did deceive her, and there is no punishment on
earth great enough to give me for that--except to have no word from
her!"

"You are to go at once. I put it beyond you to understand Belknap's
conduct in this matter."

"He is a gentleman," I said, "and fit to love her. I think none of us
needs praise or blame for that."

He choked up. "She's my girl," he said. "Yes, all my boys in the Army
love her--there isn't one of them that wouldn't be proud to marry her on
any terms she would lay down. And there isn't a man in the Army, married
or single, that wouldn't challenge you if you breathed a word of what
has gone between you and her."

I looked at him and made no motion. It seemed to me go unspeakably sad,
so incredible, that one should be so unbelievably underestimated.

"Now, finally," resumed Colonel Meriwether, after a time, ceasing his
walking up and down, "I must close up what remains between you and me.
My daughter said to me that you wanted to see me on some business
matter. Of course you had some reason for coming out here."

"That was my only reason for coming," I rejoined. "I wanted to see you
upon an important business matter. I was sent here by the last message
my father gave any one--by the last words he spoke in his life. He told
me I should come to you."

"Well, well, if you have any favor to ask of me, out with it, and let us
end it all at one sitting."

"Sir," I said, "I would see you damned in hell before I would ask a
crust or a cup of water of you, though I were starving and burning. I
have heard enough."

"Orderly!" he called out. "Show this man to the gate."

CHAPTER XXXVI

THE GOAD

It was at last borne in upon me that I must leave without any word from
Ellen. She was hedged about by all the stern and cold machinery of an
Army Post, out of whose calculations I was left as much as though I
belonged to a different world. I cannot express what this meant for me.
For weeks now, for months, indeed, we two had been together each hour of
the day. I had come to expect her greeting in the morning, to turn to
her a thousand times in the day with some query or answer. I had made no
plan from which she was absent. I had come to accept myself, with her,
as fit part of an appointed and happy scheme. Now, in a twinkling, all
that had been subverted. I was robbed of her exquisite dependence upon
me, of those tender defects of nature that rendered her most dear. I was
to miss now her fineness, h