language. Oaths and imprecations poured from his lips;
he raved at Billings, despite the efforts of the officers to quiet him,
despite the adjutant's threat to report his language at once to the
commanding officer.

Mr. Billings paid no attention whatever to his accusations, but went on
eating his dinner with an appearance of serenity that only added fuel to
his captain's fire. Two or three officers rose and left the table in
disgust, and just how far the thing might have gone cannot be accurately
told, for in less than three minutes there came a quick, bounding step
on the piazza, the clank and rattle of a sabre, and the adjutant fairly
sprang back into the room:

"Captain Buxton, you will go at once to your quarters in close arrest,
by order of Major Stannard."

Buxton knew his colonel and that little fire-eater of an adjutant too
well to hesitate an instant. Muttering imprecations on everybody, he
went.

The next morning, O'Grady was released and returned to duty. Two days
later, after a long and private interview with his commanding officer,
Captain Buxton appeared with him at the officers' mess at dinner-time,
made a formal and complete apology to Lieutenant Billings for his
offensive language, and to the mess generally for his misconduct; and so
the affair blew over; and, soon after, Buxton left, and Mr. Billings
became commander of Troop "A."

And now, whatever might have been his reputation as to sobriety before,
Private O'Grady became a marked man for every soldierly virtue. Week
after week he was to be seen every fourth or fifth day, when his guard
tour came, reporting to the commanding officer for duty as "orderly,"
the nattiest, trimmest soldier on the detail.

"I always said," remarked Captain Wayne, "that Buxton alone was
responsible for that man's downfall; and this proves it. O'Grady has all
the instincts of a gentleman about him, and now that he has a gentleman
over him he is himself again."

One night, after retreat-parade, there was cheering and jubilee in the
quarters of Troop "A." Corporal Quinn had been discharged by expiration
of term of service, and Private O'Grady was decorated with his chevrons.
When October came, the company muster-roll showed that he had won back
his old grade; and the garrison knew no better soldier, no more
intelligent, temperate, trustworthy non-commissioned officer, than
Sergeant O'Grady. In some way or other the story of the treatment
resorted to by his amateur