Perhaps some of them longed to touch, oftener than they did,
the hands of children, and to consider more the faces of women,--for
hearts are hearts even under a belted coat of red on the Fiftieth
Parallel,--but men of nerve do not blazon their feelings.
No one would have accused Sergeant Fones of having a heart. Men of keen
discernment would have seen in him the little Bismarck of the Mounted
Police. His name carried farther on the Cypress Hills Patrol than any
other; and yet his officers could never say that he exceeded his duty
or enlarged upon the orders he received. He had no sympathy with crime.
Others of the force might wink at it; but his mind appeared to sit
severely upright upon the cold platform of Penalty, in beholding breaches
of the statutes. He would not have rained upon the unjust as the just if
he had had the directing of the heavens. As Private Gellatly put it:
"Sergeant Fones has the fear o' God in his heart, and the law of the land
across his saddle, and the newest breech-loading at that!" He was part
of the great machine of Order, the servant of Justice, the sentinel in
the vestibule of Martial Law.
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