oldier--a man fit to command and lead, a man with a record behind him,
not an uncertainty ahead. Dwight's seat, at the request of the veteran
general officer going with them to the States, had been at the captain's
table, but Dwight soon effected--at least Farrell effected and Dwight
got the _dis_credit of it--a transfer with the officer who had been
seated at the side of Inez Farrell, and Dwight's mental condition can
perhaps be judged of by the fact that he never noticed that General Hume
thereafter not once addressed him on the voyage.

Enough said. Oswald Dwight's many friends throughout the service read
with much surprise, most of them with vague disquietude and some few
with downright dismay, the announcement of the marriage at Los Angeles,
by the Right Reverend the Bishop of the Diocese, assisted by the Very
Reverend Fathers Moran and Finley, at the Church of the Immaculate
Conception, of Inez, only daughter of Major and Quartermaster James
O'Donohue Farrell, U. S. V., of Santa Rosita, Texas, and Maria Mercedes
de la Cruz y Mendoza y Fronteras, his wife, to Captain Oswald M. Dwight,
--th U. S. Cavalry.

When the happy pair set forth upon their wedding journey some comment
was created by the fact that, while they went to New Orleans, the
parents of the bride did not go to Texas, as had been planned. Moreover,
the major, it seems, had not anticipated that orders honorably
discharging him from the volunteer service would meet him within the
week of his arrival within the Golden Gate. Officers of the Department
Staff, interrogated on the subject, said little but looked volumes.
Major Blake, of the Cavalry, an old and intimate friend of the Rays, was
understood to say that it was a wonder the major had been honorably
discharged at all. Farrell, who was to have gone to his Texas property,
found that certain mines in Mexico demanded immediate looking after.
Indeed, it was this fact that precipitated an earlier marriage than Miss
Farrell, whose trousseau was by no means in readiness, had for a moment
contemplated. Farrell said he might be as much as six months in the
mountains beyond Guadalajara and other places. The senora had, of
course, wealthy kindred with whom she could stay at Mexico or Vera Cruz,
but the hitch was about Inez, who, said her father, was so Americanized
that she couldn't get along with her mother's people--they were forever
at swords' points, and what more natural than that the ardent swain
should p