ike a triphammer. Alert-minded drunk or sober, drunk,
he was lightning-tongued, and he could play as well drunk as sober,
too; but more than once a sympathetic officer altered the tactics that
McGilveray might not be compelled to march, and so expose his condition.
Standing still he was quite fit for duty. He never got really drunk "at
the top." His brain was always clear, no matter how useless were his
legs.

But the wonderful thing was that for six months McGilveray's legs were
as steady as his head was right. At first the regiment was unbelieving,
and his resolution to drink no more was scoffed at in the non-com mess.
He stuck to it, however, and then the cause was searched for--and not
found. He had not turned religious, he was not fanatical, he was of
sound mind--what was it? When the sergeant-major suggested a woman, they
howled him down, for they said McGilveray had not made love to women
since the day of his weaning, and had drunk consistently all the time.

Yet it was a woman.

A fortnight or so after Wolfe's army and Saunders's fleet had sat down
before Quebec, McGilveray, having been told by a sentry at Montmorenci
where Anstruther's regiment was camped, that a French girl on the
other side of the stream had kissed her hand to him and sung across in
laughing insolence:

"Malbrouk s'en va t'en guerre,"

he had forthwith set out to hail this daughter of Gaul, if perchance she
might be seen again.

At more than ordinary peril he crossed the river on a couple of logs,
lashed together, some distance above the spot where the picket had seen
Mademoiselle. It was a moonlight night, and he might easily have been
picked off by a bullet, if a wary sentry had been alert and malicious.
But the truth was that many of these pickets on both sides were in no
wise unfriendly to each other, and more than once exchanged tobacco
and liquor across the stream. As it chanced, however, no sentry saw
McGilveray, and presently, safely landed, he made his way down the
stream. Even at the distance he was from the falls, the rumble of them
came up the long walls of firs and maples with a strange, half-moaning
sound--all else was still. He came down until he was opposite the spot
where his English picket was posted, and then he halted and surveyed his
ground.

Nothing human in sight, no sound of life, no sign of habitation. At
this moment, however, his stupidity in thus rushing into danger, the
foolishness of pursuing a wo