"I am the captain of these men, if that is what you would ask, madame. Are all soldiers butchers in your estimation?" "Soldiers!" she cried scornfully. "Call ye them soldiers? But perhaps you are even as they, and ’tis by your orders they torture women and children and make a veritable hell of God’s earth. I wish you joy of such work." "Pardon my dulness, madame," answered the captain calmly, "but I have not the least idea to what you are alluding or how I have incurred your displeasure." "No? Then hearken, sir." And in burning words she described the cause of her indignation. The captain listened with a gathering frown to her story, and at the conclusion turned on the corporal with a look that boded ill for that self-satisfied mortal. "So, sirrah! Is this the way you carry out my orders? Have I not said I will have no violence to the village folk? And by Heaven I will be obeyed. I have long known thee for a knave. Art fool and coward, too, that you must needs force children to help thee with thy work? Is this thy notion of a soldier’s work? I’ll teach thee better knowledge of thy duty ere I’ve done with thee. ’Tis not the first time I’ve heard such complaints; see to it it be the last, or by the saints ’twill be the end of thy service. I’ll have no bullies in my troop. Go, sirrah!" The discomfited corporal slunk off down the street casting an ugly glance over his shoulder at the girl who had brought such a rating upon him. But for her part Barbara laughed and waved her hand after the retreating figure. "Fare thee well, Sir Knight of the whipcord," she cried gaily. When the corporal had vanished, followed by other troopers, the captain turned towards Barbara with a bow and said coldly: "I trust you are satisfied with these orders, madame." "I shall be satisfied, sir, when I know that the orders are executed," she answered coolly. "Madame, I command here. Where I command I am obeyed." "’Twere easy to believe it, sir," she answered with a half-smile and a glance at his resolute face. "But I have heard there be many orders delivered thus readily in public which privately are never intended to be performed." The captain flushed hotly, but gave no further sign of anger at this insinuation. "Indeed, I know not wherein I have deserved your distrust, madame."