. Miller
might have found it hard to give satisfactory answer. He was a widower,
and "that made him interesting to some people," was her analysis of the
situation. She really knew nothing more detrimental to his character,
and yet she wished he had not lost his wife, and her wishes on this
point were not entirely because of Elinor's motherless state. It was
the first year the girl had spent in garrison since the death of that
loving mother nearly a decade before. There were not lacking hearts
full of sympathy and affection for the weeping little maiden when that
sore affliction befell her. She had been taken to her mother's old
home, reared and educated, and possibly over-indulged there, and
sometimes gladdened by visits from her handsome and distinguished
father. A marked man in his profession was Dr. Bayard, one of the
"swells" of the medical corps of the army, and rapturously had he been
loved by the beautiful and delicate woman whose heart he had won,
somewhat to the sorrow of her people. They did not like the army, and
liked it still less in the long years of separation that followed.
Bayard was a man who in his earlier service had secured many a pleasant
detail, and had been a society leader at Old Point Comfort, and
Newport, and Boston Harbor, and now, in his advancing years and under
an administration with which he had lost influence, he was taking his
turn at frontier service, and heartily damning the fates that had
landed him at Laramie. His dead wife's father was a man whose dictum
was law in the political party in power. The doctor appealed to him to
urge the Secretary of War to revoke the orders which consigned him to
the isolation of a Wyoming post, but the old gentleman had heard more
than one account of his widowed son-in-law's propensities and
peccadilloes. It was his conviction that Newport was not the place for
handsome Dr. Bayard; he rather delighted in the news that the doctor
promptly sent him; but, though a power in politics, he was in some
things no politician, for, when his son-in-law begged him to use his
influence in his behalf, the old gentleman said no,--and told him why.

That gloomy November when Dr. Bayard left for the West he took his
revenge on the old people, for he took his daughter with him.

It was a cruel, an almost savage blow, and one that was utterly
unlooked for. Fond as he had been of Elinor's mother, and proud as he
was of his pretty child, the doctor had been content to spe