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lted down the stairs and out into the open air, mopping his heated brow. The adjutant was coming swiftly up the row. He had hastened forth from a vine-covered piazza well toward the eastward end just as Ray, with heart still hammering, came limping again into the glare of the sunlight. As they neared each other--the staff officer with quick, springy step, the subaltern somewhat halting and lame--the latter caught sight of a sabre swinging at the senior's hip. What but one thing at that hour of the day could this portend? One moment brought the answer: "Mr. Ray, I reg----" with reddened cheek and blinking eyes, began the adjutant, who liked him well. Then, with sudden effort, "I--you are hereby placed in close arrest and confined to your quarters--by order of Colonel Stone." CHAPTER XIV REACTION That colonel was a very unhappy man. "All the devils in the calendar," said he, "have broken loose here at Minneconjou. My cavalry commander has gone stark, staring mad, and it takes four men to hold him. His wife cannot stay under the same roof and live, says the maid. Madame must repose herself, or die. Mrs. Stone says she might take the mistress under our roof, but she'll be damned if she'll take the maid--at least she meant that. I said it. The maid says the mistress will die if they are separated an instant, which suggests a happy end to one of our troubles, and the cause of all the rest; and to cap the climax, Billy Ray's boy has done the maddest thing ever dreamed of in Dakota. Why, doctor, I tell you it _can't_ be doubted! Foster wires the identification was complete. He dropped the handkerchief that hid his face. Department Headquarters wired at once to slap him in arrest and investigate, and the further we look the worse it looks for Ray--and then, by gad, he denies the whole thing and demands a court-martial! Was ever a man so mixed as I am!" It was even as Stone said. Dwight was for the time being, at least, as mad as a maniac. "Brain fever," said the wiseacres about the post, "superinduced by sunstroke abroad and scandal at home." Since Tuesday night he had recognized no one, had raved or muttered almost incessantly, and at times had struggled fiercely with his attendants in the effort to leave his bed. Mrs. Dwight's room adjoined that in which he lay, and Felicie had incurred the wrath of the doctor by urging that Madame's condition demanded that Monsieur be removed to hospital or to some remot
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