The yell of laughter and applause at the ludicrous masquerade shook the hills. The Colonel rode up to see what occasioned it. He recognized his two men, and his face darkened with anger.
“You infernal rascals,” he shouted, “you have been off plundering houses, have you, in place of being with your company. I'll stop this sort of thing mighty sudden. This regiment shall not degrade itself by plundering and robbing, if I have to shoot every man in it. Captain, arrest those men, and keep thim in close confinement until I can have them tried and properly punished.”
Chapter XVII. Alspaugh on a Bed of Pain.
This is the very ecstacy of love,
Whose violent property foredoes itself.
And leads the will to desperate undertakings
As often as any passion under Heaven
That does afflict our natures.—Hamlet
Endurance is made possible by reason of the element of divisibility. Metaphysical mathematicians imagine that there is possibly a “fourth dimension,” by the existence of which many hitherto inexplicable phenomena may be explained. They think that probably this fourth dimension is SUCCESSION OF TIME.
So endurance of unendurable things is explainable on the ground that but a small portion of them has to be endured in any given space of time.
It is the old fable of the clock, whose pendulum and wheels stopped one day, appalled by the discovery that they would have to move and tick over three million times a year for many wearisome years, but resumed work again when reminded that they would only have to tick ONCE each second.
So it was with Rachel Bond.
The unendurable whole of a month's or a week's experience was endurable when divided in detail and spread over the hours and days.