erestimate. His
temperament was sweet and sunny. He had long been happily, most happily,
married. His wife was charming, admired, and beloved. His children were
all a father's heart could wish. Health and competence had always been
theirs. They had, indeed, for years known the joys of moderate wealth,
for Mrs. Ray had brought her husband something besides beauty and grace,
physical and spiritual. The Marion Sanford of the Centennial year of '76
was reputed an heiress, and the children that had come in course of time
to bless their union were certainly born to the purple. But army people
of those days lived long years in the far West, had to trust their
business affairs to agents in the far East, and some agents could not
stand such prosperity. Mrs. Ray's property was mainly in real estate,
some of which became gradually unproductive. Then there came the
financial storm of '93, and a subsequent flitting of financial agents,
some to the convenient Canadas, some to the Spanish Main.

Then another thing happened, almost whimsical in the way of retributive
justice where Mrs. Ray's relatives were concerned. That the resultant
burden should have been saddled on her cavalry husband was perhaps not
quite so diverting. There were several of Mrs. Ray's nearest of kin who
had by no means approved of her marriage in the army, and to a nameless,
moneyless subaltern at that. "He will make ducks and drakes of her
fortune," said they. "He will drink and gamble it away," said certain
others. Ray had possibly heard, had probably expected this. At all
events he had steadfastly declined to use his wife's money. He had gone
so far as to grieve her not a little by very gently, but very firmly,
declining to undertake the management of her property. That was all left
in the hands of her people. It was the agent of their choice who made
ducks and drakes of much of it, as well as of their own, and, at the
time the Spanish War broke out, from his pay as major in the line of the
army "Billy" Ray was contributing to the support of certain of the
children of his former detractors.

Then came partial relief. "Sandy" Ray, their eldest son, commissioned
like his father in the cavalry, was no longer to be provided for.
Indeed, he was sending every month a certain quarter of his salary
direct to his mother to repay her for moneys advanced for him when they
were much needed. Maidie Ray, their lovely dark-eyed daughter, had
married the man of her choice, a