and see you later?"

"By all means! and will you not dine with us? A real campaign dinner,
you know, but we shall be so pleased to have you."

Langston's face fairly glowed. "I'll be here in half an hour, if I may,
but I must see the captain at once, and will go. I trust--Miss
Loomis--is well."

"Very well, and quite able to answer for herself," said Mrs. Cranston,
mischievously, while Langston's eyes eagerly searched the door-way and
dim interior; but Miss Loomis was nowhere in sight, and chose to appear
to be not within hearing.

"Why didn't you come or speak?" said Meg, reproachfully, the moment he
was gone.

"I was busy. These are school days," was the calm reply, one that would
have been no comfort to Langston, who walked rather ruefully on with the
subaltern. The business with Cranston proved interesting.

"You have a young trooper, Brannan, whom I need to see confidentially,
and at once. May I do so, captain?"

"Certainly. Send Corporal Brannan here," said the troop commander,
wondering what new complication had involved this wayward son; and
presently, erect and soldierly, with a fine tan on his cheek and
brand-new chevrons on his sleeves, "lanced for bravery in the field," as
the troopers expressed it in those days, the young soldier stood
attention before them.

"You probably do not remember me, Corporal Brannan," said Langston, in
courteous tone, "but I remember you favorably and well for the day at
Bluff Siding last June." And the light in the young soldier's eyes
indicated that he recalled the civilian. "Your captain knows something
of the matter on which I wish to see you, and I have asked him to remain
here with us." And now an anxious, troubled look crept over Brannan's
face, some swift overshadowing from the coming cloud. "You have never
yet told any one whose knife it was that cut you that day."

Brannan's lips moved and he turned even paler, but he said no word.

"Well, corporal, the time seems to have come when instead of keeping
silence to protect another man you may have to speak for your own sake."

Brannan glanced quickly, anxiously, from one face to another, from the
lawyer to his troop commander, as though appealing to the latter to say
how could that be. Presently he faltered, "I don't understand." "Well,
I will tell you, in part at least. Your captain and I know something of
your past history, and I do not think you will have cause to regret that
fact. We know that you were at D