"A clergyman is fitter to reply to you than I."
"Do you not think it best that I marry Dolly Glenn?"
"God knows. It is all too melancholy and too terrible for me to comprehend the right and wrong of it, or how a penitence is best made. Yet, as you ask me, it seems to me that what she will one day become should claim your duty and your future. The weakest ever has the strongest claim."
"Yes, it-is true. I stand tonight so fettered to an unborn soul that nothing can unloose me.... I wish that I might live."
"You will live! You must live!"
"Aye, 'must' and 'will' are twins of different complexions, Loskiel.... Yet, if I live, I shall live decently and honestly hereafter in the sight of God and—Lana Helmer."
We said nothing more. About ten o'clock Boyd rose and went away all alone. Half an hour later he came back, followed by some score and more of men, a dozen of our own battalion, half a dozen musket-men of the 4th Pennsylvania Regiment, three others, two Indians, Hanierri, the headquarters Oneida guide, and Yoiakim, a Stockbridge.
"Volunteers," he said, looking sideways at me. "I know how to take Amochol; but I must take him in my own manner."
I ventured to remind him of the General's instructions that we find the Chinisee Castle and report at sunrise.
"Damn it, I know it," he retorted impatiently, "but I have my own plans; and the General will bear me out when I fling Amochol's scalp at his feet."