the Wabash. If the tree grew there, then there too stood the
Roussillon house with its cosy log rooms, its clay-daubed chimneys
and its grapevine-mantled verandas, while some distance away and
nearer the river the rude fort with its huddled officers' quarters
seemed to fling out over the wild landscape, through its squinting
and lopsided port-holes, a gaze of stubborn defiance.

Not far off was the little log church, where one good Father
Beret, or as named by the Indians, who all loved him, Father
Blackrobe, performed the services of his sacred calling; and
scattered all around were the cabins of traders, soldiers and
woodsmen forming a queer little town, the like of which cannot now
be seen anywhere on the earth.

It is not known just when Vincennes was first founded; but most
historians make the probable date very early in the eighteenth
century, somewhere between 1710 and 1730. In 1810 the Roussillon
cherry tree was thought by a distinguished botanical letter-
writer to be at least fifty years old, which would make the date
of its planting about 1760. Certainly as shown by the time-stained
family records upon which this story of ours is based, it was a
flourishing and wide-topped tree in early summer of 1778, its
branches loaded to drooping with luscious fruit. So low did the
dark red clusters hang at one point that a tall young girl
standing on the ground easily reached the best ones and made her
lips purple with their juice while she ate them.

That was long ago, measured by what has come to pass on the gentle
swell of rich country from which Vincennes overlooks the Wabash.
The new town flourishes notably and its appearance marks the