I am in my sound senses. Now come and show me the ladder, and
where you found it, and tell me the whole story over again. I think it
grows interesting. One moment: has he that picture yet?"

"I suppose so. I don't know. In these last few days everybody is
fighting shy of him. He thinks it is my doing, and looks black and sulky
at me, but is too proud or too much afraid of consequences to ask the
reason of the cold shoulders and averted looks. Gray has taken seven
days' leave and gone off with that little girl of his to place her with
relatives in the East. He has heard the stories, and it is presumed that
some of the women have told her. She was down sick here a day or two."

"Well, now for the window and the ladder. I want to see the outside
through your eyes, and then I will view the interior with my own. The
colonel bids me do so."

Together they slowly climbed the long stairway leading up the face of
the cliff. Chester stopped for a breathing-spell more than once.

"You're all out of condition, man," said the younger captain, pausing
impatiently. "What has undone you?"

"This trouble, and nothing else. By gad! it has unstrung the whole
garrison, I believe. You never saw our people fall off so in their
shooting. Of course we expected Jerrold to go to pieces, but nobody
else."

"There were others that seemed to fall away, too. Where was that
cavalry-team that was expected to take the skirmish medal away from us?"

"Sound as a dollar, every man, with the single exception of their big
sergeant. I don't like to make ugly comparisons to a man whom I believe
to be more than half interested in a woman, but it makes me think of the
old story about Medusa. One look at her face is too much for a man. That
Sergeant McLeod went to grass the instant he caught sight of her, and
never has picked up since."

"Consider me considerably more than half interested in the woman in this
case, Chester: make all the comparisons that you like, provided they
illumine matters as you are doing now, and tell me more of this Sergeant
McLeod. What do you mean by his catching sight of her and going to
grass?"

"I mean he fell flat on his face the moment he saw her, and hasn't been
in good form from that moment to this. The doctor says it's
heart-disease."

"That's what the colonel says troubles Mrs. Maynard. She was senseless
and almost pulseless some minutes last night. What manner of man is
McLeod?"

"A tall, slim, dark-eyed, swarth