in hurriedly leaving, Lieutenant Creswell had
turned over to his young subordinate not only the troop fund, amounting
to over four hundred dollars, but the money belonging to the post
athletic association, and marked envelopes containing the pay of certain
soldiers on temporary detached service--in all between nine hundred and
one thousand dollars.

"Whenever you have care of public money--even temporarily--put it at
once into the nearest United States depository," said his father. "Even
office safes in garrison are not safe," he had further said. "Clerks,
somehow, learn the combination and are tempted sometimes beyond their
strength. Lose no time, therefore, in getting your funds into the bank."

And that was what he meant to do in this case, only, as the absent
troopers were expected to return in two days, what was the use of
breaking up those sealed envelopes and depositing the whole thing only
to have to draw it out in driblets again as the men came to him for it.
Surely he could safely leave that much at least in the quartermaster's
safe. Creswell never thought of depositing the cash at all. He carried
it around with him, a wad of greenbacks and a little sack of gold, and
never lost a cent.

Ray took the entire sum to the quartermaster's office Tuesday evening
and asked to store it in the safe. The clerk looked up from his desk and
said he was sorry, but the quartermaster was the only man who knew the
combination, and he had gone over to Camp Merritt.

So Ray kept it that night and intended taking it to town Wednesday
morning, but drills interposed. He carried a little fortune with him
when he went in to meet his mother and sister Wednesday evening, half
intending to ask the genial "major,"--mine host of the Occidental,--to
take care of it for him in the private safe, but the major was out and
the money was still bulging in Ray's pockets when he returned to the
post late that night, and it had been very much in his way. Thursday he
fully expected the troopers back, and yet when stables were over
Thursday evening and he was ready to start for town to join his dear
ones, and was arraying himself in his most immaculate uniform and
secretly rejoicing in the order prohibiting officers from wearing for
the time being civilian dress, he found himself still burdened by the
money packages and in a hurry to catch a certain car or else keep them
waiting for dinner.

The quartermaster's office was several hundred yards aw