ened quarters. Some few of them, in feminine
superscription and bearing the Portland postmark, Dr. Bentley had seen
fit to segregate and set aside. They had been placed for safe keeping
in the hands of Mrs. Stannard, of whom, said Bentley, "there are not
ten women of her sense in the whole service," which, said Lieutenant
Blake, of Camp McDowell, when told of the fact, "is a most egregious
exaggeration," and no woman there knew just what he meant. Blake at the
moment was riding boot to boot with his captain, Freeman, for between
the two there dwelt an attachment and understanding rarely seen between
captain and subaltern, but Freeman guffawed at his junior's whimsical
remark, and told it, just to try the effect on three of the four
heroines then quartered at the camp. No one of their number was there
who did not envy Mrs. Stannard her place in public estimation, but no
one of them, could they have known, would have envied her the plight in
which she found herself--joint custodian, with Bentley, of Hal
Willett's unconscious confidences--compelled to see a young girl's
rapturous love lavished upon a man so saturated with the incense of
feminine idolatry as to be more than apt to underrate the priceless
boon of a pure woman's heart-whole devotion.

They had clipped short, and shaved, much of the hair from the back and
left side of Harold's handsome head, where fell the blows that had
stunned him, but as those severe contusions healed, and it transpired
that the skull was sound, the doctor's main anxiety was transferred to
the gunshot wound, which might well be serious in view of the amount of
anatomy traversed, yet even that was healing, healthfully, steadily. "A
beautiful constitution has this damned young Lovelace," said Bentley to
Bucketts, in whom he had long since found a kindred spirit. "Just look
at that!" and with a nod over his pipe stem, he indicated the bunch of
letters forwarded from the Columbia. "Why don't you"--began Bucketts,
but dropped it--he knew it was impossible. He knew, moreover, that when
both mother and daughter have set their hearts on a single man,
paterfamilias is powerless. "The whole family's infatuated," said
Bentley, "and in his whole handsome carcase there isn't half the man in
Willett that there is in that dried up little chap yonder."

"The dried up little chap yonder," dismounting slowly and carefully
from one of Turner's staidest troop horses, was the unappreciated
Harris, returning fr