He began
to chafe under this inaction, and long again for the excitement of the
march and bivouac, in which, for the past four years, he had buried his
past.
He was sitting one afternoon alone before his reports and dispatches,
when this influence seemed so strong that he half impulsively laid them
aside to indulge in along reverie. He was recalling his last day
at Robles, the early morning duel with Pinckney, the return to San
Francisco, and the sudden resolution which sent him that day across the
continent to offer his services to the Government. He remembered
his delay in the Western town, where a volunteer regiment was being
recruited, his entrance into it as a private, his rapid selection,
through the force of his sheer devotion and intelligent concentration,
to the captaincy of his company; his swift promotion on hard-fought
fields to the head of the regiment, and the singular success that had
followed his resistless energy, which left him no time to think of
anything but his duty. The sudden intrusion of his wife upon his career
now, even in this accidental and perhaps innocent way, had seriously
unsettled him.
The shadows were growing heavier and deeper, it lacked only a few
moments of the sunset bugle, when he was recalled to himself by that
singular instinctive consciousness, common to humanity, of being
intently looked at.
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