, Herbert, give me a good, sharp pinch to wake me up! I may
be sleeping on my post again?" said Traverse in perplexity.

"You are not sleeping, Traverse!"

"Are you sure?"

"Perfectly," replied Herbert, laughing.

"Well, then, do you think that crack upon the crown of my head that I
got upon Chapultepec has not injured my intellect?"

"Not in the slightest degree!" said Herbert, still laughing at his
friend's perplexity.

"Then I am the hero of a fairy tale, that is all--a fairy tale in which
waste paper is changed into bank notes and private soldiers prince
palatines! Look here!" cried Traverse, desperately, thrusting the bank
checks under the nose of his friend, "do you see those things and know
what they are, and will you tell me that everything in this castle
don't go by enchantment?"

"Yes, I see what they are, and it seems to me perfectly natural that
you should have them!"

"Humph!" said Traverse, looking at Herbert with an expression that
seemed to say that he thought the wits of his friend deranged.

"Traverse," said Major Greyson, "did it never occur to you that you
must have other relatives in the world besides your mother? Well, I
suspect that those checks were sent by some relative of yours or your
mother's, who just begins to remember that he has been neglecting you."

"Herbert, do you know this?" inquired Traverse, anxiously.

"No, I do not know it; I only suspect this to be the case," said
Herbert, evasively. "But what is that which you are forgetting."

"Oh! this--yes, I had forgotten it. Let us see what it is!" said
Traverse, examining a paper that had rested unobserved upon the stand.

"This is an order for my discharge, signed by the Secretary of War, and
dated--ha-ha-ha--two years ago! Here I have been serving two years
illegally, and if I had been convicted of neglect of duty in sleeping
on my post, I should have been shot unlawfully, as that man, when he
prosecuted me, knew perfectly well!" exclaimed Traverse.

"That man, as I said before, lies upon his deathbed! Remember, nothing
against him! But that order for a discharge! now that you are in the
way of promotion and the war is over, will you take advantage of it?"

"Decidedly, yes! for though I am said to have acquitted myself passably
well at Chapultepec--"

"Gloriously, Traverse! You won your colors gloriously!"

"Yet for all that my true mission is not to break men's bones, but to
set them when broken. Not to take men's l