ithin its battered bastions.

But the Special Messenger only said: "Before your regiment goes back,
may I tell Captain Stanley who I am?"

The colonel's face fell.

"Nobody is supposed to have any idea who you are----"

"I know it. But is there any harm if I only tell it to--to just this
one, single man?" she asked, earnestly, not aware that her eyes as well
as her voice were pleading--that her whole body, bent forward in the
saddle, had become eloquent with a confession as winning as it was
innocent.

The colonel looked curiously into the eager, flushed face, framed in its
setting of dark, curly hair, then he lifted a gauntleted hand from his
bridle and slowly stroked his crisp mustache upward to hide the smile he
could not control.

"I did not know," he said gravely, "that Captain Stanley was
the--ah--'one' and 'only' man."

She blushed furiously, the vivid color ran from throat to temple,
burning her ears till they looked like rose petals caught in her dark
hair.

"You may tell Captain Stanley--if you must," observed the colonel of the
Fourth Missouri. He was gazing absently straight between his horse's
ears when he spoke. After a few moments he looked at the sky where,
overhead, the afterglow pulsated in bands of fire.

"I always thought," he murmured to himself, "that old Stanley was in
love with that Southern girl he saw at Sandy River.... I had no idea he
knew the Special Messenger. It appears that I am slightly in error."
And, very thoughtfully, he continued to twist his mustache skyward as he
rode on.

When he ventured to glance around again the Special Messenger had
disappeared.

"Fancy!" he muttered; "fancy old Stanley knowing the mystery of the
three armies! And, by gad, gentlemen!" addressing, _sotto voce_, the
entire regiment, as he turned in his stirrups and looked back at the
darkening column behind him--"by gad! gentlemen of the Fourth Dragoons,
no prettier woman ever sat a saddle than is riding this moment with the
captain of Troop F!"

What Captain Stanley saw riding up to him through the dull afterglow was
a slightly built youth in the uniform of the regular cavalry, yellow
trimming on collar, yellow welts about the seams of the jacket, yellow
stripes on the breeches; and, as the youth drew bridle, saluted, and
turned to ride forward beside him, he caught sight of a lieutenant's
shoulder straps on the sergeant's shell jacket.

"Well, youngster," he said, smiling, "don't they clothe