So will the critical
occurrences of a day fill chapters, after those of a year have failed
to yield more material than will eke out a paragraph. Experience
proceeds by fits and starts. Only in fiction does a career run in an
unbroken line of adventures or memorable incidents.
The personal life of Philip Winwood, as distinguished from his
military career, which had no difference from that of other commanders
of rebel partisan horse, and which needs no record at my hands, was
marked by no conspicuous event from the night when he learned and
defeated Madge's plot, to the end of the war. The news of her
departure, and of Tom's death, came to him with a fresh shock, it is
true, but they only settled him deeper in the groove of sorrow, and in
the resolution to pay full retribution where it was due.
He had no pusillanimous notion of the unworthiness of revenge. He
believed retaliation, when complete and inflicted without cost or
injury to the giver, to be a most logical and fitting thing. But he
knew that revenge is a two-edged weapon, and that it must be wielded
carefully, so as not to cause self-damage. He required, too, that it
should be wielded in open and honourable manner; and in that manner he
was resolved to use it upon Captain Falconer. As for Madge, I believe
he forgave her from the first, holding her "more in sorrow than in
anger," and pitying rather than reproaching.
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