. I suppose you know the general has ordered me relieved and
sent back to my company as no longer worthy to be called a cavalryman.
All the same, one of these days I mean to get a transfer. My legs are
too long for the doughboys anyhow. Meantime, with all meekness I'll bear
my burden--I deserve it; but you'll believe me when I say it isn't the
punishment, the humiliation this has cost me that so weighs upon me now;
it is the thought of your loss and your prostration. One of these days I
may find means to show you how much I feel it. Just now I have only a
hint. Last year at this time my most cherished possession was my new
spring style, ten-dollar Amidon. A silk hat is as out of place in
Arizona as a sunshade in Sitka, yet my striker has just unpacked it and
asked, with a grin on his confounded mug, 'What'll I be doin' wid this,
sor?'"

"I know! Sole leather hat box and all, it goes by buckboard to your
address at division headquarters. Our heads are about of the same
caliber; the main difference is that yours seems loaded. The _Alta_
says silk hats are now worn on sunny mornings. Sport mine for me,
though it be of the vintage of a by-gone year. I shall not show my
face in civilization till I have lived down my shame. So now for two
years at least of Yuma and the consolation to be derived from the
solitary study of philosophy and Shakespeare.

"Yours in meekness of spirit,
"GERALD BLAKE.

"P. S.--They say that Sancho's brother's real name is Escalante. If
ever you come across one of that race keep your eyes peeled."

Another day and the billows of the gulf were breaking under the Idaho's
counter and hissing sternward in snowy foam, answering the rush of a
strong southwest wind. It was late at evening when the black hull went
reeling in toward the lights of Guaymas, and the massive anchor, with
prodigious splash dove for the sandy bottom, but late as it was the
shore boats and lighters came pulling to the gangway stairs, and
merchants, clerks and customs officers nimbly scrambled up the side, and
then followed a number of passengers, cigarette smoking and cackling
about the swarming deck, and Turnbull and the Engineer hung over the
rail and watched for the promised boatload of beauty and presently it
came. Two or three small boats were rowed alongside, and there were
glimpses of shrouded forms and there