And within half an
hour he was standing guard in the flower garden, making grimaces at the
children in the street. Colonel Clark sat at a table in the little front
room, and while two of Monsieur Rocheblave's negroes cooked his dinner,
he was busy with a score of visitors, organizing, advising, planning, and
commanding. There were disputes to settle now that alarm had subsided,
and at noon three excitable gentlemen came in to inform against a certain
Monsieur Cerre, merchant and trader, then absent at St. Louis. When at
length the Colonel had succeeded in bringing their denunciations to an
end and they had departed, he looked at me comically as I stood in the
doorway.
"Davy," said he, "all I ask of the good Lord is that He will frighten me
incontinently for a month before I die."
"I think He would find that difficult, sir," I answered.
"Then there's no hope for me," he answered, laughing, "for I have
observed that fright alone brings a man into a fit spiritual state to
enter heaven. What would you say of those slanderers of Monsieur Cerre?"
Not expecting an answer, he dipped his quill into the ink-pot and turned
to his papers.
"I should say that they owed Monsieur Cerre money," I replied.
The Colonel dropped his quill and stared. As for me, I was puzzled to
know why.
"Egad," said Colonel Clark, "most of us get by hard knocks what you seem
to have been born with.
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