me."

"Well. Hold on. What am I to say to the General as to Gray and those
letters?" asked the staff officer, intent upon the subject uppermost in
his mind at the moment.

"You can't say anything that will reach him before he returns. You have
just told me no other boat would start for a week. By that time he'll be
coming home." And with that Armstrong let himself out and strode to the
elevator, leaving his friend to cogitate on the question over his
luncheon. It was decidedly that officer's opinion that Armstrong knew
much more than he would tell.

But Armstrong knew much less than he himself believed. Hastening back to
camp and ordering his horse, he was soon speeding up the slope to the
wind-swept heights overlooking the Golden Gate. The morning had opened
fine as silk, but by noon the sky was hidden in clouds and the breath of
the sea blew in salt and strong. The whitecaps were leaping on the crest
of the surges driving in through the straits and the surf bursting high
on the jagged rocks at the base of the cliffs. A little coast steamer
from Santa Barbara way came pitching and plunging in from sea, and one or
two venturesome craft, heeling far to leeward, tore through the billows
and tossed far astern a frothing wake. With manes and tails streaming in
the stiff gale, the troop horses of the Fourth Cavalry were cropping at
the scanty herbage down the northward slope, and the herd guard nearest
the road lost his grip on his drab campaign hat as he essayed a salute,
and galloped off on a stern chase down the long ravine to the east, as
the colonel trotted briskly by. One keen glance over the bay beyond rocky
Alcatraz had told him the China was not yet away from her pier. He might
have to send a dispatch by that swift steamer, and even then it would be
six days getting to Hawaii. If the department commander should by that
time be on his homeward journey the information would still be of
interest to the general commanding the new military district at "the
Cross Roads of the Pacific," and of vast benefit, possibly, to his late
client, Mr. Gray. He wondered what Canker's grounds could be for saddling
so foul a suspicion on the boy's good name. He wondered how long that
poor lad would have to struggle with this attack of fever and remain,
perhaps happily, unconscious of this latest indignity. He wondered if Amy
Lawrence yet knew of that serious seizure, and, if she did, what would be
her sensations. Down the winding, slo