esent omniscience and omnipotence. To each of
these gentlemen she sent an epistle recounting where, when, and how
Lieutenant Ralph Thurstane had been ambushed by unknown Indians, supposed
to be Apaches.

These letters she wrote and mailed without the knowledge of Coronado. This
was not caution, but pity; she did not suspect that he would try to
intercept them; only that it would pain him to learn how much she yet
thought of his rival. Indeed, it would have been cruel to show them to
him, for he would have seen that they were blurred with tears. You
perceive that she had come to be tender of the feelings of this earnest
and scoundrelly lover, believing in his sincerity and not in his villainy.

"Surely some of those people will know," thought Clara, with a trust in
men and dignitaries which makes one say _sancta simplicitas_. "If they do
not know," she added, with a prayer in her heart, "God will discover it to
them."

But no answers came for months. The colonel was not with his regiment, but
on detached service at New York, whither Clara's letter travelled to find
him, being addressed to his name and not marked "Official business." What
he did of course was to forward it to the Adjutant-General of the army at
Washington. The Adjutant-General successively filed both communications,
and sent a copy of each to headquarters at Santa Fe and San Francisco,
with an endorsement advising inquiries and suitable search. The mails were
slow and circuitous, and the official routine was also slow and
circuitous, so that it was long before headquarters got the papers and
went to work.

Does any one marvel that Clara did not go directly to the military
authorities in the city? It must be remembered that man has his own world,
as woman has hers, and that each sex is very ignorant of the spheres and
missions of the other, the retired sex being especially limited in its
information. The girl had never been told that there was such a thing as
district headquarters, or that soldiers in San Francisco had anything to
do with soldiers at Fort Yuma. Nor was she in the way of learning such
facts, being miles away from a uniform, and even from an American.

One day, when she was fuller of hope than usual, she dared to write to
that ghost, Thurstane. Where should the letter be addressed? It cost her
much reflection to decide that it ought to go to the station of his
company, Fort Yuma. This gave her an idea, and she at once penned two
other l