Chapter 14 - Page 2

not posted, so far as could be ascertained, even
a solitary sentinel.

"This is altogether surprising for Indian tactics," observed the
captain, in a low voice; for everything that was uttered that night
without the building was said in very guarded tones. "I have never
before known the savages to cover themselves in that manner; nor is it
usual with them to light fires to point out the positions they occupy,
as these fellows seem to have done."

"Is it not all _seeming_, sir?" returned the major. "To me that
camp, if camp it can be called, has an air of being deserted."

"There is a look about it of premeditated preparation that one ought
always to distrust in war."

"Is it not unmilitary, sir, for two soldiers like ourselves to remain
in doubt on such a point? My professional pride revolts at such a state
of things; and, with your leave, I will go outside, and set the matter
at rest by reconnoitring."

"Professional pride is a good thing, Bob, rightly understood and
rightly practised. But the highest point of honour with the really good
soldier is to do that for which he was precisely intended. Some men
fancy armies were got together just to maintain certain exaggerated
notions of military honour; whereas, military honour is nothing but a
moral expedient to aid in effecting the objects for which they are
really raised. I have known men so blinded as to assert that a soldier
is bound to maintain his honour at the expense of the law; and this in
face of the fact that, in a free country, a soldier is in truth nothing
but one of the props of the law, in the last resort. So with us; we are
here to defend this house, and those it contains; and our military
honour is far more concerned in doing that effectually, and by right
means, than in running the risk of not doing it at all, in order to
satisfy an abstract and untenable notion of a false code. Let us do
what is _right_, my son, and feel no concern that our honour
suffer."

Captain Willoughby said this, because he fancied it a fault in his
son's character, sometimes to confound the end with the means, in
appreciating the ethics of his profession. This is not an uncommon
error among those who bear arms, instances not being wanting in which
bodies of men that are the mere creatures of authority, have not
hesitated to trample the power that brought them into existence under
foot, rather than submit to mortify the feelings of a purely
conventional and exaggerated pride. The major was rebuked rather than
convinced, it not being the natural vocation of youth to perceive the
justice of all the admonitions of age.

"But, if one can be made auxiliary to the