fidential chat, there suddenly entered the
two doctors. "Black Bill," the inspector, it seems, had given notice
that he must needs have speech with the culprit, if that bandaged,
blistered, and unprincipled young man were in condition to see him.
"Black Bill" and his host had been having a night of it. Button was in
high fettle over the amazingly truthful and unlooked-for articles in
the _Mail_, and as eager to know and reward their author as he had been
to apprehend and punish the earlier detractor. Button had begun to
"wobble," as Bill expressed it, in his spleen against Lanier until so
suddenly "braced" by the truculent stand of Captain Snaffle, whose
half-drunken words the previous night were by this time known all over
the post.

The matter was now in the hands of Colonel Riggs, however, and it was
his to determine what further action to take. Snaffle had named as his
witness Sergeant Fitzroy, Private Kelley (who, though drunk on duty, had
not been so drunk, said Snaffle and Fitzroy, that he could not recognize
an officer when he saw him), and the third witness, to the amaze of
Barker and the derision of Ennis, when told of it, was no less a person
than poor Tom Rafferty, Lanier's own "striker" and hitherto devoted
henchman. And to the consternation of Stannard, Sumter, and others,
Captain Snaffle had been able to back his words. Riggs sent for the two
availables, Fitzroy and Kelly, and the two had declared they could not
be mistaken; that they had heard Miss Arnold's scream, followed
instantly by the crash of glass. Fitzroy admitted that he was at the
moment at Captain Snaffle's back door; said he ran round to the Sumters'
gate; that he distinctly saw the figure of a man in a soldier's overcoat
and fur cap leaping and sliding down the roof, and that a moment later
he grappled with it in the dark woodshed, dropping his hold only when
angrily ordered to do so, the voice adding instantly, "I'm Lieutenant
Lanier." Kelly was ready to swear to practically the same facts, though
he "thought there was two of them," which, under the circumstances, was
not to be wondered at. Fitzroy declared that a moment later Rafferty
rushed to the spot, recognized the lieutenant, and by him was sternly
ordered to leave. As yet Rafferty was in no condition to affirm or deny.
The excitement of the fire had brought on a relapse, and the wild
Irishman was wilder than ever, "raving-like," as the steward said, in
the big post hospital.

And