teem, and begging if ever they met again to be regarded as most
sincerely their friend, etc.

"There is no answer," said Davies, as he finished it, a smile of
contempt on his lips. "You must have known there couldn't be, did you
not?"

"Well, I fancied as much. He had no friend to carry it for him unless I
would, and the young idiot has gone off feeling profoundly wretched
about the whole business, as he deserves to. Had I been here, as an old
friend of his family, it would have been my right to warn him weeks ago,
and to put a stop to his foolishness if he was not to be advised. More
than that, Mr. Davies, I wish to say that ever since I met you on the
train last June I felt an interest in you that would have prompted me to
stand your friend in your absence whether I felt any interest in him or
not. I should like to know you better and to convince you that I meant
what I said when we parted there."

And Davies at last held out a cordial hand.

This was the afternoon before his early start, and though he left the
post feeling that he had gained a friend worth having, Davies did not
fully realize how dangerous a thing it was to leave a community of
women, none of whom he had sought to placate and some of whom he had
offended. Mrs. Darling had declared war against him, and Mrs. Stone, if
not Mrs. Flight, was in full sympathy with her. How dare he say they
were responsible for Mrs. Davies's flirtation? How dare he insinuate
that they had led her to the forbidden shades of Cresswell's? There was
a tempest in a teapot among Mrs. Stone's friends and associates over
Mrs. Darling's account of his rebuke to her, for Mrs. Darling had
deftly managed to include Mrs. Stone and Mrs. Flight in the scope of his
condemnation, and very possibly old Peleg might have been wrought up to
pitch of sympathetic resentment but for the fact that he was
concentrating all of his shattered faculties on the mysterious robbery
of the adjutant's desk.

Captain Devers, relieved at last from command of the post and
overshadowed by vague sense of official condemnation, was now, in
hopeful imitation of the Homeric Achilles, sulking in his tent. Invited
by Colonel Stone to appear at the office and give his counsel as to the
matter, Captain Devers had replied that in view of the discourtesies to
which he had been subjected at the hands of the adjutant he could hardly
be expected to care to visit the building except when compelled to do
so, and having b