you like: oh, it all goes for nothing! That man is resolved to rule the
roost and he'll set his face against any plan that he didn't think of
himself."

The captain puffed for a while at his pipe, as if meditating upon his
grievances; then he began again:

"For twenty years I have been in the British army; and in all that time
I never had half so much dissension, and quarreling, and nonsense, as
since I have been on this cursed prairie. He's the most uncomfortable
man I ever met."

"Yes," said Jack; "and don't you know, Bill, how he drank up all the
coffee last night, and put the rest by for himself till the morning!"

"He pretends to know everything," resumed the captain; "nobody must give
orders but he! It's, oh! we must do this; and, oh! we must do that; and
the tent must be pitched here, and the horses must be picketed there;
for nobody knows as well as he does."

We were a little surprised at this disclosure of domestic dissensions
among our allies, for though we knew of their existence, we were not
aware of their extent. The persecuted captain seeming wholly at a loss
as to the course of conduct that he should pursue, we recommended him to
adopt prompt and energetic measures; but all his military experience
had failed to teach him the indispensable lesson to be "hard," when the
emergency requires it.

"For twenty years," he repeated, "I have been in the British army, and
in that time I have been intimately acquainted with some two hundred