bad man to have been fruitless of
serious, practical evil, Herbert encouraged his friend to be patient
for a short time longer, when they should see the end of the campaign,
if not of the war.

It was now that period of suspense and of false truce between the
glorious 20th of August and the equally glorious 8th of September,
1847--between the two most brilliant actions of the war, the battle of
Churubusco and the storming of Chapultepec.

The General-in-Chief of the United States forces in Mexico was at his
headquarters in the Archiepiscopal palace of Tacubaya, on the suburbs,
or in the full sight of the city of the Montezumas, awaiting the issue
of the conference between the commissioners of the hostile governments,
met to arrange the terms of a treaty of peace--that every day grew more
hopeless.

General Scott, who had had misgivings as to the good faith of the
Mexicans, had now his suspicions confirmed by several breaches on the
part of the enemy of the terms of the armistice.

Early in September he despatched a letter to General Santa Anna,
complaining of these infractions of the truce, and warning him that if
some satisfactory explanations were not made within forty-eight hours
he should consider the armistice at an end, and renew hostilities.

And not to lose time, he began on the same night a series of
reconnaisances, the object of which was to ascertain their best
approach to the city of Mexico, which, in the event of the renewal of
the war, he purposed to carry by assault.

It is not my intention to pretend to describe the siege and capture of
the capital, which has been so often and eloquently described by grave
and wise historians, but rather to follow the fortunes of an humble
private in the ranks, and relate the events of a certain court-martial,
as I learned them from the after-dinner talk of a gallant officer who
had officiated on the occasion.

It was during these early days in September, while the illustrious
General-in-Chief was meditating concluding the war by the assault of
the city of Mexico, that Colonel Le Noir also resolved to bring his own
private feud to an end, and ruin his enemy by a coup-de-diable.

He had an efficient tool for his purpose in the Captain of the company
to which Traverse Rocke belonged. This man, Captain Zuten, was a vulgar
upstart thrown into his command by the turbulence of war, as the scum
is cast up to the surface by the boiling of the cauldron.

He hated Trave