what have you against him?"

"I do not think this a matter on which I should speak at all, Major
Stannard, except to proper authority. The court will hear the evidence
in due season."

"Well, I mean to hear something _now_, Mr. Gleason, or, by the eternal!
I'll wake up the whole command to put the question. What you make one
believe is, that you are seeking to ruin Ray by getting him at a
disadvantage with all his friends away. Captain Truscott, what do you
say?"

And then Truscott spoke. As usual, he was master of himself and showed
no vestige of temper.

"The matter is very simple, Mr. Gleason. You are believed to be the
accuser of Mr. Ray at a moment when it is certain the regiment is going
to be so far away that its officers cannot be present at the court,--may
not even be able to communicate with it. If you decline to indicate what
you know to Major Stannard and me, who are his friends, the immediate
protest of the regiment against your conduct must go to headquarters
with the request that the court be held until we can appear before it.
More than that, in two days we will reach the general commanding the
department. Do you fancy he will permit Mr. Ray, of all others, to be
brought to trial without a friend to appear for him?"

Gleason saw he was cornered. What he hoped, what he expected, was to
make his escape and get back before any one learned of the charges. That
hope was frustrated. In his wrath and perplexity he resorted to the
invariable device of the cowardly and the low. He must divert their
sympathy for Ray into distrust of him, and before he had fully
considered his words they were spoken,--crafty, insidious, and
calumniatory.

"Captain Truscott, _you_ have spoken without threatening me, and I'll
answer you. All this time I've been striving _not_ to see, not to know
Mr. Ray's offences; but I was on the horse board. You were not. Ask
Captain Buxton to-morrow who and what Ray's associates were; but let me
say to you right here that I can no longer submit to seeing you
deceived. You call Ray your friend. No man can be a worse friend than he
who sets a whole garrison talking about an absent comrade's wife and the
notes she writes him, and who is discovered alone with her,--she in
tears, he burning a letter. Webb witnessed it. Ask him."

The last words were spoken with utmost haste, with upraised hand, with
trembling lips, for both Truscott and Stannard almost savagely sprang
towards him as though to