asleep when the orderly called me, and that was what was
wanted--that I ride north and head you off."

"But you were not obliged to go?"

"No; I was not under your father's orders. I doubt if I would have
consented if I had n't been shown your picture. I could n't very well
refuse then."

She sat with hands clasped together, her eyes shadowed by long lashes.

"I should have thought there would have been some soldiers there--his
own men."

"There were," dryly, "but the army just now is recruited out of pretty
tough material. To be in the ranks is almost a confession of
good-for-nothingness. You are an officer's daughter and understand
this to be true."

"Yes," she answered doubtfully. "I have been brought up thinking so;
only, of course, there are exceptions."

"No doubt, and I hope I am already counted one."

"You know you are. My father trusted you, and so do I."

"I have wondered some times," he said musingly, watching her face
barely visible in the dawn, "whether those of your class actually
considered us as being really human, as anything more valuable than
mere food for powder. I came into the regular army at the close of the
war from the volunteer service. I was accustomed to discipline and all
that, and knew my place. But I never suspected then that a private
soldier was considered a dog. Yet that was the first lesson I was
compelled to learn. It has been pretty hard sometimes to hold in, for
there was a time when I had some social standing and could resent an
insult."

She was looking straight at him, surprised at the bitterness in his
voice.

"They carry it altogether too far," she said. "I have often thought
that--mostly the young officers, the West Pointers--and yet you know
that the majority of enlisted men are--well, dragged from the slums.
My father says it has been impossible to recruit a good class since the
war closed, that the right kind had all the army they wanted."

"Which is true enough, but there are good men nevertheless, and every
commander knows it. A little considerate treatment would make them
better still."

She shook her head questioningly.

"I do not know," she admitted. "I suppose there are two viewpoints.
You were in the volunteers, you said. Why did you enlist in the
regulars?"

"Largely because I liked soldiering, or thought I did. I knew there
would be plenty of fighting out here, and, I believed, advancement."

"You mean to a commission?"

"Ye