coward, but it must be owned that he was glad to be
well away from Minneconjou before the coming of the Dwights. What
troubled him most was, not how Sandy, his eldest boy, but how Marion,
his beloved wife, might suffer. Never to either father or mother had the
young officer spoken the name of the second Mrs. Dwight. Never since his
coming to Minneconjou had he referred to his infatuation of the previous
year, nor had he even remotely mentioned the meeting at Naples. They
knew of it, of course. There were so many aboard the transport who had
heard all there was to hear about it, and some of these many could not
be expected to keep it to themselves. Sandy, indeed, reached the post
only a day or two in advance of this interesting piece of news. Marion
heard it before her husband and refrained from telling him, in hopes
that Sandy himself would open his heart and tell her all there was to be
told; but presently it dawned upon her that the boy shrank from the very
mention of "that woman's" name--then that Will, too, had heard the
story, and not from Sandy, and then that each feared to tell the other.
Then as of old, she nestled into her husband's arms, and there, in her
refuge, said:

"After all, Will, isn't it better he should have seen her and--had done
with it?"

"If only he has done with it," thought the colonel, as he watched the
young soldier going doggedly about his duties. "If only he _has_ done
with it!" he thought again, when he saw the red burning on the young
fellow's cheek that told he knew at last of the impending arrival. But
the boy had shown splendid nerve and grit in that vital matter of the
gradual repayment of the moneys lost through his neglect at the Presidio
in '98. He had shown such manliness in abjuring wine after that one
almost excusable lapse so long ago. A boy who could keep himself so
thoroughly in hand, said the colonel, in two cardinal points, can be
counted on to keep his head even when he may have lost his heart. No.
Ray had trusted Sandy thoroughly in the past, and Sandy had thoroughly
justified it. Ray meant as thoroughly to trust now to the manfulness and
honor of his son. Pride, too, would help the lad even were "that woman"
to seek to lure him again.

But it was hard to leave Marion to meet the Dwights. In all her army
life, with the possible exception of Grace Truscott, never had Marion
met a woman for whom she felt such depth of affection and regard as for
Margaret Dwight. The two