o had not seen Ray for years, would
never have misunderstood it, but when he first heard it six months
afterwards, and while Ray and himself had yet to meet, it was told
semi-confidentially, told as Ray never said it, told in fact--by
Gleason; and Billings, who was of a nervous, sensitive disposition, as
outspoken in a way as Ray was in his, was hurt more than a little. He
had known Ray a dozen years before when both were wearing the gray as
cadets at the Point, but they were in different classes and by no means
intimate. Each, however, had cordially liked the other, and Billings
would have been slow to believe the statement as told him for a single
instant except for two things,--one was that Gleason was a new
acquaintance of whom up to that time he knew nothing really
discreditable; the other was that just before the regiment came East
from Arizona the adjutancy became vacant, Lieutenant Truscott, who had
long held the position, was detailed for duty at West Point and speedily
promoted to his captaincy; Billings was brought in wounded and sent off
by sea to San Francisco as soon as he could travel, and so heard little
of the particulars of some strange mystery that was going on at
regimental headquarters, and when, some months later, he rejoined the
regiment in Kansas, it was with much mental perturbation that he
received from "Old Catnip" the offer of the still vacant adjutancy.

Of course, he had heard by that time just why Truscott had resigned and
refused to re-accept the position; he also knew that the colonel had
said that he could give it to no officer who had not served with them in
the rough days in Arizona; and, moreover, that he had once declared that
offering the adjutancy to a second lieutenant was equivalent to saying
that no first lieutenant was capable of performing the duties. But he
did not know that soon after Truscott's resignation the colonel had
tendered the adjutancy to Ray, and that impolitic youth had promptly
declined. He knew, as did the whole regiment, that for Truscott Ray had
an enthusiastic admiration and regard, and for that matter, Billings
himself had reason to look upon the ex-adjutant as a friend worth
having; but he did not suspect, as some at old Camp Sandy more than
suspected, that Ray had been offered his place. The colonel, in his
surprise and mortification, would speak of it to no one. Ray, in his
blunt honesty, conceived it to be his duty to regard the offer as
confidential,