on are not yet with me. Major Waldron has it all in
writing, and Mr. Billings has merely told me the general features. Of
course you shall have a copy of it in good time. As you go East to-day
and have your wife and household to think for, it may be as well that
you do not attempt to see Mr. Hayne before starting. And this matter
will not be discussed."

And so it happened that when the Rayners drove to the station that
bright afternoon, and a throng of ladies and officers gathered to see
them off, some of the youngsters going with them into town to await the
coming of the train, Nellie Travers had been surrounded by chattering
friends of both sexes, constantly occupied, and yet constantly looking
for the face of one who came not. For an hour before their departure
every tongue in garrison that wagged at all--and few there were that
wagged not--was discoursing on the exciting events of the
morning,--Hayne's emancipation from the last vestige of suspicion,
Clancy's capture, confession, and tragic death, Mrs. Clancy's flight and
probable future. At Rayner's, people spoke of these things very
guardedly, because every one saw that the captain was moved to the
depths of his nature. He was solemnity itself, and Mrs. Rayner watched
him with deep anxiety, fearful that he might be exposed to some
thoughtless or malicious questioning. Her surveillance was needless,
however: even Ross made no allusion to the events of the morning, though
he communicated to his fellows in the subsequent confidences of the
club-room that Midas looked as though he'd been pulled through a series
of knot-holes. "Looks more's though he were going to his own funeral
than on leave," he added.

As for Hayne, he had been closeted with the colonel and Major Waldron
for some time after his return,--a conference that was broken in upon
by the startling news of Clancy's death. Then he had joined his friend
the doctor at the hospital, and was still there, striving to comfort
little Kate, who could not be induced to leave her father's rapidly
stiffening form, when Mrs. Waldron re-entered the room. Drawing the
child to her side and folding her motherly arms about her, she looked up
in Hayne's pale face:

"They are going in five minutes. Don't you mean to see her?"

"Not there,--not under his roof or in that crowd. I will go to the
station."

"I must run over and say good-by in a moment,--when the carriage goes
around. Shall--shall I say you will come?"

Th