Trooper Tales — page 125: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A Soldier of Misfortune. 113 Poor Duffie did not know well of that which he spoke. And Euphrasie believed his words. She would have fol- lowed him through the dreariest of the world’s distances— to his home. Duffie will never forget the enchantment of that night. Faintly from the quarters up the trail was borne the bugle call for retreat. The man heard the distant scream of the trumpet, but he only held Euphrasie closer. It was a weird sensation for the soldier-no-longer. The sergeant would not call his name that night. Duffie’s heart held no regret—it held nothing that moment but the image of the woman into whose eyes he gazed, while the mount- ing moon scattered the twilight in the low southeast. How happy would those two have been if the man felt not the beckoning of his native shores, and the yearning of his mother’s heart! The next day Euphrasie left Corizel and the orange- perfumed slopes—lingered one last moment to listen to the song of the mountain river, then journeyed thither toward San Juan—el capital—with her husband. A white man cannot disregard social usages where other white men are. No, not even if he is a self-support- ing institution. It matters not the slightest whether a man cares more for a look from his wife than for a grasp upon the throttle of the mammoth social engine. If Duffie had known the woes of the man who dares transgress upon unconventional boundaries—the woes of even a poor ex-soldier—he could not have been driven from the isl- (CCONMICE NOOLSaE@)