must not be wholly reliant on her
presence for his moral strength.

His face fell for a moment when she made the suggestion, but it cleared
presently, and he said with a dry laugh: "Well, I guess they must make
me a sergeant pretty quick. I'm a colonel in the Kentucky Carbineers!"

She laughed, too; then a moment afterwards, womanlike, wondered if she
was right, and was a little frightened. But that was only because she
was not self-opinionated, and was anxious, more anxious than any woman
in all the North.

It happened as Jim said; he was made a sergeant at once--Sally managed
that; for, when it came to the point, and she saw the conditions in
which the privates lived, and realised that Jim must be one of them and
clean out the stables, and groom his horse and the officers' horses,
and fetch and carry, her heart failed her, and she thought that she
was making her remedy needlessly heroical. So she went to see the
Commissioner, who was on a tour of scrutiny on their arrival at the
post, and, as better men than he had done in more knowing circles,
he fell under her spell. If she had asked for a lieutenancy, he would
probably have corrupted some member of Parliament into securing it for
Jim.

But Jim was made a sergeant, and the Commissioner and the captain of the
troop kept their eyes on him. So did other members of the troop who did
not quite know their man, and attempted, figuratively, to pinch him here
and there. They found that his actions were greater than his words, and
both were in perfect harmony in the end, though his words often seemed
pointless to their minds, until they understood that they had conveyed
truths through a medium more like a heliograph than a telephone. By and
by they begin to understand his heliographing, and, when they did that,
they began to swear by him, not at him.

In time it was found that the troop never had a better disciplinarian
than Jim. He knew when to shut his eyes, and when to keep them open. To
non-essentials he kept his eyes shut; to essentials he kept them very
wide open. There were some men of good birth from England and elsewhere
among them, and these mostly understood him first. But they all
understood Sally from the beginning, and after a little they were glad
enough to be permitted to come, on occasion, to the five-roomed little
house near the barracks, and hear her talk, then answer her questions,
and, as men had done at Washington, open out their hearts to her. The