“Pardon me, Captain Borroughcliffe,” said his host, elevating his person to more than its usually erect attitude; “they may be misguided, deluded, and betrayed, but the comparison is unjust. Give them arms and give them discipline, and he who gets an inch of their land from them, plentiful as it is, will find a bloody day on which to take possession.” “The veriest coward in Christendom would fight in country where wine brews itself into such a cordial as this,” returned the cool soldier. “I am a living proof that you mistook my meaning; for had not those loose-flapped gentlemen they call Vermontese and Hampshire-granters (God grant them his blessing for the deed) finished two-thirds of my company, I should not have been at this day under your roof, a recruiting instead of a marching officer; neither should I have been bound up in a covenant, like the law of Moses, could Burgoyne have made head against their long-legged marchings and countermarchings. Sir, I drink their healths, with all my heart; and with such a bottle of golden sunshine before me, rather than displease so good a friend, I will go through Gates' whole army, regiment by regiment, company by company, or, if you insist on the same, even man by man, in a bumper.” “On no account would I tax your politeness so far,” returned the colonel, abundantly mollified by this ample concession; “I stand too much your debtor, Captain Borroughcliffe, for so freely volunteering to defend my house against the attacks of my piratical, rebellious, and misguided countrymen, to think of requiring such a concession.” “Harder duty might be performed, and no favors asked, my respectable host,” returned the soldier. “Country quarters are apt to be dull, and the liquor is commonly execrable; but in such a dwelling as this, a man can rock himself in the very cradle of contentment. And yet there is one subject of complaint, that I should disgrace my regiment did I not speak of--for it is incumbent on me, both as a man and a soldier, to be no longer silent.” “Name it, sir, freely, and its cause shall be as freely redressed,” said the host in some amazement. “Here we three sit, from morning to night,” continued the soldier; “bachelors all, well provisioned and better liquored, I grant you, but like so many well-fed anchorites, while two of the loveliest damsels in the island pine in solitude within a hundred feet of us, without tasting the homage of our sighs. This, I will maintain, is a reproach both to your character, Colonel Howard, as an old soldier and to mine as a young one. As to our old friend, Coke on top of Littleton here, I leave him to the quiddities of the law to plead his own cause.”