall. It was not on the floor, or in my breast pocket, or in my saddle-bags.

The robbery was unendurable. And I knew the Indian who had done it. He was the quietest, most stubborn Oneida that ever followed an adopted white man. Why he had taken the book I could not understand. But I was entirely certain that he had taken it out of my hand while I slept. He would not break the padlock and read it, but like a judicious father he would take care of a possibly unwholesome volume himself.

I went out and found the bald-headed and well-beloved wretch. He was sitting with his knees to his chin by the evening log fire.

"Skenedonk," I said, "I want my book."

"Children and books make a woman of you," he responded. "You had enough books at Longmeadow."

"I want it at once," I repeated.

"It's sorcery," he answered.

"It's a letter from Madame de Ferrier, and may tell where she is."

His fawn eyes were startled, but he continued to hug his knees.

"Skenedonk, I can't quarrel with you. You were my friend before I could remember. When you know I am so bound to you, how can you deal me a deadly hurt?"

"White woman sorcery is the worst sorcery. You thought I never saw it. But I did see it. You went after her to Paris. You did not think of being the king. So you had to come back with nothing. That's what woman sorcery does. Now you have power with the tribes. The President sees you are a big man! And she sends a book to you to bewitch you! I knew she sent the book as soon as I saw it."

"Do you think she sent Paul?"

He made no answer.

"Madame de Ferrier does not know I have the book."

"You haven't it," said Skenedonk.

"But you have."

"If she wrote and sent a letter she expected it would be received."

"When I said a letter I meant what is called a journal: the writing down of what happens daily. Johnny Appleseed got the book from an Indian. That is how it was sent to me."

"If you read it you will want to drop everything else and go to find her."

This was the truth, for I was not under military law.

"Where is the book?"

"Down my back," said Skenedonk.

I felt the loose buckskin.

"It isn't there."

"In my front," said Skenedonk.

I ran my hand over his chest, finding nothing but bone and brawn.

"There it is," he said, pointing to a curled wisp of board at the edge of the fire. "I burnt it."

"Then you've finished me."

I turned and left him sitting like an image by the fire.