No kind of covering
intervened betwixt their gray heads and the sky's fierce light, which
made the rivers seem to wrinkle with fire. An old Frenchman loved to
feel heaven's hand laid on his hair. Sometimes they spoke to one
another; but the most of each man's soul was given to basking. Their
attitudes said: "This is as far as I have lived. I am not living
to-morrow or next day. The past has reached this instant as high-water
mark, and here I rest. Move me if you can. I have arrived."
Booths were set up along the route to the common meadow, where the
thirsty and hungry might find food and drink; and as the crowd surged
toward its destination, a babel of cries rose from the venders of these
wares. Father Baby was as great a huckster as any flatboat man of them
all. He outscreamed and outsweated Spaniards from Ste. Genevieve; and a
sorry spectacle was he to Father Olivier when a Protestant circuit-rider
pointed him out. The itinerant had come to preach at early
candle-lighting to the crowd of sinners which this occasion drew to
Kaskaskia.
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