and Skelton
promised not to "split." The coming of Mrs. Dwight brought a remarkable
change in Blenke, and when Captain Foster followed her and hung about
her all day long, Skelton saw there was something much amiss. Blenke
seemed going crazy through watching that lady and that man. Blenke had
some clothes of Lieutenant Ray's that he kept hidden at Skidmore's, and
Skelton felt sure that when the story went round about Lieutenant Ray's
being seen at night, prowling back of the major's quarters, that Blenke
was the real culprit. They were talking one day--Skelton and his former
chums--of the chance they'd have now of waylaying the captain, and
Blenke twitted them of not daring, even if they had the chance. They
vowed then that if he would only show them a way, he could count on
their doing it, and they did. Blenke had a plan matured, when suddenly
the captain left, after the row with Lieutenant Ray, and then Blenke
seemed just to take fire. He sent for them and unfolded another. The
Captain's train was five hours late and he knew a way to lure him out on
the road. He hated him, too, he said, and "we were beginning to see why.
He was so dead gone on the lady himself." He fixed the whole business,
got a note to the captain, he said, the captain couldn't tell from her
own writing, and it fetched him out just as was planned, and the rest
was pretty much as the captain told it. Skelton at first didn't much
care that an officer got credit for it all; Blenke had seen to that.
Blenke seemed to hate Lieutenant Ray--though he was forever copying
him--most as much as he hated Foster; but when Skelton got to the
agency, got to know Ray, got knocked down at the pow-wow and rescued by
Ray, got shot and left to roast to death at the agency, and was again
rescued by Ray, Skelton made up his mind that he'd sooner go to
Leavenworth for life, if he lived, or to hell if he didn't, than permit
Mr. Ray to suffer another day in suspicion. It was Blenke who wore his
dress at night and copied his very limp. It was Blenke that kept
prowling about the major's, lallygagging with that French maid. It was
high time Blenke himself was in limbo, and now they'd got him, they'd be
wise to keep an eye on him.

And so, with the case--the two cases--against Sandy Ray abruptly closed,
the colonel, the surgeon and the adjutant, who had heard the confession,
seemed also to think; for the sentry at the bedside of the mournful-eyed
invalid received orders to bayo