household were still the occupants. Possibly in his dazed condition that
memory was working in what was left of his brain. There was nothing to
excuse or explain his wandering thither now, said Blenke. He had no
mercy to ask. He deserved none. So the case was closed with a sizable
fine, and the accused sent back to his company.

But the officer of the day had told a different tale, and the godless
array at the bachelor mess was still having fun with it. Felicie, the
self-styled French maid, had been from the start the object of no little
interest among the non-commissioned element in garrison. Felicie was
pious, if not actually pretty, and assiduous at first in Sunday morning
attendance at the little Catholic church in town, whither Dwight's own
horse and buggy and man were detailed to take her, for Inez could not
think of placing her educated and traveled maid in the same category and
wagon with the soldiers' wives. "Feelissy," from her very first
appearance, was by no means popular with this critical sisterhood, and
when it became evident that some of the best beaux among the sergeants
were also moved to attend early church in Silver Hill, feeling grew
strong against the usurper. Nor was the feeling modified by the fact
soon discovered that the maid had higher aspirations. She was too good
for the soldiers, said her commentators; but that goodness, said her
defamers, wasn't proof against the wiles of those who had more money.
Obviously the officers were aimed at in this observation, and it must be
owned that Felicie's expressive eyes had sometimes wandered toward the
mess, and that her glances fell not all on unresponsive others. The
night of Blenke's wandering was windy. The officer of the day's little
lantern blew out as he rounded a turn from the west gate toward the
bluff behind the post of No. 4, to the end that he stumbled on the
sentry unchallenged, and, when rebuked for his negligence, the sentry
said he was troubled about something at Major Dwight's. He could have
sworn, he said, the door to the high back stoop had opened just a moment
ago, letting quite a streak of light into the darkness for the space of
a few seconds, during which time he was almost sure he saw a slender
feminine shape disappear into the house. Now, he could swear no one had
entered the back gate for ten minutes, anyway, because he happened to be
right there. If it was a woman, as he believed, she must have been out
in the yard as much as