ed, leaving only a
senior or two and Lieutenant Stuyvesant to question further, for
Stuyvesant, coming from afar and arriving late, was full of anxiety and
concern.

Despite his temporary escape, circumstances and the civil authorities
(now become decidedly military) had thrown him into still further
association with the woman whom he would so gladly have shunned--the
importunate Miss Perkins. He had taken a turn round the block--and
refuge in the English Club--until he thought her disposed of at home and
his carriage returned. He had come across the little equipage, trundling
slowly up and down the street in search of him, had dined without
appetite and smoked without relish, striving to forget that odious
woman's hints and aspersions, aimed evidently at the Rays, and had gone
to his own room to write when a corporal appeared with the request from
the captain in charge of the police guard of Ermita to step down to the
office.

It was much after nine then and the excitement caused by the alarm was
about over, the troops going back to barracks and presumably to bed. The
captain apologized for calling on him that late in the evening, but told
him a man recognized as Murray, deserter from the cavalry, was secreted
somewhere in the neighborhood, and it was reported that he, Stuyvesant,
could give valuable information concerning him. Stuyvesant could and
did, and in the midst of it in came Miss Perkins, flushed, eager, and
demanding to know if that villain was yet caught--"and if not, why not?"

Then she caught sight of Stuyvesant and precipitated herself upon him.
That man Murray had hatefully deceived her and imposed upon her
goodness, she declared. She had done _everything_ to help him at the
Presidio, and he had promised her a paper signed by all the boys asking
that the P. D. A.'s be recognized as the organization the soldiers
favored, and showed her a petition he had drawn up and was getting
signatures to by the hundreds. That paper would have insured their being
recognized by the government instead of those purse-proud Red Cross
people, and then he had wickedly deserted, after--after--and Stuyvesant
could scarcely keep a straight face--getting fifty dollars from her and
a ring that he was going to wear always until he came back from
Manila--an officer. Oh, he was a smart one, a smooth one! All that
inside of three days after he got to the Presidio, and then was
arrested, and then, next thing she knew, he had fled,-