e cadet uniform of his yearling days
and the khaki of Manila, of Billy, Junior, now far away studying for the
entrance exams at the famous Academy. Of the four beings she most
devotedly loved, only one was with her now, her deeply, doubly wronged
Sandy, whose impetuous, indignant tones she could hear so distinctly as
he told his own story to the colonel's sympathetic ear. So distinctly
indeed could she hear her own boy that for a moment she failed to hear
Margaret's little Jim, standing patiently, pathetically at the
threshold; but at sight of his sorrowful face her arms went out to him
instantly. Jim could think--speak--of nothing but his father, his father
who, they all told him, was so ill that he would not know his own
blessed boy, who could not have known him or himself or anybody that
dreadful morning! Love and anxiety, utter trust and forgiveness, were
uppermost in the loyal little heart, and Marion, speechless, held and
rocked him in her arms as she listened to his broken words and to the
sound of the brave young voice in the parlor. Oh, what would she _not_
have to tell in that next letter to her husband, now so many a weary
league of land and sea beyond possibility of call!

A badgered man was Stone, as he tramped back homeward, taking a short
cut across the parade, ostensibly to look at the patchwork along the
_acequia_, the morning's task of the fatigue details, but only too
obviously to avoid the eyes and greetings of the many women along the
row. Sandy Ray's story was told in utter sincerity, so far as Stone
could judge. Yet how was it to help him? Sandy admitted having set forth
westward up the valley, having ridden lazily out beyond the butts of the
rifle range, and then over the southward range to the prairie. He was
gone fully two hours, he said. The moon was so low when he returned
that, after leaving his horse with the man in the stables, he could only
barely see the sentry on No. 3 some distance up the post, and the sentry
apparently did not see--he certainly did not challenge--him at all. That
was bad. It would have been so much better if No. 3 had seen, recognized
and could vouch for him. Stone did not tell Sandy of the sentry's story.
He wished to think that over. Sandy said that the sentry at the stables
was some distance down his post and the only man with whom he spoke was
this unrecognized soldier, presumably on duty at the quartermaster's
stables, where the lieutenant's mount was kept and car