once it reached the rocks along the stream-bed they lost
it." Then wisely Mrs. Stannard changed the subject.

But if she and they knew not where and how Willett had spent the night
and hours of the day, they and Harris, by this time, were the only ones
at Almy in such ignorance. Moreover, Almy was having a lot of fun out
of it. No one had ever heard of Case's playing before in all the time
he had silently, unobtrusively, gone about his daily doings at the
post. Three weeks out of four he sat over the books and accounts, or
some writing of his own, saying nothing to anybody unless addressed,
then answering civilly, but in few words. The other week, just as
quietly and unobtrusively, he was apt to be busy with his bottle,
sometimes in the solitude of his little room, sometimes wandering by
night down along the stream, sometimes stealing out to the herds,
petting and crooning to the horses, sometimes slyly tendering the herd
guard a drink, and always accompanied by a pack of the hounds, for by
them he was held in reverence and esteem. He never accosted anybody,
never even complained when a godless brace of soldier roughs robbed him
of his bottle as he lay half-dozing to the lullaby of the babbling
stream. He simply meandered a mile and got another.

From this plane of inoffensive obscurity Case had sprung in one night
to fame and, almost, to fortune. A single field had turned the chance
of war, and the placid Sunday found him the most talked of man at the
post. Rumor had it that he had quit five hundred dollars ahead of the
game, and the most conservative estimate could not reduce it more than
half. For the first time Camp Almy awoke to the conclusion that an
experienced gambler was in their midst--one who had spared the soldier
and his scanty pay that he might feed fat, eventually, on the officer.
Rumor had it that Case's trunk contained a roulette wheel and faro
"layout." In fine, long before orderly call at noon, in the whimsical
humor of the garrison, he was no longer Case, the bookkeeper, but
"Book, the Case Keeper," and every frontiersman, civil or military, in
those days knew what that meant.

And even as they exalted Case, who toward afternoon had disappeared
from public gaze, refusing to be lionized, so would they have abased
Willett, who likewise had concealed himself, on the plea of needed
sleep, yet had done but little sleeping. Willett was haunted by a
memory, and not pleasantly. The fact that he had lost o