tar, he
and his comrades of the Black Watch had been reared in the broad faith
that teaches temperance, not intolerance. Their canteen sergeant set the
limit, not the pace, and doubtless Mac in 'listing for a soldier in the
land of liberty had looked perhaps for even greater license. Beer he
called "swipes," and despised. Rhine wine, tasted but once, set his grim
face awry, and presently townward. Mac's one peccadillo since joining at
Minneconjou was a rantin', roarin' drunk in Silver Hill that cost Uncle
Sam three days of his services, and the Highlander three months of his
pay. There were fines both military and municipal. In disgust Mac swore
off. He "had na use for a consairn that compelled a mon to walk three
miles to get a wee drappie--and lose three months' siller."

But Priscilla was undaunted still. She had written glowingly,
enthusiastically, unceasingly, of all her efforts to promote the cause
of temperance among the nation's soldiery. She had told much of her
converts to total abstinence, and little of their backsliding. She had
managed, through Blenke and others, to get a transcript of the daily
guard report, and the punishments awarded by the summary and general
courts-martial. Minneconjou had now a garrison of some eight hundred
men, with a big and bustling frontier town only a few miles away. Thanks
to the system of the post Exchange and the careful supervision, both of
its customers and its supplies, drunkenness had been reduced almost to a
minimum. Not one out of one hundred men was in confinement, either
awaiting or serving sentence. Not more than ten in two months had been
fined for minor breaches of discipline due to drink. Some old topers,
relics of the sutler-shop days of the army, were still to be found, men
whose stomachs could not be always appeased by mild measures, and
demanded the coarser stimulant--in bottles smuggled from town; but every
case, however mild, had been made, it seems, the text for one of
Priscilla's vivid letters descriptive of the depravity still rampant in
the army, and due entirely to the presence of that blot upon Christian
civilization--the Canteen.

And well had they served their purpose. In fancied security, knowing
that their methods had resulted in the greatest good to the greatest
number, the officers on duty with troops had read with smiling tolerance
marked copies of Eastern papers detailing the concerted efforts of the
crusaders against the post Exchange. Congre