n his eyes. But Spruce had seen them. Of course he made no
sign, stepping away briskly, with a little pat on the lean shoulder.

He came back softly in a little while. He looked at Danvers, who was
simulating sleep, with his dark lashes fallen over red eyelids, and he
shook his head. During his absence he had found that the orders were no
rumor. The regiment was going to Porto Rico sure enough. Spruce stood a
moment, before he sat down by Danvers' side. But he barely was seated
ere he was on his feet again, in a nervous irritation which none had
ever seen in Spruce. He walked to the door of the tent and gazed, in the
same attitude that the nurse had gazed, an hour earlier, at the low,
white streets. Two great buzzards were flying low against the hot,
cloudless vault of blue.

"Them boys'll be all broke up if I go!" said Spruce.

He frowned and fidgeted. In fact, he displayed every symptom of a man
struggling with a fit of furious temper. What really was buffeting
Spruce's soul was not, however, anger, it was the temptation of his
life. Spruce had known few temptations; at least, he had recognized few.
His morality was the lenient, rough-hewn article which satisfies a
soldier's conscience. He had no squeamishness about the sins outside his
limited category; he fell into them blithely and had no remorse when he
remembered them, wherefore he preserved a certain incongruous innocence
even in his vices, as has happened to many a man before. It is, perhaps,
the moral nature's own defense; and keeps untouched and ever fresh
little nooks and corners of a sinner's soul, into which the conscience
may retreat and from which sometimes she sallies forth to conquer the
abandoned territory. What Spruce called his duty he had done quite as a
matter of course. He had not wavered any more than he wavered when the
war bonnets were swooping down on his old captain's crumpled-up form.
But this--this was different. The boys needed him. But if he stayed with
the boys, there was the regiment and the company and the captain and the
chance to distinguish himself and march back in glory to his town.

"I guess most folks would say I'd _ought_ to follow the colors," he
thought; "raw fellers like them, they need a steady, old hand. Well,
they've got Bates." (Bates was an old regular, also, of less
enterprising genius than Spruce, but an admirable soldier.) "I
s'pose,"--grudgingly--"that Bates would keep 'em steady. And captain can
fight, and the