for supplies, and I beg no part of my regiment may
be the first to set an example to the contrary.«
    »You have only to command, Major Duncan, to be obeyed; and, yet, if I might
presume, sir -«
    »Speak freely, serjeant; you are talking with a friend.«
    »I was merely about to say, that I find even the Scotch soldiers, like
venison and birds, quite as well as pork, when they are difficult to be had.«
    »That may be very true, but likes and dislikes have nothing to do with
system. An army can rely on nothing but its commissaries. The irregularity of
the provincials has played the devil with the King's service, too often, to be
winked at any longer.«
    »Gen. Braddock, your honor, might have been advised by Col. Washington -«
    »Out upon your Washington! - You're all provincials together, man, and
uphold each other, as if you were of a sworn confederacy.«
    »I believe His Majesty has no more loyal subjects than the Americans, your
honor.«
    »In that, Dunham, I'm thinking you're right, and I have been a little too
warm, perhaps. I do not consider you a provincial, however, serjeant, for,
though born in America, a better soldier never shouldered a musket.«
    »And Col. Washington, your honor -«
    »Well, and Col. Washington may be a useful subject too. He is the American
prodigy, and I suppose I may as well give him all the credit you ask. You have
no doubt of the skill of this Jasper Eau douce?«
    »The boy has been tried, sir, and found equal to all that can be required of
him.«
    »He has a French name, and has passed much of his boyhood in the French
colonies - has he French blood, in his veins, serjeant?«
    »Not a drop, your honor. Jasper's father was an old comrade of my own, and
his mother came of an honest and loyal family, in this very province.«
    »How came he then so much among the French, and whence his name? - He speaks
the language of the Canadas, too, I find!«
    »That is easily explained, Major Duncan. The boy was left under the care of
one of our mariners in the old war, and he took to the water, like a duck. Your
honor knows that we have no