nd 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 advised 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 I have 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 language, 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 inst