The officer had
further said: "And if it was something that both you and the Patrol would
be the better for, you couldn't object, Sergeant." But the Sergeant only
saluted, looking steadily into the eyes of the officer. That was his
reply. Private Gellatly, standing without, heard Sergeant Fones say, as
he passed into the open air, and slowly bared his forehead to the winter
sun:
"Exactly."
And Private Gellatly cried, with revolt in his voice, "Divils me own, the
word that a't to have been full o' joy was like the clip of a rifle-
breech."
Justice in a new country is administered with promptitude and vigour,
or else not administered at all. Where an officer of the Mounted Police-
Soldiery has all the powers of a magistrate, the law's delay and the
insolence of office have little space in which to work. One of the
commonest slips of virtue in the Canadian West was selling whisky
contrary to the law of prohibition which prevailed. Whisky runners were
land smugglers. Old Brown Windsor had, somehow, got the reputation of
being connected with the whisky runners; not a very respectable business,
and thought to be dangerous.
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