The _chasseurs_ in the
mess-room were making merry after dinner with pipes and cards, and one
of these, giving Pisgah a piece of bread and a tin basin of strong
soup, slapped him smartly upon the shoulder, and cried:
"My fine fellow! you have the stuff in you for a soldier."
"I am just getting a soldier's stuff into me," responded Pisgah,
antithetically.
"Why do you go abroad, hungry, ill-dressed, and houseless, when you can
wear the livery of France?"
Pisgah thought the soldier a very presuming person.
"I am a foreigner," he said, "a--a--a French Canadian (we speak
_patois_ there). My troubles are temporary merely. A day or two may make
me rich."
"Yet for that day or two," continued the _chasseur_, "you will have the
humiliation of begging your bread. What signifies seven years of
honorable service to three days of mendicancy and distress? We are well
cared for by the nation; we are respected over the world. It is a mean
thing to be a soldier in other lands; here we are the gentlemen of
France."
Pisgah had never looked upon it in that light, and said so.
"Your poverty may have unmanned you," repeated the other; "to recover
your own esteem do a manly act! We have all feared death as citizens;
but take cold steel in your hand, and you can look into your grave
without a qualm.
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