t in the cellar, but not one word here." Then hied him homeward.

When the senior surgeon came over later, the patient was sleeping, and,
after hearing that Wallen had been there, he left without interrogating
the nurse. All seemed going well, so Waring had nothing of especial
consequence to tell the colonel when dropping in at the office later.

Even the officer of the day, in response to the question, "Anything
special to report, sir?" failed to make the faintest mention of the
excitement reported by No. 4 as occurring soon after twelve. But it was
no fault of the officer of the day. He had other and, presumably, far
more important matters to mention first, and by the time he had told
that two sergeants, three corporals and a dozen men had been run in by
the patrols, many of them battered, most of them drunk, and all of them
out of quarters, out of the post and in the thick of a row over at
Skid's; that one of the guard had been slashed with a knife in the hands
of a half-breed; that the patrol had been pelted with bottles, glasses
and bar-room bric-a-brac; that Lieutenant Stowe had been felled by a
missile that flattened the bridge of his nose, and that the prison room
was filled to the limit, the colonel would hear no more. He ordered his
horse and a mounted orderly, strode to the guard-house to personally
look over the prisoners, then set forth to town in search of the
sheriff.

So the old officer of the day and the old guard were relieved and went
about their business, and while the colonel was closeted with civilian
officials in town a new story started the rounds at Minneconjou--a story
that only slowly found its way to the officers' club or quarters, for,
if the commanding officer didn't care to hear it, Captain Rollis, the
old officer of the day, cared not to refer to it, but there was one set
of quarters besides that of Major Dwight's in which some portion of the
story, at least, had been anticipated.

Unable to sleep, filled with anxiety about her firstborn, Marion Ray
after midnight had left her room and stolen over to his, hoping vainly
that he might have made his way thither. But the bed was undisturbed,
the room was empty. Then she thought perhaps he might have fallen asleep
in an easy-chair in the parlor; but the parlor, too, was empty, the
lights turned low. The front door was closed for the night and bolted,
so she went to the kitchen and found the back door ajar. Somewhere out
on sentry post there