“In what?” was the brief demand.
“In being absent from the Fort, without leave, sir.”
“Indeed! To substantiate that, you must bring proofs, Captain Headley. Who,” and he looked around him, as if challenging his accuser, “pretends to have seen me beyond these defences?”
The commandant was for some moments at a loss, for he had not anticipated this difficulty. At length he resumed. “Was it not to be absent without leave, that, when the guard was all ready to be marched off, you were not to be found?”
“Had the guard been marched off, or the parade even formed, I should of course, have come justly under your censure, Captain Headley; but it was not so—you ordered the parade and guard-mounting for a later hour. I am here at that hour.”
“Hem!” returned the commandant, who was in some degree obliged to admit the justice of the remark; “you defend yourself more in the spirit of a lawyer, than of a soldier, Mr. Ronayne, but all this difficulty is soon set at rest. I require but your simple denial that you have been absent from the Fort, within the last twenty-four hours. That given, I shall be satisfied.”
“And that, sir,” was the firm reply of the youth, “I am not disposed to give. I am not much versed in military prudence, Captain Headley,” he pursued, after a few moments' pause, and in a tone of slight irony, which that officer did not seem to perceive, “but at least sufficient to induce me to reserve what I have to say for my defence. You have charged me, sir, with having been absent from the Fort without leave; and it is for you to prove that fact before a competent authority.”
“March off your guard, Mr. Ronayne,” was the abrupt rejoinder of the commandant, for he liked not the continuation of a scene in which the advantage seemed not to rest with him, but with the very party whom he had sought to chasten; “Mr. Elmsley dismiss the parade. I had intended promoting on the spot, Corporal Nixon and private Collins for their conduct yesterday, but the gross insubordination I have just seen, has caused me to change my mind. Neither shall have the rank intended, until the guilty parties are named. I give until the hour of parade to-morrow for their production, and if, by that time, their names are not laid before me, no such promotion shall take place while I command the garrison. Dismiss the men, sir. Here, Winnebeg, my good fellow, you have come at a good moment. I have dispatches to send to Detroit this very evening, and I know no one I can trust so well as yourself.”
“Good,” was the answer, “Winnebeg always ready to do him order—no angry more, gubbernor, with young chief,” pointing to the ensign, as he moved off with his small guard. “Dam good soger—you see dis?” and he touched his scalping-knife with his left hand, and looked very significantly.
“No, Winnebeg, not angry any more,” was the reply; “but how do you know him to be good soger? What has your scalping-knife to do with it?”