“I do think, your honour,” said Joyce, as they entered the court together, “that we may depend on O’Hearn, and Jamie, and Strides.  The latter, as a matter of course, being a corporal, or serjeant as he calls himself; and the two first, as men who have no ties but such as would be likely to keep them true to this family.  But here is the corporal to speak for himself.”

As this was said, corporal Strides, as the serjeant persisted in terming Joel, on the ground that being but one step higher himself, the overseer could justly claim no rank of greater pretension, approached the captain, taking care to make the military salute which Joyce had never succeeded before in extracting from him, notwithstanding a hundred admonitions on the subject.

“This is a distressing affair, captain Willoughby,” observed Joel, in his most jesuitical manner; “and to me it is altogether onaccountable!  It does seem to me ag’in natur’, for a man to desart his own household and hum’ (Joel meant ‘home’) in the hour of trial.  If a fellow-being wunt (Anglice ‘wont’) stand by his wife and children, he can hardly be expected to do any of his duties.”

“Quite true.  Strides,” answered the confiding captain, “though these deserters are not altogether as bad as you represent, since, you will remember, they have carried their wives and children with them.”

“I believe they have, sir—­yes, that must be allowed to be true, and that it is, which to me seems the most extr’or’nary.  The very men that a person would calcilate on the most, or the heads of families, have desarted, while them that remain behind are mostly single!”

“If we single men have no wives and children of our own to fight for, Strides,” observed Joyce, with a little military stiffness, “we have the wife and children of captain Willoughby; no man who wishes to sell his life dearly, need look for a better motive.”

“Thank you, serjeant,” the captain said, feelingly—­“On you, I can rely as on myself.  So long as I have you, and Joel, here, and Mike and the blacks, and the rest of the brave fellows who have stood by me thus far, I shall not despair. We can make good the house against ten times our own number.  But, it is time to look to the Indians.”

“I was going to speak to the captain about Nick,” put in Joel, who had listened to the eulogium on his own fidelity with some qualms of conscience.  “I can’t say I like the manner he has passed between the two parties; and that fellow has always seemed to me as if he owed the captain a mortal grudge; when an Injin does owe a grudge, he is pretty sartain to pay it, in full.”

“This has passed over my mind, too, I will confess, Joel; yet Nick and I have been on reasonably good terms, when one comes to remember his character, on the one side, and the fact that I have commanded a frontier garrison on the other.  If I have had occasion to flog him a few times, I have also had occasion to give him more rum than has done him good, with now and then a dollar.”