r reasons of his own, the latter had
seen fit to change it. This was reasoning enough for soldiers, though
the hurt received by Sergeant Dunham would have sufficiently explained
the circumstance had an explanation been required.

All this time Captain Sanglier was looking after his own breakfast
with the resignation of a philosopher, the coolness of a veteran, the
ingenuity and science of a Frenchman, and the voracity of an ostrich.
This person had now been in the colony some thirty years, having left
France in some such situation in his own army as Muir filled in the
55th. An iron constitution, perfect obduracy of feeling, a certain
address well suited to manage savages, and an indomitable courage, had
early pointed him out to the commander-in-chief as a suitable agent to
be employed in directing the military operations of his Indian allies.
In this capacity, then, he had risen to the titular rank of captain; and
with his promotion had acquired a portion of the habits and opinions
of his associates with a facility and an adaptation of self which are
thought in America to be peculiar to his countrymen. He had often led
parties of the Iroquois in their predatory expeditions; and his
conduct on such occasions exhibited the contradictory results of both
alleviating the misery produced by this species of warfare, and
of augmenting it by the broader views and greater resources of
civilization. In other words, he planned enterprises that, in their
importance and consequences, much exceeded the usual policy of the
Indians, and then stepped in to lessen some of the evils of his own
creating. In short, he was an adventurer whom circumstances had thrown
into a situation where the callous qualities of men of his class might
readily show themselves for good or for evil; and he was not of a
character to baffle fortune by any ill-timed squeamishness on the score
of early impressions, or to trifle with her liberality by unnecessarily
provoking her frowns through wanton cruelty. Still, as his name was
unavoidably connected with many of the excesses committed by his
parties, he was generally considered in the American provinces a wretch
who delighted in bloodshed, and who found his greatest happiness in
tormenting the helpless and the innocent; and the name of Sanglier,
which was a sobriquet of his own adopting, or of Flint Heart, as he was
usually termed on the borders, had got to be as terrible to the women
and children of that part o