Understand me, however, I ask no more for Davy Muir than a clear field and no favor.In love, as in war, each man must gain his own victories.Are you certain that the rations have been properly calculated?""I'll answer for it, Major Duncan; but if they were not, we cannot suffer with two such hunters as Pathfinder and the Serpent in company.""That will never do, Dunham," interrupted Lundie sharply; "and it comes of your American birth and American training.No thorough soldier ever relies on anything but his commissary for supplies; and I beg that no part of my regiment may be the first to set an example to the contrary.""You have only to command, Major Duncan, to be obeyed; and yet, if I might presume, sir -- ""Speak freely, Sergeant; you are talking with a friend.""I was merely about to say that I find even the Scotch soldiers like venison and birds quite as well as pork, when they are difficult to be had.""That may be very true; but likes and dislikes have nothing to do with system.An army can rely on nothing but its commissaries.The irregularity of the provincials has played the devil with the king's service too often to be winked at any longer.""General Braddock, your honor, might have been ad-vised by Colonel Washington."
"Out upon your Washington! You're all provincials together, man, and uphold each other as if you were of a sworn confederacy.""I believe his majesty has no more loyal subjects than the Americans, your honor.""In that, Dunham, I'm thinking you're right; and Ihave been a little too warm, perhaps.I do not consider _you_ a provincial, however, Sergeant; for though born in America, a better soldier never shouldered a musket.""And Colonel Washington, your honor?"
"Well! -- and Colonel Washington may be a useful subject too.He is the American prodigy; and I suppose I may as well give him all the credit you ask.You have no doubt of the skill of this Jasper Eau-douce?""The boy has been tried, sir, and found equal to all that can be required of him.""He has a French name, and has passed much of his boyhood in the French colonies; has he French blood in his veins, Sergeant?""Not a drop, your honor.Jasper's father was an old comrade of my own, and his mother came of an honest and loyal family in this very province.""How came he then so much among the French, and whence his name? He speaks the language of the Canadas, too, I find.""That is easily explained, Major Duncan.The boy was left under the care of one of our mariners in the old war, and he took to the water like a duck.Your honor knows that we have no ports on Ontario that can be named as such, and he naturally passed most of his time on the other side of the lake, where the French have had a few vessels these fifty years.He learned to speak their lan-guage, as a matter of course, and got his name from the Indians and Canadians, who are fond of calling men by their qualities, as it might be.""A French master is but a poor instructor for a British sailor, notwithstanding.""I beg your pardon, sir: Jasper Eau-douce was brought up under a real English seaman, one that had sailed under the king's pennant, and may be called a thorough-bred;that is to say, a subject born in the colonies, but none the worse at his trade, I hope, Major Duncan, for that.""Perhaps not, Sergeant, perhaps not; nor any better.
This Jasper behaved well, too, when I gave him the com-mand of the _Scud_; no lad could have conducted himself more loyally or better.""Or more bravely, Major Duncan.I am sorry to see, sir, that you have doubts as to the fidelity of Jasper.""It is the duty of the soldier who is entrusted with the care of a distant and important post like this, Dunham, never to relax in his vigilance.We have two of the most artful enemies that the world has ever produced, in their several ways, to contend with, -- the Indians and the French, -- and nothing should be overlooked that can lead to injury.""I hope your honor considers me fit to be entrusted with any particular reason that may exist for doubting Jasper, since you have seen fit to entrust me with this command.""It is not that I doubt you, Dunham, that I hesitate to reveal all I may happen to know; but from a strong re-luctance to circulate an evil report concerning one of whom I have hitherto thought well.You must think well of the Pathfinder, or you would not wish to give him your daughter?""For the Pathfinder's honesty I will answer with my life, sir," returned the Sergeant firmly, and not without a dignity of manner that struck his superior."Such a man doesn't know how to be false.""I believe you are right, Dunham; and yet this last in-formation has unsettled all my old opinions.I have re-ceived an anonymous communication, Sergeant, advising me to be on my guard against Jasper Western, or Jasper Eau-douce, as he is called, who, it alleges, has been bought by the enemy, and giving me reason to expect that further and more precise information will soon be sent.""Letters without signatures to them, sir, are scarcely to be regarded in war.""Or in peace, Dunham.No one can entertain a lower opinion of the writer of an anonymous letter, in ordinary matters, than myself; the very act denotes cowardice, meanness, and baseness; and it usually is a token of false-hood, as well as of other vices.But in matters of war it is not exactly the same thing.Besides, several suspicious circumstances have been pointed out to me.""Such as is fit for an orderly to hear, your honor?""Certainly, one in whom I confide as much as in your-self Dunham.It is said, for instance, that your daughter and her party were permitted to escape the Iroquois, when they came in, merely to give Jasper credit with me.I am told that the gentry at Frontenac will care more for the capture of the _Scud_, with Sergeant Dunham and a party of men, together with the defeat of our favorite plan, than for the capture of a girl and the scalp of her uncle.""I understand the hint, sir, but I do not give it credit.
