d witnesses."

"By God, Captain Armitage, the army is no longer a place for a
gentleman, if his every movement is to be spied upon like this!"

"The world is no place for a man of your stamp, is perhaps a better way
of putting it," said Armitage, whose fingers were twitching
convulsively, and whose whole frame quivered with the effort he was
making to restrain the rage and indignation that consumed him. He could
not--he would not--believe in her guilt. He must have this man's proof,
no matter how it might damn _him_ for good and all, no matter whom else
it might involve, so long as it cleared her precious name. He must be
patient, he must be calm and resolute; but the man's cold-blooded,
selfish, criminal concealment nearly maddened him. With infinite effort
he controlled himself, and went on:

"But it is of her I'm thinking, not of you. It is the name you have
compromised and can clear, and should clear, even at the expense of your
own,--in fact, Mr. Jerrold, _must_ clear. Now will you tell me where you
were and how you can prove it?"

"I decline to say. I won't be cross-questioned by men who have no
authority. Captain Chester said he would refer it to the colonel; and
when _he_ asks I will answer,--not until then."

"I ask in his name. I am authorized by him, for he is not well enough to
meet the ordeal."

"You say so, and I don't mean to dispute your word, Captain Armitage,
but I have a right to demand some proof. How am I to know he authorized
you?"

"He himself gave me this letter, in your handwriting," said Armitage;
and, opening the long envelope, he held forth the missive over which the
poor old colonel had gone nearly wild. "He found it the morning they
left,--in her garden."

If Jerrold's face had been gray before, it was simply ghastly now. He
recoiled from the sight after one fruitless effort to grasp the letter,
then rallied with unlooked-for spirit:

"By heaven, Armitage, suppose I _did_ write that letter? What does it
prove but what I say,--that somebody has been prying and spying into my
affairs? How came the colonel by it, if not by fraud or treachery?"

"He picked it up in the garden, I tell you,--among the rose-bushes,
where she--where Miss Renwick had been but a few moments before, and
where it might appear that she had dropped it."

"_She!_ That letter! What had she to do with it? What right had she to
read it?"

Armitage stepped impulsively forward. A glad, glorious light was
bursti