nd then, deserting, it was he
who sought to carry away these precious girls, and he came within an
ace of succeeding. By the Eternal, but there will be a day of
reckoning for him if ever 'C' troop runs foul of him again! No wonder
you couldn't sleep, poor fellow, for thinking of that mother. This
caps the climax of his scoundrelism. Where,--when did you see him
last?--since he enlisted?"

But now Wing's face is again averted. He is covering it with his arms.

"Wing, answer me!" exclaims Drummond, springing suddenly to his feet.
"By heaven, I demand to know!" Then down on his knees he goes again,
seizing and striving to pull away the nearest arm. "You need not try,
you cannot conceal it now. I see it all,--all. Miss Harvey," he cries,
looking up into the face of the trembling girl, who has hastened in at
sound of the excitement in his voice,--"Miss Harvey, think of it;
'twas no Apache who shot him, 'twas a worse savage,--his own uncle."

"Promise me mother shall not know," pleads poor Wing, striving to rise
upon his elbow, striving to restrain the lieutenant, who again has
started to his feet. "Promise me, Miss Fanny; you know how she loved
him, how she plead with you."

"I promise you this, Wing," says Drummond, through his clinching
teeth, "that there'll be no time for prayer if ever we set eyes on him
again; there'll be no mercy."

"You can't let your men kill him in cold blood, lieutenant. I could
not shoot him."

"No, but, by the God of heaven, I could!"

And now as Wing, exhausted, sinks back to his couch his head is caught
on Fanny Harvey's arm and next is pillowed in her lap.

"Hush!" she murmurs, bending down over him as mother might over
sleeping child. "Hush! you must not speak again. I know how her heart
is bound up in you, and I'm to play mother to you now."

And as Drummond, tingling all over with wrath and excitement, stands
spellbound for the moment, a light step comes to his side, a little
hand is laid on the bandaged arm, and Ruth Harvey's pretty face, two
big tears trickling down her cheeks, is looking up in his.

"You, too, will be ill, Mr. Drummond. Oh, why can't you go and lie
down and rest? What will we do if both of you are down at once with
fever?"

She is younger by over two years than her brave sister. Tall though
she has grown, Ruth is but a child, and now in all her excitement and
anxiety, worn out with the long strain, she begins to cry. She strives
to hide it, strives to contr