another captain who disliked Jerrold; and Chester's rugged sense of
fair play told him that it was not among the enemies of the young
officer that he should now seek advice, but that if he had a friend
among the older and wiser heads in the regiment it was due to him that
that older and wiser head be given a chance to think a little for
Jerrold's sake. And there was not one among the seniors whom he could
call upon. As he ran over their names, Chester for the first time
realized that his ex-subaltern had not a friend among the captains and
senior officers now on duty at the fort. His indifference to duties, his
airy foppishness, his conceit and self-sufficiency, had all served to
create a feeling against him; and this had been intensified by his
conduct since coming to Sibley. The youngsters still kept up jovial
relations with and professed to like him, but among the seniors there
were many men who had only a nod for him on meeting. Wilton had
epitomized the situation by saying he "had no use for a masher," and
poor old Gray had one day scowlingly referred to him as "the
professional beauty."

In view of all this feeling, Chester would gladly have found some man to
counsel further delay; but there was none. He felt that he must inform
the colonel at once of the fact that Mr. Jerrold was absent from his
quarters at the time of the firing, of his belief that it was Jerrold
who struck him and sped past the sentry in the dark, and of his
conviction that the sooner the young officer was called to account for
his strange conduct the better. As to the episodes of the ladder, the
lights, and the form at the dormer-window, he meant, for the present at
least, to lock them in his heart.

But he forgot that others too must have heard those shots, and that
others too would be making inquiries.

VI.

A lovely morning it was that beamed on Sibley and the broad and
beautiful valley of the Cloudwater when once the sun got fairly above
the moist horizon. Mist and vapor and heavy cloud all seemed swallowed
up in the gathering, glowing warmth, as though the King of Day had
risen athirst and drained the welcoming cup of nature. It must have
rained at least a little during the darkness of the night, for dew there
could have been none with skies so heavily overcast, and yet the short
smooth turf on the parade, the leaves upon the little shade-trees around
the quadrangle, and all the beautiful vines here on the trellis-work of
the