Point had cast them in her unbreakable mold. Neat, precise, they sat
rigidly erect, and smoked their cigars.

"Do you like it on the staff of General Jackson, Harry," asked Colonel
Talbot.

"I felt regrets at leaving the Invincibles," replied Harry truthfully,
"but I like it. I think it a privilege to be so near to General
Jackson."

"A leader who has fought only one battle in independent command and who
lost that," said Lieutenant-Colonel Hector St. Hilaire, thoughtfully--he
knew that Harry would repeat nothing, "and who nevertheless has the
utmost confidence of his men. He does not joke with them as the young
Napoleon did with his soldiers. He has none of the quality that we call
magnetic charm, and yet his troops are eager to follow him anywhere. He
has won no victories, but his men believe him capable of many. He takes
none of his officers into his confidence, but all have it. Incredible,
but true. Why is it?"

He put his cigar back in his mouth and puffed meditatively. Colonel
Leonidas Talbot, who also had been puffing meditatively while
Lieutenant-Colonel Hector St. Hilaire was speaking, now took his cigar
from his mouth, blew away the delicate rings of smoke, and said in an
equally thoughtful tone:

"It occurs to me, Hector, that it is the power of intellect. Stonewall
Jackson has impressed the whole army down to the last and least little
drummer with a sense of his mental force. I tell you, sir, that he is
a thinker, and thinkers are rare, much more rare than people generally
believe. There is only one man out of ten thousand who does not act
wholly according to precedent and experience. Habit is so powerful that
when we think we are thinking we are not thinking at all, we are merely
recalling the experiences of ourselves or somebody else. And of the
rare individuals who leave the well-trod paths of thought to think new
thoughts, only a minutely small percentage think right. This minutely
small fraction represents genius, the one man in a million or rather ten
million, or, to be more accurate, the one man in a hundred million."

Colonel Leonidas Talbot put the cigar back in his mouth and puffed with
regularity and smoothness. Lieutenant-Colonel Hector St. Hilaire, in his
turn, took his cigar from his mouth once more, blew away the fine white
rings of smoke and said:

"Leonidas, it appears to me that you have hit upon the truth, or as our
legal friends would say, the truth, the whole truth and nothing but