officer thought he could put up with an
occasional drunk in a man who promised to make as good a trooper under
the stars and stripes as he had made under the stars and bars. And so
he was enlisted, and, to the surprise of everybody, hadn't taken a
drop since.

Now this, said the rank and file, was proof positive of something
radically wrong, either in his disposition or his record. It was
entirely comprehensible and fully in accordance with human nature and
the merits of the case that a man should quit drinking when he quit
the army, but that a man with the blot of an occasional spree on his
escutcheon should enlist for any other cause than sheer desperation,
and should then become a teetotaler, was nothing short of _prima
facie_ evidence of moral depravity.

"There's something behind it all, fellers," said Corporal Murphy, "and
I mean to keep an eye on him from this out. If he don't dhrink next
pay-day, look out for him. He's a professional gambler laying for your
hard-earned greenbacks."

And so while the seniors among the sergeants were becoming gradually
the associates, if not the intimates, of this fine-looking trooper,
the mass of the regiment, or rather the little detachment thereof
stationed at Lowell, looked upon Bland with the eye of suspicion.
There was one sergeant who repudiated him entirely, and who openly
professed his disbelief in Bland's account of himself, and that was
Feeny. "He may have testimonials from all Texas," said he, hotly, "but
I've no use for that sort of credentials. Who can vouch for his goings
and comings hereabouts before he joined us? I think Murphy's right,
and if I was stationed at Lowell and belonged to his troop, you bet
I'd watch him close."

Now, in all the command it would have been a hard matter to find a
soldier in whose favor appearances were so unanimously allied. Tall,
erect, sinewy, and active, he rode or walked with an easy grace that
none could fail to mark. His features were fine and clear cut; his
eyes a dark hazel, with heavy curling lashes and bushy, low-arched
brows; his complexion, naturally dark, was bronzed by sun and
sand-storm to a hue almost Mexican. He shaved clean all but the heavy
moustache that drooped over his firm lips, and the sprinkling of gray
about the brows, temples, and moustache was most becoming to his
peculiar style. One prominent mark had he which the descriptive book
of his company referred to simply as "sabre-scar on right jaw," but it