e was living his vigorous out-of-door life,
but was playing the mischief with his judgment and general condition now
that he was penned up in the narrow limits of his quarters. Very, very
anxious had Mrs. Stannard's face become; very wistful and anxious, too,
was Miss Sanford's; and very sympathetic was Mrs. Truscott's. The first
few days of his arrest they used to stroll down the line, and make it a
point to go there and chat with him on his piazza; and this exasperated
old Whaling, who was indignant that the cavalry ladies should make a
martyr of their regimental culprit. The third day of his arrest, they
were all seated there on the piazza, while Ray sat at his open window,
and Hogan, his orderly, had led Dandy around to the front, and the
pretty sorrel--the light of his master's eyes until eclipsed by one
before which even Dandy's paled its ineffectual fire--was cropping the
juicy herbage in the little grass plat in front of the piazza and being
fed with loaf-sugar by delicate hands. Blake was sprawled over the
railing, limp and long-legged, chatting with Mrs. Truscott. Miss Sanford
was seated nearer the window, where Ray's eager eyes seemed to chain
her, and Mrs. Stannard was doing most of the talk, for they seemed
strangely silent. It was a pleasant picture of loyalty and _esprit de
corps_, thought Mr. Warner, as he came down from the office; but to old
Whaling, coming home crabbed from the store, where his post
quartermaster had beaten him several games of pool, it was a galling
sight. The ladies bowed in quiet, modified courtesy,--there was no
cordiality whatever in it. Blake straightened up and saluted his
superior in a purely perfunctory style that had nothing of deference and
little of respect in it, and the colonel and his quartermaster both
raised their caps in evident embarrassment. They looked back at Dandy
after they had passed on a few rods, and Blake muttered,--

"Now, Billy boy, they'll be sending you a note to keep your horse out of
your front yard hereafter." But Blake had undershot the mark.

That evening there came bad news. Rallston had been named as one of the
principal witnesses, and Ray had telegraphed and written to his sister
at Omaha asking where he was. His letter explained the situation he was
in, and, though he would say nothing to accuse her husband, he told her
that one of the allegations was that he had accepted five hundred
dollars from him as a bribe to induce him to "pass" certain