ad already heard, enjoyed and longed to hear again, and the
mess could not but wish that old Stannard had not been so exact in his
interpretation, and punctual in his acceptance of that invitation.
There followed a few minutes of general talk and laughter, and then
Archer's voice was again dominant. Nothing would do but that the
Stannards both come in and taste that famous claret (which neither
desired _after_ dinner, however much it might then have been enjoyed).
Then all went trooping in-doors again, all save Lilian and Lieutenant
Harris, for presently these two came sauntering into the moonlight at
the southward end of the veranda. The girl resumed her seat and guitar;
the young officer the chair lately occupied by Willett, and here full
ten minutes were they in conversation when the orderly came stalking
back from the guard-house; the quintette came flocking forth from the
hallway, and Willett, coming to resume his seat and chat, found his
classmate in possession. It was the first opportunity that had fallen
to Harris, and if Willett hoped or expected that he would rise and
surrender in his favor he was doomed to disappointment. Harris never so
much as turned his head.

They were an odd contrast, these two young graduates of the nation's
soldier school, as they looked to Captain Stannard that November night.
He spoke of it to his wife and thought of it long after, for he, too,
had come toward the little group a bit impatient, it must be owned, of
the general's mellow monologue, and wearying of a conversation in which
_he_ had no part. But here again Stannard found scant opportunity.
Miss Archer, bending slightly forward, was, with much animation
describing to Mr. Harris the brilliant ball given by the artillery at
the Presidio just before they were hurried off to that fatal Modoc war.
Harris, caring little for the affair, and possibly hearing little of
what she was saying, sat as though drinking in every word, and gazing
enthralled upon the beauty of her sweet young face. He, too, was
bending forward, his lithe, slender, supple frame clad in the trim
undress uniform of the day, his clear-cut face, with its thin, almost
hollow cheeks, tanned brown by the blazing suns of the southern desert,
his hair cropped close to his shapely head, his gray-blue eyes, large,
full and steady, fixed unswerving upon her. Leaning on his elbow, one
lean brown hand was toying with the sun-bleached ends of his mustache,
the other, with th