Old Kaskaskia | Page 9

took to their heels, and left like sheep a perceptible little cloud of
dust smoking in the gloom behind them.
Beyond the last house and alongside the Okaw river stood the ruined
building with gaping entrances. The girls stumbled among irregular
hummocks which in earlier days had been garden beds and had
supplied vegetables to the brethren. The last commandant of Kaskaskia,
who occupied the Jesuits' house as a fortress, had complained to his
superiors of a leaky and broken roof. There was now no roof to
complain of, and the upper floors had given way in places, leaving the
stone shell open to the sky. It had once been an imposing structure,
costing the Jesuits forty thousand piasters. The uneven stone floor was
also broken, showing gaps into vaults beneath; fearful spots to be
avoided, which the custom of darkness soon revealed to all eyes.
Partitions yet standing held stained and ghastly smears of rotted plaster.
The river's gurgle and rush could be distinctly heard here, while the
company around the bonfire were lost in distance.
Angélique had given her arm to Maria Jones in the flight down the road;
but when they entered the college Maria slipped away from her. A
blacker spot in an angle of the walls and a smothered cough hinted to
the care-taker where the invalid girl might be found, but where she also
wished to be let alone.
Now a sob rising to a scream, as if the old building had found voice and
protested against invasion, caused a recoil of the invaders. Girls

brought up in neighborly relations with the wilderness, however, could
be only a moment terrified by the screech-owl. But at no previous time
in its history, not even when it was captured as a fort, had the Jesuit
College inclosed such a cluster of wildly beating hearts. Had light been
turned on the group, it would have shown every girl shaking her hand
at every other girl and hissing, "S--s--sh!"
"Girls, be still."
"Girls, do be still."
"Girls, if you won't be still, somebody will come."
"Clarice Vigo, why don't you stop your noise?"
"Why do you not stop yours, mademoiselle?"
"I haven't spoken a word but sh! I have been trying my best to quiet
them all."
"So have I."
"Ellen Bond fell over me. She was scared to death by a screech-owl!"
"It was you fell over me, Miss Betsey."
"If we are going to try the charm," announced Peggy Morrison, "we
must begin. You had better all get in a line behind me and do just as I
do. You can't see me very well, but you can scatter the hempseed and
say what I say. And it must be done soberly, or Satan may come
mowing at our heels."
From a distant perch to which he had removed himself, the screech-owl
again remonstrated. Silence settled like the slow fluttering downward
of feathers on every throbbing figure. The stir of a slipper on the
pavement, or the catching of a breath, became the only tokens of
human presence in the old college. These postulants of fortune in their
half-visible state once more bore some resemblance to the young ladies
who had stood in decorum answering compliments between the figures

of the dance the night before.
On cautious shoe leather the march began. One voice, two voices, and
finally a low chorus intoned and repeated,--
"Hempseed, I sow thee,--hempseed, I sow thee; let him who is to marry
me come after me and mow thee."
Peggy led her followers out of the east door towards the river; wheeling
when she reached a little wind-row of rotted timbers. This chaos had
once stood up in order, forming makeshift bastions for the fort, and
supporting cannon. Such boards and posts as the negroes had not
carried off lay now along the river brink, and the Okaw was steadily
undermining that brink as it had already undermined and carried away
the Jesuits' spacious landing.
Glancing over their shoulders with secret laughter for that fearful gleam
of scythes which was to come, the girls marched back; and their
leader's abrupt halt jarred the entire line. A man stood in the opposite
entrance. They could not see him in outline, but his unmistakable hat
showed against a low-lying sky.
"Who's there?" demanded Peggy Morrison.
The intruder made no answer.
They could not see a scythe about him, but to every girl he took a
different form. He was Billy Edgar, or Jules Vigo, or Rice Jones, or any
other gallant of Kaskaskia, according to the varying faith which beating
hearts sent to the eyes that saw him.
The spell of silence did not last. A populous roost invaded by a fox
never resounded with more squalling than did the old Jesuit College.
The girls