said things which First Sergeant Haney overheard and reported
to the captain. It seemed queer, even to me, so many men going from
Devers's troop under command of somebody else's lieutenant, and now
Davies himself has gone, and suppose he should hear of this talk?"

"He will know what to do, chaplain. Davies has earnest friends who will
not see him further wronged, but just now, as you probably understand,
nothing can be done. Now excuse me a moment. I may have been mistaken,
but I thought I saw a man's figure hanging about the back gate of Number
Twelve as I came up the bluff from the wood-yard. I thought he went
through Davies's yard and that I'd see him crossing the parade when I
got to the corner, but not a soul was in sight and it is almost as light
as the day. If he didn't go through he must be in the shadows there of
the wood-shed. There's been some prowling, and though this isn't the
sort of night for that sort of thing, it's still possible. Will you
kindly wait here and watch the front and this side while I beat up the
rear?"

Wonderingly the chaplain assented, and, with his sabre clanking at his
side, Cranston strode away northward along the line of white
picket-fence until he came to the high rear barrier of the row, one of
black unplaned boards, and around behind that he disappeared. Across the
intervening yard and through the open gate-way at the back the chaplain
could see a patch of the snow-clad valley, and watched for the
appearance of Cranston's sturdy form in that silvery gap.

But another eye had also been alert. The very instant the figure of the
officer-of-the-day disappeared from view behind the high back fence, out
from the shadows of the shed there sprang a lithe, slender form, clad in
soldier overcoat, and, in less time than it takes to tell it, around it
darted behind the shed, was one instant poised at the top of the fence
that separated the yard of Davies's quarters from that of their
next-door neighbor, then noiselessly dropped out of sight on the other
side. The next minute Cranston appeared in the gap.

Instead of shouting, fearful of disturbing the inmates, the chaplain
quit his post, hastened along the front to Davies's gate and around the
house to the rear, where he found Cranston searching.

"There was a man. I saw him. He leaped the fence into the next yard. A
tall, slender fellow."

But search in there and in its fellows revealed nothing. The prowler had
had time to skip from y