itary eye, could have been so wanting in
subordination, as not merely to have infringed a positive order of the
garrison, but to have made a private soldier of that garrison accessary
to his delinquency, it is more than probable his stern habits of
military discipline would have caused him to overlook the offence of
the soldier, in deeper indignation at the conduct of the infinitely
more culpable officer; but not one word did he credit of a statement,
which he assumed to have been got up by the prisoner with the mere view
of shielding himself from punishment: and when to these suspicions of
his fidelity was attached the fact of the introduction of his alarming
visitor, it must be confessed his motives for indulging in this belief
were not without foundation.

The impatience manifested during the trial of Halloway was not a result
of any desire of systematic persecution, but of a sense of wounded
dignity. It was a thing unheard of, and unpardonable in his eyes, for a
private soldier to assert, in his presence, his honour and his
respectability in extenuation, even while admitting the justice of a
specific charge; and when he remarked the Court listening with that
profound attention, which the peculiar history of the prisoner had
excited, he could not repress the manifestation of his anger. In
justice to him, however, it must be acknowledged that, in causing the
charge, to which the unfortunate man pleaded guilty, to be framed, he
had only acted from the conviction that, on the two first, there was
not sufficient evidence to condemn one whose crime was as clearly
established, to his judgment, as if he had been an eye-witness of the
treason. It is true, he availed himself of Halloway's voluntary
confession, to effect his condemnation; but estimating him as a
traitor, he felt little delicacy was necessary to be observed on that
score.

Much of the despotic military character of Colonel de Haldimar had been
communicated to his private life; so much, indeed, that his sons,--both
of whom, it has been seen, were of natures that belied their origin
from so stern a stock,--were kept at nearly as great a distance from
him as any other subordinates of his regiment. But although he seldom
indulged in manifestations of parental regard towards those whom he
looked upon rather as inferiors in military rank, than as beings
connected with him by the ties of blood, Colonel de Haldimar was not
without that instinctive love for his childr