r matter: Clancy's discharge has arrived.
Does the old fellow know you had requested it?"

"No, sir," answered Rayner, with hesitation and embarrassment. "We
wanted to keep him straight, as I told you we would, and he would
probably get on a big tear if he knew his service-days were numbered. I
didn't look for its being granted for forty-eight hours yet."

"Well, he will know it before night; and no doubt he will be badly cut
up. Clancy was a fine soldier before he married that harridan of a
woman."

"She has made him a good wife since they came into the Riflers, colonel,
and has taken mighty good care of the old fellow."

"It is more than she did in the ----th, sir. She was a handsome, showy
woman when I first saw her,--before my promotion to the regiment,--and
Clancy was one of the finest soldiers in the brigade the last year of
the war. She ran through all his money, though, and in the ----th we
looked upon her as the real cause of his break-down,--especially after
her affair with that sergeant who deserted. You've heard of him,
probably. He disappeared after the Battle Butte campaign, and we hoped
he'd run off with Mrs. Clancy; but he hadn't. She was there when we got
back, big as ever, and growing ugly."

"Do you mean that Mrs. Clancy had a lover when she was in the ----th?"

"Certainly, Captain Rayner. We supposed it was commonly known. He was a
fine-looking, black-eyed, dark-haired, dashing fellow, of good
education, a great swell among the men the short time he was with us,
and Mrs. Clancy made a dead set at him from the start. He never seemed
to care for _her_ very much."

"This is something I never heard of," said Rayner, with grave face, "and
it will be a good deal of a shock to my wife, for she had arranged to
take her East with Clancy and Kate, and they were to invest their money
in some little business at her old home."

"Yes: it was mainly on the woman's account we wouldn't re-enlist Clancy
in the ----th. We could stand him, but she was too much for us,--and for
the other sergeant, too. He avoided her before we started on the
campaign, I fancy. Odd! I can't think of his name.--Billings, what was
the name of that howling swell of a sergeant who was in Hull's troop at
Battle Butte,--time Hull was killed? I mean the man that Mrs. Clancy was
said to have eloped with."

"Sergeant Gower, sir," said the adjutant, without looking up from his
work. He did look up, however, when a moment after the captain