Alice of Old Vincennes

Contents

I. Under the Cherry Tree
II. A Letter from Afar
III. The Rape of the Demijohn
IV. The First Mayor of Vincennes
V. Father Gibault
VI. A Fencing Bout
VII. The Mayor's Party
VIII. The Dilemma of Captain Helm
IX. The Honors of War
X. M. Roussillon Entertains Colonel Hamilton
XI. A Sword and a Horse Pistol
XII. Manon Lescaut, and a Rapier-Thrust
XIII. A Meeting in the Wilderness
XIV. A Prisoner of Love
XV. Virtue in a Locket
XVI. Father Beret's Old Battle
XVII. A March through Cold Water
XVIII. A Duel by Moonlight
XIX. The Attack
XX. Alice's Flag
XXI. Some Transactions in Scalps
XXII. Clark Advises Alice
XXIII. And So It Ended





Alice of Old Vincennes





CHAPTER I

UNDER THE CHERRY TREE


Up to the days of Indiana's early statehood, probably as late as 1825,
there stood, in what is now the beautiful little city of Vincennes on
the Wabash, the decaying remnant of an old and curiously gnarled cherry
tree, known as the Roussillon tree, le cerisier de Monsieur Roussillon,
as the French inhabitants called it, which as long as it lived bore
fruit remarkable for richness of flavor and peculiar dark ruby depth of
color. The exact spot where this noble old seedling from la belle
France flourished, declined, and died cannot be certainly pointed out;
for in the rapid and happy growth of Vincennes many land-marks once
notable, among them le cerisier de Monsieur Roussillon, have been
destroyed and the spots where they stood, once familiar to every eye in
old Vincennes, are now lost in the pleasant confusion of the new town.

The security of certain land titles may have largely depended upon the
disappearance of old, fixed objects here and there. Early records were
loosely kept, indeed, scarcely kept at all; many were destroyed by
designing land speculators, while those most carefully preserved often
failed to give even a shadowy trace of the actual boundaries of the
estates held thereby; so that the position of a house or tree not
infrequently settled an important question of property rights left open
by a primitive deed. At all events the Roussillon cherry tree
disappeared long ago, nobody living knows how, and with it also
vanished, quite as mysteriously, all traces of the once important
Roussillon estate. Not a record of the name even can be found, it is
said, in church or county books.