ow or at
any time, you are most damnably mistaken, sir, as you will find as soon
as you are sober enough to receive a message." And with that he turned
and left the room. The next morning Blake was out with a note, as
everybody knew would be the result, and poor Crane tied a wet towel
around his head and sent for Wilkins and Heath and others, and they all
told him the same thing. He had made an outrageous ass of himself, and
had best write a full apology,--and he did. It was "the church
militant," said Blake, "that Billy joined," and it was evident enough
that the chip was still there on Ray's shoulder. Even Marion Sanford's
sunny head had not displaced it.

And then came a time in the spring when Ray's letters began to be very
frequent, and Rallston's big fist sprawled in on all manner of envelopes
from all manner of Iowa and Nebraska hotels. He was doing a lively
business in the horse and cattle trade again, had quit gambling, said
rumor, and Mrs. Rallston was with him now on all his journeyings, and
looking marvellously well and happy; and along in April Blake and Ray
were doing all they knew how, with Mrs. Stannard's assistance, to make
their quarters habitable for lady's use, and Rallston and Nell came and
paid them a visit of an entire week, and went away enraptured with the
regiment. Rallston was ill at ease at first, but his wife's grace and
beauty, the fact that she was Ray's sister, and that Mrs. Stannard and
Mrs. Truscott became devoted to her from the start, and that "old
Stannard" and Truscott took Rallston under their protecting wings, and
showed him around as though there had never been a flaw in his
record,--all these things and his natural good nature combined to make
him popular among the officers, and the night before they left he had
the whole crowd in at a "stag party" in town, whereat there was much
conviviality and good feeling; and the next thing whispered about the
garrison was that Ray had "an interest in the business," for when
Billings wanted a new horse, and could find none just to suit him in the
stables, he sought Ray's advice, as he always did in such matters (the
cloud between them had long since drifted away, but not until Billings
had "made a clean breast of it"), and Ray told him to wait a few days
and the horse to suit him would be there, and he could take his own time
in paying for him, too. (He did, by the way.) And when May came, and
with it orders for a summer camp, Ray's old tro