new of the fracas between them that day; but few,
perhaps, had heard the lieutenant's threats, and in this brutal fashion
had he fulfilled them.

Copies of this, of course, had gone to Department Headquarters. The
commander was expected back at the end of the week from his tour of
inspection at Yellowstone Park. Sandy could not be held in close arrest
beyond the eighth day; but that the affair would have to be thoroughly
investigated by general court everybody felt and said. Indeed, Ray
himself would be content with nothing less. But what a solemn time was
this for Marion, his devoted mother; indeed for all at Minneconjou.

Up at the "ranking" end of the row Oswald Dwight lay in the grasp of a
burning fever that, coupled with what had gone before, had weakened his
reason and might well end his life. Under the same roof, visited at
intervals by the charitable, the sympathetic or the merely inquisitive
of their sex and station, Mrs. Dwight and her inseparable companion,
Felicie, made their moan and told their woeful tale to all comers. Inez
had been, she said, suffering all the torments of purgatory, and to many
eyes she looked it. Her husband, in his mad delirium, would not have her
near him: _he_ raved of the wife of his youth. She wept for his boy who
had been taken from her, his proper, his natural, his legal protector at
such a time. Inez was horrified to think of the outrage upon Captain
Foster, their attached and devoted friend. Inez would never believe, she
said, that such a gentleman as Mr. Ray could stoop to so vile a
vengeance, to the level of the assassin, but Felicie had other views.
The episode of that blood-stained gauntlet had been by no means
forgotten, and was dinned into the ears of those who would listen, with
infinite vim and pertinacity; this, too, despite the fact that Ray
denied having worn gauntlets that evening--having worn them, in fact,
that summer. They were no longer "uniform" for cavalry officers, and he
had not set eyes on that glove or its mate for over a month. Possibly
during the move from the major's quarters to the humble home of the
subaltern, but certainly somehow, Ray had lost several items that,
before the change in uniform, had been in frequent use, but of late
would hardly be missed, and of these were the gauntlets.

So there was distress--anxiety--sorrowing in more than one of the many
households at Minneconjou, and in the midst of it all Priscilla, who had
thought her burden,