mstances which had been brought to light by the testimony of the
witnesses during the course of the trial and because the act had been
committed without malice or criminal intent, he was found not guilty of
any violation of the Articles of War, but imprudent in his action, for
which cause he had been sentenced to receive a reprimand from the
Military Governor.

Stephen spoke not a word to any one as he made his way back to his seat.
Why could they not have given him a clear verdict? Either he was guilty
or he was not guilty. He could not be misled by the sugary phrases in
which the vote of censure had been couched. The court had been against
him from the start.

At any rate, he thought, the reprimand would be only a matter of form.
Its execution lay wholly with him who was to administer it. The court
could not, by law, indicate its severity, nor its lenity, nor indeed add
anything in regard to its execution, save to direct that it should be
administered by the commander who convened the court. And while it was
undoubtedly the general intention of the court-martial to impose a mild
punishment, yet the quality of the reprimand was left entirely to the
discretion of the authority commissioned to utter it.

When Stephen appeared before the Military Governor at the termination of
the business of the day, he was seized with a great fury, one of those
angers which, for a while, poison the air without obscuring the mind.
There was an unkind look on the face of the Governor, which he did not
like and which indicated to him that all would not be pleasant. He bowed
his head in answer to his name.

"Captain Meagher," the Governor began. "You have been found guilty by
the Regimental Court-Martial of an action which was highly imprudent.
You have been led perhaps by an infatuate zeal in behalf of those, whom
you term your co-religionists, to the committal of an offense upon the
person of your superior officer. It is because of this fact that I find
it my sad duty to reprimand you severely for your misguided ardor and to
admonish you, together with the other members of your sect, of whom an
unfair representation is already found in the halls of our Congress and
in the ranks of our forces, lest similar outbreaks occur again. Did you
but know that this eye only lately saw the members of that same Congress
at Mass for the soul of a Roman Catholic in purgatory, and participating
in the rites of a Church against whose anti-Christian cor