The Adjutant half turned his head, sheered a little in the direction of the voice, and landed stiffly on the sand-bar below the bridge.
A mangy little Jackal, who had been yapping hungrily on a low bluff, cocked up his ears and tail, and scuttered across the shallows to join the Adjutant.
"I heard," said the Adjutant, in a voice like a blunt saw going through a thick board--"I HEARD there was a new-born puppy in that same shoe."
"It is here," said the Adjutant, squinting over his beak at his full pouch.
"A liar, a flatterer, and a Jackal were all hatched out of the same egg," said the Adjutant to nobody in particular; for he was rather a fine sort of a liar on his own account when he took the trouble.
"When the Jackal owns he is gray, how black must the Jackal be!" muttered the Adjutant. He could not see what was coming.
But that which we have just heard is wisdom," said the Adjutant, bringing down one foot.
There you will find the adjutant on duty," said the official.
The adjutant on duty, meeting Prince Andrew, asked him to wait, and went in to the Minister of War.
His fertile mind instantly suggested to him a point of view which gave him a right to despise the adjutant and the minister.
"Take this and deliver it," said he to his adjutant, handing him the papers and still taking no notice of the special messenger.
When Prince Andrew left the palace he felt that all the interest and happiness the victory had afforded him had been now left in the indifferent hands of the Minister of War and the polite adjutant. The whole tenor of his thoughts instantaneously changed; the battle seemed the memory of a remote event long past.