ce I have been on this cursed prairie. He's the most uncomfortable
man I ever met."

"Yes," said Jack; "and don't you know, Bill, how he drank up all the
coffee last night, and put the rest by for himself till the morning!"

"He pretends to know everything," resumed the captain; "nobody must give
orders but he! It's, oh! we must do this; and, oh! we must do that; and
the tent must be pitched here, and the horses must be picketed there;
for nobody knows as well as he does."

We were a little surprised at this disclosure of domestic dissensions
among our allies, for though we knew of their existence, we were not
aware of their extent. The persecuted captain seeming wholly at a loss
as to the course of conduct that he should pursue, we recommended him to
adopt prompt and energetic measures; but all his military experience
had failed to teach him the indispensable lesson to be "hard," when the
emergency requires it.

"For twenty years," he repeated, "I have been in the British army, and
in that time I have been intimately acquainted with some two hundred
officers, young and old, and I never yet quarreled with any man. Oh,
'anything for a quiet life!' that's my maxim."

We intimated that the prairie was hardly the place to enjoy a quiet
life, but that, in the present circumstances, the best thing he could
do toward securing his wished-for tranquillity, was immediately to put
a period to the nuisance that disturbed it. But again the captain's
easy good-nature recoiled from the task. The somewhat vigorous measures
necessary to gain the desired result were utterly repugnant to him; he
preferred to pocket his grievances, still retaining the privilege of
grumbling about them. "Oh, anything for a quiet life!" he said again,
circling back to his favorite maxim.

But to glance at the previous history of our transatlantic confederates.
The captain had sold his commission, and was living in bachelor ease
and dignity in his paternal halls, near Dublin. He hunted, fished, rode
steeple-chases, ran races, and talked of his former exploits. He
was surrounded with the trophies of his rod and gun; the walls were
plentifully garnished, he told us, with moose-horns and deer-horns,
bear-skins, and fox-tails; for the captain's double-barreled rifle had
seen service in Canada and Jamaica; he had killed salmon in Nova Scotia,
and trout, by his own account, in all the streams of the three kingdoms.
But in an evil hour a seductive stranger cam