d his empty head with an equally
empty canteen and called him a Yap. Some one else, farther back, sang
out, "Three cheers for the lieutenant," and stentorian authority in
chevrons bellowed "Silence there, fore and aft!" and then, when instant
hush and awe rewarded the mandate, followed up the order with the
military Milesianism, "Youse fellers wants to keep your mouths shut
barrin' you're atin'." The wounded in the Pullman ate and drank
gratefully and heartily at the lieutenant's expense, and these are
matters the rank and file remember. Lance Corporal Brannan, made
comfortable for the night in the sleeper, had a few murmured words with
the dark-eyed and more intelligent-looking of the two recruits before
they were remanded to their own car for the night, where they went, and,
after the manner of their kind, one of them bragged not a little over
the bully supper they had had with the lieutenant. "Enjoy it while you
can, me bucks," was the caustic comment of a fellow-recruit who had all
the ear-marks and none of the credentials of previous service about him.
"It's the last of that sort of hobnobbing you'll ever see."

For upwards of an hour during the night, while Mrs. Cranston lay
peacefully sleeping, Mr. Davies and Miss Loomis sat in conversation in
the opposite section. Tibbetts, who would fain have enjoyed such a
privilege, found no opportunity. Somewhere towards ten o'clock he came
quickly in. Davies read official matter in the captain's manner as he
approached the section, and rising, stood attention, cadet-like, when
addressed.

"Mr. Davies, while I think everything will go quietly with those
fellows from this on, I wish to take all necessary precautions. I will
divide the night with you. After two o'clock I wish you to go through
the cars once every two hours and see that the recruits are quiet and
the guard alert, also to step outside to the platform when we stop at
stations. Better turn in now and get what sleep you can."

But though promptly at two o'clock the young officer aroused the
captain, who was dozing in the smoking-room, he himself had had little
sleep. The events of the day, the novelty of his position, the desire to
see something of the strange, half-settled land so recently the
roaming-ground of Indian and buffalo through which they were steadily
rolling, and which lay outspread, weird and ghostly, in the summer
moonlight,--these and thoughts of home and the rapidly nearing
possibilities of fron