dal of the service. They saw
it all now, these good people who had dreamed so wildly, and some few
there were who went to Ray during the brief fortnight that followed her
final disappearance and said: "We knew you couldn't have been guilty of
such a thought," but Sandy did not thank them. In his downright
impulsiveness he had gone to Stone and told him the truth, and said he
_had_ been guilty of such a thought, and asked the commander what he
ought to say to Dwight; and Stone, after pondering over the matter,
replied in effect, though not in these precise words, that he'd be
d--elighted if he knew.

Time and Dwight solved that problem, as time solves others. The major
remained not long at Minneconjou, nor did the Rays. The former, with
little Jim ever at his side, went eastward for a while, whence letters
came occasionally from both father and son. The latter found divided
duties. An interesting event, an arrival extraordinary, called for the
presence of Mrs. Ray in distant Manhattan, and Priscilla looked her last
for many a day upon the fords of the Minneconjou and those hated
tenements on the hither shore, to whose permanence and prosperity her
own efforts had lent such unlooked-for aid. A wiser woman in many a way
was Priscilla Sanford when she turned her clear eyes eastward again.
Firm as before was her faith that she had a mission, but she had learned
a lesson still needed by many of her sect, and by many of both sexes.
She had a tale to unfold to most excellent theorists in the field that
taught a new gospel in the cause of man's uplifting. They were found by
Dwight and Jimmy at the seashore, late that summer, and Priscilla
strolled hand in hand with her boy friend along the shining sands, and
talked long and gravely with his sire as to the real way of reaching the
moral nature of the enlisted soldier. They were joined by Sandy for a
day or two in September--a rather grave-faced young gentleman, despite
recent promotion and longed-for orders to join his troop in far Luzon.
They were in no wise startled when a cable came from Colonel
Ray--"Grandfather Billy" in spite of his looks--suggesting that they,
too, come with Sandy. They were all at Manila in the late autumn, except
the Dwights, and long before Christmas Priscilla had found in Colonel
Blake, that old-time friend and comrade of Uncle Will, a most delighted
listener to her theories. "Legs" was forever stumping round to the
bungalow and starting Priscilla on h