Sergeant La Croix protested with many oaths that all the best generals of the day had commanded him in turn, and that his present colonel was the first that had succeeded in inspiring him with unlimited confidence.

"He knows every point of war--this one," said La Croix, "I heard him beg and pray for leave to storm this thundering bastion before it was armed: but no, the old muffs would be wiser than our colonel.

So now here we are kept at bay by a place that Julius Caesar and Cannibal wouldn't have made two bites at apiece; no more would I if I was the old boy out there behind the hill." In such terms do sergeants denote commanders-in-chief--at a distance.

A voluble sergeant has more influence with the men than the minister of war is perhaps aware: on the whole, the 24th brigade would have followed its gloomy colonel to grim death and a foot farther.

One thing gave these men a touch of superstitious reverence for their commander.