th the big, wide-open, violet eyes, the father
questioned:

"What's this about Georgie Thornton? How was he cut?"

"Georgie? Cut? Why, daddy, I didn't know it. Is he hurt?"

"You don't, Jim? Why, they told me to ask you, as though _you_ would
know. Weren't you with him?"

"Why, yes, daddy. I--I got out late," and here the young face began to
cloud. "And then--such fun!" and the laughter once more came bubbling
joyously from his happy heart. "Some 'B' Troop horses got loose, and we
all ran to see the round-up, and we were hinder-most at the start,
Georgie and I, but _I_ caught 'em, and got there with the foremost, an'
I guess he got tired and went home because we ran away from him,
really."

But already the father's attention was diverted. His eyes were following
Stanley Foster, who, dancing lightly down the steps, waved his hand with
exuberant cordiality to the pair as he crossed the road and struck out
over the parade.

"When that fellow begins putting his hand on my shoulder or patting my
back or calling me old chap I know he's playing to 'do' me some way,"
once said a brother officer of Foster's, and Sandy Ray was thinking of
it when three minutes later Foster came bounding breezily in,
confidence, cordiality, and jovial good-fellowship beaming from his
well-groomed visage:

"Sandy, old boy, lend me a horse this afternoon, will you?"

Ray was alone at his desk. The bare little army office, with its few
maps and ornamental calendars adorning the unpapered walls, its
barrack-built table and chairs, its stacks of letter-files, boxes and
tins of samples, was an uninviting place at best, yet had never hitherto
appeared inhospitable. Even under the management of the still
half-crippled cavalryman, himself an abstainer from the cup that
sometimes cheers, and a partaker of a cup that always saddens, there had
ever been frank and cordial greeting for visiting comrades, followed
usually by invitation to taste the good cheer of the Canteen and
suggest, if possible, additional improvement. But it was a lack-luster
eye that turned on the entering officer this day. Sergeant Bates had but
just left the room after having, in answer to question, briefly stated
that no one but Captain Foster had visited the lieutenant's office
during church time Sunday. The captain had merely tasted the beer,
glanced about him, and then departed. No, not the way he came, the
parade side. The captain had looked into the reading-room and throu