ome gray mustache and distinguished bearing, and that air
of conscious success and possession which some men know so well how to
assume even when their chances are slimmer than my lady's hand. The
sisterly breach was healed before that beautiful month was over. Frost
dined at the Garrison's four times a week and drove Miss Nita behind his
handsome bays every day or two. In November he asked a question. In
December there was an announcement that called forth a score of
congratulations around headquarters, and in January the wedding cards
went all over the Union--some to West Point--but to Latrobe, who had been
looking ill and anxious for six weeks, said his classmates, and falling
off fearfully in his studies, said his professors, only a brief note
inclosing his letters and begging for hers. At reveille next morning
there was no captain to receive the report of roll call from the first
sergeant of Company "B." "Where's Latrobe?" sleepily asked the officer of
the day of the cadet first lieutenant. "I don' know," was the answer, and
to the amaze of Latrobe's roommate, who had gone to bed and to sleep
right after taps the night before, they found evidence that "Pat" had
left the post. He had not even made down his bedding. His cadet uniforms
were all there, but a suit of civilian clothes, usually in a snug package
up the chimney, that had been used several times "running it" to the
hotel after taps in August, was now, like its owner, missing. After three
days' waiting and fruitless search, the superintendent wired Latrobe's
uncle and best friend, old General Drayton, and that was the last seen or
heard of "Pat." In the spring and ahead of time his class was graduated
without him, for the war with Spain was on. In the spring an irate and
long-tried father was upbraiding another only son for persistent failures
at college. "Gov Prime will get the sack, not the sheepskin," prophesied
his fellows. And then somehow, somewhere the father heard it was a
married woman with whom his boy was so deeply in love, and there were
bitter, bitter words on both sides--so bitter that when at last he flung
himself out of his father's study Gov Prime went straight to Mildred's
room, silently kissed her and walked out of the house. This was in April.
The next heard of him he had enlisted for the war and was gone to San
Francisco with his regiment with the prospect of service in the
Philippines ahead of him, but that was full four months after his
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