What are the descriptive words immediately following this in the printed
narrative? They also were visibly expressed upon the platform. "Looking
up he met the eyes that had so strong an influence over him. He put his
hand before his own eyes, and the breast of his disgrace-jacket swelled
as if it would fly asunder." His observant adviser thereupon quietly
but very earnestly remarks, that he "would rather see this in him
(Doubledick) than he would see five thousand guineas counted out upon
the table between them for a gift to his (the Captain's) good mother,"
adding suddenly, "Have you a mother?" Doubledick is thankful to say she
is dead. Reminded by the Captain that if his praises were sounded from
mouth to mouth through the whole regiment, through the whole army,
through the whole country, he would wish she had lived to say with pride
and joy, "He is my son!" Doubledick cries out, "Spare me, sir! She would
never have heard any good of me. She would never have had any pride or
joy in owning herself my mother. Love and compassion she might have had,
and would always have had, I know; but not--spare me, sir! I am a broken
wretch quite at your mercy." By this time, according to the words of the
writing, according only to the eloquent action of the Reading, "He had
turned his face to the wall and stretched out his _imploring_ hand."
How eloquently that "imploring hand" spoke in the agonised, dumb
supplication of its movement, coupled as it was with the shaken frame
and the averted countenance, those who witnessed this Reading will
readily recall to their recollection. As also the emotion expressed in
the next broken utterances exchanged by the interlocutors:--

"My friend------"

"God bless you, sir!"

Captain Taunton, interrupted for the moment, adding--

"You are at the crisis of your fate, my friend. Hold your course
unchanged a little longer, and you know what must happen, _I_ know
better than ever you can imagine, that after that has happened you are a
lost man. No man who could shed such tears could bear such marks."

Doubledick, replying in a low shivering voice, "I fully believe it,
sir," the young Captain adds--

"But a man in any station can do his duty, and in doing it can earn his
own respect, even if his case should be so very unfortunate and so very
rare, that he can earn no other man's. A common soldier, poor brute
though you called him just now, has this advantage in the stormy times
we live in, that