rgaret could not bear to speak of it to Miss Loomis. It was
Agatha herself who calmly asked, "And when is he to be married?" In
answering Mrs. Cranston found it impossible to conceal that she thought
it both quixotic and unnecessary. Miss Loomis quietly but decidedly took
the opposite view. No honorable man could have done otherwise. They had
long been engaged. It was not only their own but his mother's choice.
She was young, beautiful, deeply in love with him. He had long been in
love with her. Doubtless they would be very happy, as they deserved to
be. Margaret flared up again: "I believe he's doing it as he does
everything else,--from sheer sense of duty, and that you advised him
to." A random shot which went nearer the mark than the archer supposed,
for Miss Loomis flushed in an instant, and made no reply. "Well!" said
Mrs. Cranston, "she longs only to share the humblest cot, the rudest
habitation with her beloved. We'll see how she'll take to frontier
life."

A detachment of thirty troopers had been ordered kept at the new agency
eighty miles to the north, and thither to his supreme disgust had
Lieutenant Boynton of the Eleventh been banished in command, with the
promise of relief soon after Christmas. Cranston wrote asking permission
to use the lieutenant's vacated rooms for the new-comers, saying he
would provide servants and such fittings as would be needed. Boynton
wired back yes, of course, and the dreary bachelor den was made as
habitable as Mrs. Cranston's busy hands and brain could make it. Other
kindly women lent their aid, as well as pillow shams, towels,
comforters, bed linen, lamps, wardrobe, bureau, rocking-chairs, lounge,
etc. The Davieses were to breakfast and lunch with the Cranstons each
day, and to be invited round to dinner until their own cot was ready.
And in thus wise did traditional army hospitality vindicate itself.
There was that still unexplained something hanging over Davies's head,
but as yet he knew nothing of it,--had never heard of the allegations so
vehemently, volubly laid at his door when Captain Devers had his own
portals to clear. Nor was the latter now given to faintest reference to
the matter. This at first glance may seem inconsistent, yet has its
explanation. As matters now stood there would be no further inquiry into
that wretched business. If Davies were once to know his good name had
been attacked, and that his explanation of his failure to reach his men
or give notice of