He had thought of a fine revenge upon the officer who had referred to him and his fellows as mule drivers.

But he saw that it could not come to pass.

His dreams had collapsed when the mule drivers, dwindling rapidly, had wavered and hesitated on the little clearing, and then had recoiled.

And now the retreat of the mule drivers was a march of shame to him.
A dagger-pointed gaze from without his blackened face was held toward the enemy, but his greater hatred was riveted upon the man, who, not knowing him, had called him a mule driver.
When he knew that he and his comrades had failed to do anything in successful ways that might bring the little pangs of a kind of remorse upon the officer, the youth allowed the rage of the baffled to possess him.

This cold officer upon a monument, who dropped epithets unconcernedly down, would be finer as a dead man, he thought.