t it--where you have often
got it before, and where you'd better get it before it's too late;"
these were words said to him that very morning, in tones so low that
none but he could bear; yet they were ringing in his head now like the
boom of some tolling bell. Time was when he had taken government money
and turned it into handsome profit through the brokers of San Francisco
and Chicago. But, as Mr. John Oakhurst remarked, "There's only one thing
certain about luck, and that is it's bound to change," and change it
had, and left him face to face with calamity and dishonor. Where was he
to raise the ten thousand dollars that must be sent to the post
quartermaster at Warrior Gap? The end of the fiscal year was close at
hand. He dare not further divert funds from one appropriation to cover
shortages in another. He could borrow from the banks, with a good
endorser, but what endorser was there good enough but John Folsom?--the
last man now whom he could bear to have suspect that he was in straits.
Folsom was reported to be worth two hundred thousand dollars, and that
lovely girl would inherit half his fortune. There lived within his
circle no man, no woman in whose esteem Burleigh so longed to stand
high, and he had blundered at the start. Damn that young cub who dared
to lecture him on the evils of poker! Was a boy lieutenant to shame him
before officers of the general's staff and expect to go unwhipped? Was
that butt-headed subaltern to be the means of ruining his prospects
right here and now when he stood so sorely in need of aid? Was the devil
himself in league against him, that that boy's sister should turn out to
be the closest friend old Folsom's daughter ever had--a girl to whom
father and daughter both were devoted, and through her were doubtless
interested in the very man he had been plotting to pull down? Burleigh
savagely ground his teeth together.

"Go and hurry that buggy," he ordered, as he crushed the sheet of paper
on which he had been nervously figuring. Then, springing up, he began
pacing his office with impatient stride. A clerk glanced quickly up from
his desk, watched him one moment with attentive eye, and looked
significantly at his neighbor. "Old man's getting worse rattled every
day," was the comment, as the crash of wheels through loose gravel
announced the coming of the buggy, and Burleigh hastened out, labored
into his seat, and took the whip and reins. The blooded mare in the
shafts darted forward