quarters did you
choose?"

"What difference does it make to you, Rags?" put in Mr. Dana. "You
fellows will have the post to yourselves all summer, anyhow. We shan't
get out so much as a chair until we come back from the campaign."

"Well, the married officers have chosen theirs, you know. Stannard's
traps are all moved into No. 11, and they are pretty nearly settled
already,--the carpets were all down yesterday. So they were at Turner's.
Mrs. Whaling has been helping them unpack for the last three days, and
telling everybody what they had and didn't have. I tell you what,
fellows, we're going to have no end of a good time here this summer with
your band and all the ladies while you're roughing it out on the Big
Horn. Whaling says he'll bet a hat none of you get back before
Thanksgiving."

"Is it so that Truscott comes here with his troop?" asked one of the
captains of Lieutenant Crane.

"Well, the troop comes, but as to Truscott, that's another matter."

"I don't understand you, Crane," said Mr. Blake, with sudden change from
his roystering manner. "I thought you heard Ray say that he knew
Truscott would be after us as soon as it was settled that we would take
the field."

"Ray knew no more about it than you do, Blake," was the impatient reply.
"Ray has a fashion of being oracular where Truscott is concerned as
though he were on intimate and confidential terms with him. Now I, for
one, don't believe he had any authority whatever for saying what he
did."

"Well, hold on here," said Blake, deliberately. "My recollection is that
Ray only spoke of it as his conviction,--not that Truscott had told him
anything; still, he was certain that Truscott would come, and that he
would lose no time in getting relieved either. You know he is at the
Point," he said, in explanation, to the silent infantryman.

"Well, I'm d----d if I can understand it in him," muttered Wilkins, as he
buried his broad face in a beer-mug.

"No, Wilkins, I dare say you can't," was the drawling reply, and the
sarcasm was not lost among the listeners, though it missed its effect on
the stolid object. "Truscott, Ray, Heath, and Wayne, and Canker, are not
the style of men to spend this summer, of all others, away from the
regiment."

"Well, here we are, marching to-morrow, and where are your Ray and
Truscott?" asked Wilkins, with as near an approach to a sneer as he dare
venture.

Blake rose quickly from his chair, near where the trio still conti