hat he might surprise out of joint at the post.

Perhaps it was a shock to his valuation of his own indispensability to
find everything in proper form at the post. The sentry paced before
the flagstaff, decorum prevailed. There was not one small particular
loose to give him ground for flying at the culpable person and raking
him with his blistering fire.

Colonel Landcraft turned into his own house with a countenance
somewhat fallen as a consequence of this discovery. It seemed to bear
home to him the fact that the United States Army would get along very
neatly and placidly without him.

The colonel occupied one wing of his sprawling, commodious, and
somewhat impressive house as official headquarters. This room was full
of stiff bookcases, letter files, severe chairs. The colonel's desk
stood near the fireplace in a strong light, with nothing ever
unfinished left upon it. It was one of the colonel's greatest
satisfactions in life that he always was ready to snap down the cover
of that desk at a moment's notice and march away upon a campaign to
the world's end--and his own--leaving everything clear behind him.

A private walk led up to a private door in the colonel's quarters,
where a private in uniform, with a rifle on his shoulder, made a
formal parade when the colonel was within, and accessible to the
military world for the transaction of business. This sentinel was not
on duty now, the return of the colonel being unlooked-for, and nobody
was the wiser in that household when the master of it let himself into
the room with his key.

The day was merging into dusk, or the colonel probably would have been
aware that a man was hastening after him along the leaf-strewn walk as
he passed up the avenue to his home. He was not many rods behind the
colonel, and was gaining on him rapidly, when the crabbed old
gentleman closed his office door softly behind him.

The unmilitary visitor--this fact was betrayed by both his gait and
his dress--turned sharply in upon the private walk and followed the
colonel to his door. He was turning through the letters and telegrams
which had arrived during his absence when the visitor laid hand to the
bell.

No sound of ringing followed this application to the thumbscrew
arrangement on the door, for the colonel had taken the bell away long
ago. But there resulted a clucking, which brought the colonel to the
portal frowning and alert, warming in the expectation of having
somebody whom he