and
down, still burning with indignation over the events of the previous
night. There had been a fresh fall of snow Sunday morning, and though
the walks and paths were cleared, the soft white mantle lay like a
glistening carpet over the parade and prairie and along the slanting
roofs of the quarters. There was an open space of sixty feet from outer
wall to wall along officers' row, and a paling or picket fence, running
at right angles to the roadway in front, divided this space equally, so
that each set of quarters had its own yard. Davies had remarked with a
smile the previous evening, the contrast presented by the Leonards's
yard at the west end and his at the east of the double set in which they
lived. Leonard's yard was criss-crossed, cut up in every direction by
tracks of sled-runners and sturdy little rubber boots. His own lay like
a flawless sheet without even a kitten's footprint to mar its virgin
surface. Now as he strode rapidly westward again and came in front of
the Leonard playground, he noted once more the traces that spoke so
eloquently of happy, healthy childhood, of rosy cheeks and sparkling
eyes and merry laughter. Then he turned back to his own, still tramping
briskly in the endeavor to send the blood to his finger-tips, and then
coming in view of what at nightfall had been an unbroken coverlet of
snow, Davies stopped short, amazed. Straight from the corner at the
front where the fences met, straight as a lance, went the footprints of
a man, in long, unhesitating stride, to a point immediately underneath
the closed blinds of the window behind which his wife now lay placidly
sleeping. Davies stood and studied the tracks a moment, then went to the
point of meeting of the front fence,--a flat-topped affair,--with its
picketed offshoot. Beyond doubt the maker of those tracks had swung
himself over the fence at that point, dropped lightly to the ground
inside and gone straightway to that side window. There he must have
stood a moment or two, for the snow was trampled. Thence the tracks led
around to the back of the house. Returning to his gate and hall-way,
Davies tiptoed noiselessly through the little dining-room to the kitchen
in the shed at the back. There Barnickel was sleepily starting a fire,
and the door leading into his little den farther back discovered the
soldier blankets of his bunk tumbled over as though he had just arisen.
The door to the yard was still bolted. Davies slipped the bolt and
ste