said Lanier. "I went direct from the
dancing room to my quarters, not even stopping for my overcoat. I was
chilled when I got there. The fire was low, and I went back to call
Rafferty. He didn't answer, so I had to lug in some fuel. His overcoat
hung in the kitchen and I put that on, and just as I opened the back
door there came the scream from up the row. Fire was the only thing I
thought of, and I saw others running toward Captain Sumter's as I
started from the back gate. Then a man rushed past me, going the other
way, and then the next thing somebody sprang out from Captain Snaffle's
back yard, tripped me, and I went headlong. I was on my feet in a
second, but he had me round the neck, ordering me to surrender. I
wrenched loose and let him have two hard ones, right and left, before he
clinched again. Somebody else collided with us. We all went down. The
last man was up first and ran away, with the first cap he could reach,
and I followed in an effort to overtake him, knowing by that time it
wasn't fire, but robbery. Then when I realized no life was in danger, I
remembered I was in arrest, dropped the chase, and went straight to my
quarters the way I came. Both hands were bruised and left badly cut. I
am sorry, of course, to have struck Sergeant Fitzroy, but the language
he used was vile, and it seemed to me the only way to convince him I was
_not_ Trooper Rawdon."

"Colonel Button, have you any questions to ask?" demanded Riggs, as
Lanier concluded.

"Why didn't you tell _me_ this?" demanded Button.

"I should have been glad to, colonel. Indeed, I tried to the last time I
was in the office," was the deferential reply.

"Well, gentlemen," said the colonel, as a parting shot, "between us we
seem to have stirred up a pretty kettle of fish." Yet in that culinary
maelstrom even Snaffle disowned either responsibility or complicity. He
always _had_ said Lanier was a perfect gentleman.

And so ended Bob's arrest and most of our story. Riggs went back with
his report that very afternoon. Rawdon lingered for a word with Cassidy,
Quinlan, and poor remorseful Rafferty; then followed, unhampered even by
his arch enemy Fitzroy, who slipped away to the stables three minutes
after the close of the conference. But he was not even there when, along
in the spring, Mr. and Mrs. Rawdon came out for a visit to Doctor
Mayhew. Like Rawdon, he had received his discharge. Unlike Rawdon, there
was serious objection to his reenlistment. Ev