ning to report his action to the post
commander had so far departed from the strict letter of his duty as to
confidentially inform the dazed young officer that the order had come by
wire from St. Paul. It was not the colonel's doing.

Sandy was in his room, "cooling off," as he said, when, with all his own
troubles and others' deeds upon his head and clouding his honest old
face, the post commander himself came in, took the mother's hand and led
her to a seat. "It can't upset you more than it has me, my friend," said
he. "I s'pose the explanation of it all is that they met
somehow--accidentally, perhaps--renewed the quarrel; Sandy was possibly
getting the worst of it and the men, whoever they were, couldn't stand
that, for they worshiped him, and pitched in. There are few of our
fellows, especially in the cavalry, that don't just love Sandy. There
are some here that hate Foster," and then Stone stopped, astounded,
confused, for Marion Ray, with rising color, interrupted:

"Why, Colonel Stone, you speak as though you thought it possible that my
son _could_ have been concerned in this affair!"

For an instant the colonel struggled for words, his red face mottling in
the violence of his emotion.

"Why, how can I help it, Mrs. Ray, with all I have heard? But--but I'm
more than glad you don't. What does he say?"

"That he never dreamed of such a thing," was the brief answer, and Stone
hitched half a dozen different ways in his chair.

"Colonel Leale, Department Inspector, was on that train," said Stone
slowly, "and reported Foster's story verbatim, I suppose, to department
headquarters, where the arrest was ordered at once, and they demand that
we apprehend the confederates. The general's away, and there isn't a man
at headquarters that smelt powder in the Civil War--or they'd know
confederates weren't so precious easy to apprehend. The men who might
have been implicated all swear they were in town at the time and can
prove an alibi; and unless Sandy will tell, who can?"

"You still speak as though he could have had something to do with the
assault, Colonel. I'll call him to speak for himself." So Sandy came
down. Colonel and subaltern were left together, and Marion, with sore,
wounded and anxious heart, stepped into her own little snuggery to look
at the picture of her far-away husband (ah, how she missed him and
needed him!) and of Maidie, her sweet and winsome daughter, now Mrs.
Stuyvesant of Gotham, of Sandy in th