r. Powlett's at the time Mr. Davies was
assaulted and robbed near his Urbana home. You had there been on terms
of intimacy with young Powlett, who disappeared after much disreputable
doing. You soon enlisted, and were for a time very intimate with a
recruit, Howard, who corresponded with the description I have of
Powlett. You both had frequent letters,--you from your mother and he
from several sources. Then came a disagreement and you held yourself
apart from him and his new chum, a young fellow called Paine, and, while
you continued loyal to an old friendship and kept silent as to Howard's
past, he was less considerate of you. There was serious trouble between
yourself and Sergeant Haney and Howard the night you reached Fort Scott
after the campaign, and you were ordered confined. I have heard there at
Scott a story I do not believe. Will you not tell your captain and me
the real cause?"

"Well, sir, it was about my writing-case," said the corporal, in low and
hesitant voice. "I kept mother's letters and some pictures and things I
valued in it. It went with me up to the Big Horn camp all right, but
when we started on the campaign and cut loose from the wagons I had to
turn it over to Sergeant Haney. I saw him lock it in the big company
chest, and the night we got into Scott with the wagons and that chest
was unloaded, over three months afterwards, I asked for it at once, and
I had been kept back with the wagons, and I'd been drinking a little,
for it was a bitter cold march, and Haney and Howard gave me more
liquor and told me I'd better not take it until I'd quit drinking. We
had trouble that night later, and I was confined for abusing the
sergeant and being drunk, though I could prove I hadn't abused him, and
that it was just the other way, and that I was only slightly affected by
the liquor. The next day I sent word from the guard-house for my case,
and the reply came that the sergeant gave it to me the previous night. I
knew he hadn't and said so. They answered that I was drunk and must have
lost it, and that was all the satisfaction I got."

"Why didn't you tell me about this at the time, Brannan?" asked
Cranston, kindly.

"I meant to, sir, the moment I got out, but they fixed things so as to
send me direct from the guard-house with Lieutenant Boynton's detachment
to the agency, and when I wrote from there to Howard and Haney both,
they answered that they had a clue, and if I'd only keep quiet they'd
get it sur