ffairs at the agency
and the fighting on the Ska, but that, said she, was only as she knew he
would behave. From babyhood her boy had been conspicuous among his
fellows for absolute fearlessness and desperate courage, and her memory
was charged with a wealth of corroborative detail which that of his
fellows seemed to have lost. Those who were confidently appealed to were
polite and sympathetic, as became them when responding to a social
magnate of such prominence and influence, but they looked far from
confident and said satirical things when once away from her presence;
but then, no one knows how a boy is going to turn out. A few weeks and
the general himself would be home, and then, fresh from the
contemplation of the soldierly prowess and graces of her son, what could
he do less than have him commissioned a colonel or something and ordered
in on the staff, and then what store of fatted calves would not be
slaughtered in honor of this her son who was lost and was found, and who
had returned to her bringing his sheaves with him? If mother-dreams
could but come true all men would live and die immaculate, ennobled,
magnificently brave, steadfast, and commanding. And far away among the
fastnesses of the Yellowstone, living in close communion with nature, in
a glorious round of days, full of high health, courage, and hope, with
ambition fired, purpose strengthened, with freedom from care or
temptation, small wonder was it if Corporal Brannan's letters warranted
all her expectations. But those were the halcyon days of cavalry life,
not the typical. Our truest heroes are those who bear with equanimity
the heat and burden of the long, monotonous round of garrison life with
its petty tyrannies, exactions, exasperations, and bear them without a
break or murmur. It is a poor, poor soldier who cannot wax enthusiastic
on a full stomach--and a good horse--when serving in the field.

But while "C" Troop was doing escort duty, and its captain's wife and
little ones were safe at home, "A" Troop, long handicapped by the
frailties of its commander and notorious for bad drill, was now striving
to win a new name under the lead of Bachelor Hastings and its grim
Benedick second lieutenant, whose fair young bride could hardly be said
to be safe at Scott, restored to the sympathetic circle of which
Mesdames Stone, Flight, and Darling were the guiding stars. Old Pegleg
seldom left his piazza now except to go to bed or dinner, and did not
much