rd fence and completely enclosed by one of similar make. On the
east side, fronting the roadway, were broad verandas on both first and
second floors, and these were common property of the occupants of both
halls. By the rear or west door they could not pass from one hall to
the other, on account of the intervening fence. By the east door the
veranda on either story formed a convenient thoroughfare. McLean
occupied the two rooms on the north side of this hall, and a brother
infantryman, also a bachelor, occupied the two above him. The opposite
rooms on both floors were the garrison homes of married officers now in
the fields with their commands, and their doors were kept locked by the
quartermaster. The Forrests and Posts, with the Bedouin-like ease of
long experience on the frontier, had established a dining-room in
common on the ground-floor of the south end, and the temporary kitchen
was knocked up in the back yard. The south division, therefore,
contained a lively colony of women and children; the north halls, only
empty rooms and two lone bachelors.

This very May-day afternoon on which our story opens, as Lieutenant
McLean and Miss Bayard started forth on their stroll, Miss Forrest,
with a shawl hugged woman-fashion around her shapely form, was taking a
constitutional up and down the upper gallery. She came to the railing
and bent down, beaming, smiling, and kissing her hand to them,--and a
winsome smile she had,--then, as they passed out along the walk by the
old ordnance storehouse, she stood for a time looking after them.

That night, just after dusk, when Mr. McLean came bounding up the front
steps, intent on getting an album from his quarters, and then returning
to Mrs. Miller's, where he was spending the evening, he was surprised
to find the lamp extinguished. All was darkness as he opened the front
door. So, too, on the second floor there was no light in the hall, and
yet he could have sworn that both lamps were burning when he went out
at eight o'clock, half an hour before. In his own room, the front one,
however, the very opposite was the case. He had turned the lamp low the
last thing before starting, and closed the front of his standing desk,
turning the key in the lock. He always did these things when leaving
his quarters at night. Now the hanging lamp was throwing a steady light
all over the simple, soldier room, and the desk was wide open.

The rear room, his bedchamber, was dark as usual, and his fi