the military salute which Joyce had
never succeeded before in extracting from him, notwithstanding a
hundred admonitions on the subject.

"This is a distressing affair, captain Willoughby," observed Joel, in
his most jesuitical manner; "and to me it is altogether onaccountable!
It does seem to me ag'in natur', for a man to desart his own household
and hum' (Joel meant '_home_') in the hour of trial. If a fellow-
being wunt (Anglice 'wont') stand by his wife and children, he can
hardly be expected to do any of his duties."

"Quite true. Strides," answered the confiding captain, "though these
deserters are not altogether as bad as you represent, since, you will
remember, they have carried their wives and children with them."

"I believe they have, sir--yes, that must be allowed to be true, and
that it is, which to me seems the most extr'or'nary. The very men that
a person would calcilate on the most, or the heads of families, have
desarted, while them that remain behind are mostly single!"

"If we single men have no wives and children of our own to fight for,
Strides," observed Joyce, with a little military stiffness, "we have
the wife and children of captain Willoughby; no man who wishes to sell
his life dearly, need look for a better motive."

"Thank you, serjeant," the captain said, feelingly--"On _you_, I
can rely as on myself. So long as I have _you_, and Joel, here,
and Mike and the blacks, and the rest of the brave fellows who have
stood by me thus far, I shall not despair. _We_ can make good the
house against ten times our own number. But, it is time to look to the
Indians."

"I was going to speak to the captain about Nick," put in Joel, who had
listened to the eulogium on his own fidelity with some qualms of
conscience. "I can't say I like the manner he has passed between the
two parties; and that fellow has always seemed to me as if he owed the
captain a mortal grudge; when an Injin _does_ owe a grudge, he is
pretty sartain to pay it, in full."

"This has passed over my mind, too, I will confess, Joel; yet Nick and
I have been on reasonably good terms, when one comes to remember his
character, on the one side, and the fact that I have commanded a
frontier garrison on the other. If I have had occasion to flog him a
few times, I have also had occasion to give him more rum than has done
him good, with now and then a dollar."

"There I think the captain miscalcilates," observed Joel with a
knowledge of hu