of mine.
You know and I know that women like Mrs. Cranston, like Mrs. Truman,
like Mrs. Leonard or Mrs. Wright would not go there under any
circumstances, and the fact that a party of women from the fort was in
one room simply served to attract a party of--very different women to
the next."

"Then I'll bust Cresswell's head for him inside of twenty-four hours,"
exclaimed Sanders. "The idea of his daring to allow such people in there
at such a time!"

"The idea of your not standing my friend--you, the only fellow-graduate
of my regiment here at the post--and preventing my wife's being taken
there at any time. Think of that, Sanders."

"Why, damn it, Parson, don't be so brutally unjust. I supposed if you
cared a rap you'd have stopped it before."

"Stopped it before? Why, Sanders, what are you saying? You don't mean
she--my wife--had been there before?" And all the indignation had gone
from Davies's face. It was now white, almost awe-stricken.

For a moment Sanders knew not what to say. All at once there dawned upon
him the realization that now through him, in this utterly untoward,
clumsy, miserable way, was Davies for the first time being made aware of
what common, every-day rumor said of his wife. He would have cut his
tongue out rather than wilfully put in circulation a word of scandal,
yet it had been reserved for him to bring to a husband's ears the first
ill-omened tidings of a wife's misdoing.

"God forgive me, Davies, if I've blundered!" he burst out at last. "I'll
never forgive myself. I supposed--they all talked of it so fully--freely
together--I supposed you knew all about it. I never dreamed of harm in
it. Mrs. Flight--or rather Mrs. Darling and she together--occasionally
went there, and the other ladies had their husbands as a rule, or at
least sometimes, and there was good sleighing, you know, between here
and town, and absolutely nowhere else were the roads beaten. They sort
of had to go there, don't you see?"

"Go there with whom?" said Davies, grasping the rail of the fence and
breathing hard.

"Why, with Willett, of course; he was the only fellow that had a good
turnout. He used to come for them, I believe, and sometimes he had Mrs.
Darling and Mrs. Davies--he and Burtis--and sometimes Mrs. Flight."

"And do you mean that they--that these four, went there to Cresswell's?
Do you know this, Sanders?"

"Well," said Sanders, "they were all talking and laughing about it,
never dreaming of anyth