s the sergeant marched him past.
Ray called to the irate infantryman to hold on a moment, he would
explain; but Ray was in arrest and could give no orders. The sergeant
knew that for the time being he was virtually the superior. He simply
did not choose to hear the lieutenant, but went on with his prisoner
across the parade, lodged him in the guard-house, then went to the
quartermaster's and reported that he had been violently resisted by
private Hogan, locked up by him in the paddock with the horse, and that
as soon as he could get out he had "arrested private Hogan and confined
him by your order, sir," the customary formula in such cases made and
provided.

Meantime, Dandy, finding himself untied and the stable-door open, had
ventured forth from the paddock while his master had hurried through the
house to again fruitlessly call to the sergeant from the front door, and
as the sorrel sniffed the mountain breeze and felt the glow of the
sunshine on his glistening coat, all his love for a wild gallop had
possessed him; he trotted out on the triangle in rear of the houses,
looked triumphantly about him a second or two with his head high in air,
his nostrils quivering, and his eyes dilating, then with a joyous snort
and two or three exuberant plunges, with streaming mane and tail he tore
away northward, and went careering over the prairie. Miss Sanford,
seated near her window in an arm-chair--and a revery, heard the thunder
of hoofs, and ran to see what it meant. She stood some minutes watching
Dandy racing riderless over the springy turf before she knew that Grace,
too, was by her side gazing from the same window. If Billy Ray could
have seen those two faces when Marion turned to her friend--the quick,
hot flush on one, the speaking eyes of both--he would never have done
what he _did_ do,--turn back to his room with a bitter imprecation on
his lips, with anger and desolation in his heart, and, raising his hands
in almost tragic gesture of impotent wrath as he glared around at the
walls of his undeserved prison, he heartily damned the fates that had
consigned him to the unsympathizing limits of an infantry garrison; he
heartily included the colonel and quartermaster in his sweeping
anathema; and then--oh, Ray! Ray! it was so weak, so pitifully weak!--he
dragged forth the old demijohn, filled and drank a bumper of rye, hurled
the goblet into flinders against the door, and threw himself upon his
bed in an ecstasy of pent-up