soft and pink as any woman's might be; at least they were when he
bowed and smiled and spoke her name when introduced to her, and when he
nodded companionably to the bowing group of officers, to whom Mrs.
Stannard presented him with marked pride, "Mr. Ray--of Ours," but how,
for a second, his eye flashed and how rigid a spasm crossed his lips
when Gleason's name was mentioned. To him he merely nodded, and
instantly turned his back. All this and more Miss Sanford noted by that
electric process which was known to women long before lightning was
photographed, and enabled the sex to see in a quarter-second intricate
details of feminine costume that it would take the nimblest tongue ten
minutes to describe. She noticed his dress, so unlike the precise attire
of his comrades, who wore, to the uttermost detail, the regulation
uniform. He had tossed a broad-brimmed, light-colored scouting hat upon
the little grass plat as he entered, and now stood before them in the
field rig he so well adorned. A dark-blue, double-breasted,
broad-collared flannel shirt, tucked in at the waist in snugly-fitting
breeches of Indian-tanned buckskin, while Sioux leggings encased his
legs from knee to ankle, and his feet were shod substantially in
alligator-skin. Mexican spurs were at his heels; a broad leather belt
bristling with cartridges, and supporting knife and revolver, hung at
his waist; a red silk handkerchief was loosely knotted at his throat,
and soft brown gauntlets covered his hands until they were discarded as
he greeted them. If ever man looked the picture of elastic health and
vigor it was Mr. Ray. This, then, was something like the cavalry life of
which she had heard so much. Marion Sanford, despite Eastern education
and refinement, was so unconventional as to find something more
attractive in Mr. Ray in this same field rig than in Mr. Gleason in
faultlessly accurate uniform.

"Why, Mr. Ray, how very well you look!" was Mrs. Turner's exclamation,
"and somebody said you had been ill."

"I? No indeed! I never felt better in my life."

"But where have you been? When did you come? Why didn't you write?" were
some among the countless questions thrust upon him.

"I had a few days' delay, you know; came by way of Omaha to see my
sister; just arrived at one to-day; left my trunks with the
quartermaster at the depot; got into field rig in fifteen minutes;
packed my saddle-bags and slung them on Dandy, who has been waiting for
me ever si