ll-calls and such things through the day, "just to
keep them busy"? The real objection--the main objection--to the
colonel's system was that it kept a large number of officers, most of
whom were educated gentlemen, hammering all day long at an endless
routine of trivial duties, allowing actually no time in which they could
read, study, or improve their minds; but, as ill luck would have it, the
three young gentlemen who decided to present to the colonel this view of
the case had been devoting what spare time they could find to a lively
game of poker down at "the store," and their petition for "more time to
themselves" brought down a reply from the oracular lips of the commander
that became immortal on the frontier and made the petitioners nearly
frantic. For a week the trio was the butt of all the wits at Fort
Warrener. And yet the entire commissioned force felt that they were
being kept at the grindstone because of the frivolity of these few
youngsters, and they did not like it. All the same the cavalrymen stuck
up for their colonel, and the infantrymen respected him, and the
_matinees_ were business-like and profitable. They were rarely
unpleasant in any feature; but this particular morning--two days after
the arrival of Mrs. Rayner and her sister--there had been a scene of
somewhat dramatic interest, and the groups of officers in breaking up
and going away could discuss nothing else. The colonel had requested one
of their number to remain, as he wished to speak to him further; and
that man was Lieutenant Hayne.

Seven years had that young gentleman been a second lieutenant of the
regiment of infantry a detachment of which was now stationed at
Warrener. Only this very winter had promotion come to him; and, of all
companies in the regiment, he was gazetted to the first-lieutenancy of
Captain Rayner's. For a while the regiment when by itself could talk of
little else. Mr. Hayne had spent three or four years in the exile of a
little "two-company post" far up in the mountains. Except the officers
there stationed, none of his comrades had seen him during that time. No
one of them would like to admit that he would care to see him. And yet,
when once in a while they got to talking among themselves about him, and
the question was sometimes confidentially asked of comrades who came
down on leave from that isolated station, "How is Hayne doing?" or,
"What is Hayne doing?" the language in which he was referred to grew by
degrees