nstead of getting away, as I should have done,
I stepped out into the hallway. The sight that I saw filled me with
indignation, for there stood Jane Ryder, leaning against her mother,
and rigged out in the toggery of a man.

I took her by the arm, and I must have gripped it roughly, for she
winced. "If you know what is good for you," I said, very sternly, "you
will get yourself out of this wretched garb and throw it in the fire.
Will you go?"

"How can I go when you are holding me?" she asked piteously. I released
her and she went up the stairway sobbing.

Half-way up the stairs, she turned to me. "You will be sorry you didn't
go when I told you. You couldn't go now if you wanted to," and with
that she disappeared.

I could have cracked my silly pate at the sight of her weeping. I felt
a hand on my arm, and found her mother standing at my side, laughing
softly. Seeing that I regarded her with unfeigned astonishment, she
laughed the louder. "You are the first that has ever mastered her. She
is beyond me. When I married my second husband she declared that I had
sold my interest in her for a pair of side-whiskers."

The mother said this so pathetically that I could but laugh, seeing
that there was so much incongruity between the remark and the situation
all about us. My laughter must have jarred her, for she said with some
asperity, "You are laughing now, but in a minute you will be laughing
on the other side of your mouth!"

And it was even as she said. A file of soldiers entered from the rear,
and before I had time to move or raise a hand they had me surrounded.
Their leader was a man full of laughter and good-humor. "Consider
yourself a prisoner," he said to me. "How are you, mother? You are
looking well. Where is sister? Upstairs? Well, get her down, for we
must be moving away from here. What is all this?" He looked into the
room out of which I had come, and saw there the evidences of a
struggle, as well as the victims thereof.

He bustled about with an alertness that seemed to be prepared for
anything that might happen. I saw at once that he was a West Pointer. I
had seen not more than a dozen graduates of the great military academy,
but enough to recognize the characteristics that marked them all. These
characteristics are wellnigh indescribable, but they are all included
in the terms "soldier and gentleman."

"The bruiser has been bruised," he laughed. "You are looking well,
mother; keep it up for the sake