erity spoke in every
feature of the forbidding office as well as in those of the major
commanding.

There was striking contrast, too, between the man at the desk and the
man on the rack before him. Plume had led a life devoid of anxiety or
care. Soldiering he took serenely. He liked it, so long as no grave
hardship threatened. He had done reasonably good service at corps
headquarters during the Civil War; had been commissioned captain in
the regulars in '61, and held no vexatious command at any time
perhaps, until this that took him to far-away Arizona. Plume was a
gentlemanly fellow and no bad garrison soldier. He really shone on
parade and review at such fine stations as Leavenworth and Riley, but
had never had to bother with mountain scouting or long-distance Indian
chasing on the plains. He had a comfortable income outside his pay,
and when he was wedded, at the end of her fourth season in society, to
a prominent, if just a trifle _passee_ belle, people thought him a
more than lucky man, until the regiment was sent to Arizona and he to
Sandy. Gossip said he went to General Sherman with appeal for some
detaining duty, whereupon that bluff and most outspoken warrior
exclaimed: "What, what, what! Not want to go with the regiment? Why,
here's Blakely begging to be relieved from Terry's staff because he's
mad to go." And this, said certain St. Louis commentators, settled it,
for Mrs. Plume declared for Arizona.

Well garbed, groomed, and fed was Plume, a handsome, soldierly figure.
Very cool and placid was his look in the spotless white that even then
by local custom had become official dress for Sandy; but beneath the
snowy surface his heart beat with grave disquiet as he studied the
strong, rugged, somber face of the soldier on the floor.

Wren was tall and gaunt and growing gray. His face was deeply lined;
his close-cropped beard was silver-stranded; his arms and legs were
long and sinewy and powerful; his chest and shoulders burly; his
regimental dress had not the cut and finish of the commander's. Too
much of bony wrist and hand was in evidence, too little of grace and
curve. But, though he stood rigidly at attention, with all semblance
of respect and subordination, the gleam in his deep-set eyes, the
twitch of the long fingers, told of keen and pent-up feeling, and he
looked the senior soldier squarely in the face. A sergeant, standing
by the adjutant's desk, tiptoed out into the clerk's room and closed
the doo