Colonel, "you are unreasonable!"

"There he goes! another insult!" cried the disabled soldier, partially
appealing to the ladies. Under any other circumstances than those just
then existing, either or all the four would have made some attempt to
prevent what they believed would eventuate in an outright quarrel; but
Mrs. Owen, as the hostess, did not like to interfere with the right of a
guest to quarrel or even to fight, if he thought proper to do so, and
neither of the others dared say a word for fear of forcing a betrayal of
the disguise.

"Well, then," said the Colonel, who had spirit enough, sometimes, as we
have before seen, to grow angry and be even threatening when he saw no
personal danger before him. "If you do not like that, I will say
something more. You are either crazy or drunk, Captain Slivers, and I do
not know or care which!"

"I will fight you to-morrow, cripple as I am!" cried the Captain, while
the ladies had now all risen to their feet in real alarm. Then, as if
suddenly recollecting: "Stop! no, I will punish you in another way. You
wear a Colonel's uniform--where is your regiment, sir? I will make you
join it to-morrow and march within the week. Every regiment in the city
is to be ordered off at once. See if I have not influence enough with my
uncle, the Governor, to send _you_ packing!"

"_Find_ my regiment first--_find_ it, sir!" said the Colonel, now fairly
(and reasonably) exasperated beyond any recollection of what he was
saying.

"Ah!--h!--h!" cried the Captain with one of those tones of stage
exultation which he had so often heard proclaiming the final triumph of
the villain or the discovery of that lost will which was to restore the
flagging fortunes of persecuted virtue. "Ah!--h!--h! now I _have_ got
you! You have no commission, you do not belong to any regiment, and you
are subject to the draft that is already ordered! Do you hear me?--the
_draft_! the _draft_!" and he howled it out towards the Colonel as if he
suspected him of a very material failure in his sense of hearing.

Achilles had his vulnerable heel, and there are times in the lives of
each of us when the arrow of accident, harmless at all other periods,
can enter and ruin. Colonel Bancker had kept his secret, or believed
that he had kept it, inviolate; but his fatal moment had come. Whether
really frightened out of all recollection at the thought of that
terrible "draft" which has already twice re-peopled Canada[17] at the