Theodore Winthrop

“ Major André’s Bootjack, joined Skerrett on his perilous service.
“Ike for one,” continued Dewitt. “Well, Galsworthy, old Sam Galsworthy, for two. And for three, I don’t believe a better man lives than Hendrecus Canady, the root-doctor’s son. They’re all Brothertoft-Manor boys, built of the best cast-steel, and strung with the wiriest kind of wire. Shoot bullets into ’em, stick baggonets into ’em; they don’t mind the bullets any more than spit-balls at school, nor the baggonets more than witches do pins.”
“Well, Jierck, have them here in an hour. ”

“ Deer, too, — there ain’t many pieces of woods on it where I haven’t routed out deers, and when they legged for the Highlands, I legged too, and come to know the Highlands just as well. I used to love, when I was a boy, to go along on the heights above the river, and pick out places where I was going to live; but I sha’n’t live in any of ’em now. What does a man care about home, or living at all, when his woman isn’t true?”
Major Skerrett did not interrupt this burst of remembrances. “Jierck suffers as much in his way,” he thought, “as the ex-Patroon.” ”

“ I have felt tears in my eyes, all the while, and only kept them down by talking low comedy with the serio-comic black personage. Can a broken heart be mended? That is always woman’s work, I suppose. In this case, too, woman broke, woman must repair. The daughter must make over what the wife spoilt. She shall be saved for his sake and her own, even if I come out of the business an amputated torso. I don’t quite comprehend people that cannot help themselves. ”

“ And I suppose exuberant chaps, like myself, are put in the world to help them. I wonder whether any woman will break my heart! I wonder whether Miss Lucy liked any of our fellows, and had a hero in her eye to make Kerr look more caitiff than he is. ”

“ Sergeant Lincoln also goes. Now I want three men more, and you shall choose them. Each man must have the grit of a hundred; and they must know the country as well as they know the way to breakfast. Name three, Jierck! ”