OLD KASKASKIA.




PART FIRST.

THE BONFIRE OF ST. JOHN.


Early in the century, on a summer evening, Jean Lozier stood on the
bluff looking at Kaskaskia. He loved it with the homesick longing of one
who is born for towns and condemned to the fields. Moses looking into
the promised land had such visions and ideals as this old lad cherished.
Jean was old in feeling, though not yet out of his teens. The
training-masters of life had got him early, and found under his red
sunburn and knobby joints, his black eyes and bushy eyebrows, the nature
that passionately aspires. The town of Kaskaskia was his sweetheart. It
tantalized him with advantage and growth while he had to turn the clods
of the upland. The long peninsula on which Kaskaskia stood, between the
Okaw and the Mississippi rivers, lay below him in the glory of sunset.
Southward to the point spread lands owned by the parish, and known as
the common pasture. Jean could see the church of the Immaculate
Conception and the tower built for its ancient bell, the convent
northward, and all the pleasant streets bowered in trees. The wharf was
crowded with vessels from New Orleans and Cahokia, and the arched stone
bridge across the Okaw was a thoroughfare of hurrying carriages.

The road at the foot of the bluff, more than a hundred feet below Jean,
showed its white flint belt in distant laps and stretches through