hey were to
have been married last summer. He was regularly engaged to her, and
never knew she'd thrown him over until he met Granger in St. Louis."

Then Loring did a thing they both noted was unlike him. Ordinarily he
listened courteously until the question was finished. This time he broke
in:

"Blake is in his element doing cavalry duty. We had a lively chase
together after an officer who was deserting to Mexico."

"So you did," said Burleigh, with interest. "I remember hearing of it.
You were on his court, weren't you? Why! what was the fellow's name? I
remember having met him in New Orleans, too, when I read the order to
the court. Let's see, you were judge advocate, weren't you?"

"Yes. And his name was Nevins."

"Ah, yes. Dismissed, I believe. What ever became of him? There was a
rumor that he had died."

"So the consul at Guaymas reported," was Loring's brief reply.

"Well, was it never settled? Wasn't it proved in some way? I heard a
story that his wife had followed him out there. She was a damned sight
better lot than he was. I met her more than once in New Orleans. She
came of good family, but she was stranded down there by the war. They
say she had a younger sister who bled her to death, a girl she was
educating. I remember Nevins told me something about her. That fellow
had some good points, do you know, Loring? He behaved first rate during
the fever epidemic; nursed more'n one fellow through. He said that that
sister was a beauty and selfish to the core, and he wished to God she'd
marry some rich man and let them alone. Didn't you--didn't I hear that
they were out there, and that he made some dramatic scene before the
court, and sent his wife his valuables, or something of that kind?"

Loring was slowly reddening. He more than half believed that Burleigh
had heard the story set afloat by the gossips in San Francisco, and was
trying to draw him out. His tone, therefore, was cold and his answer
brief.

"They were there, but I never saw them. Pardon me, major, your rifle is
slipping," and leaning forward the Engineer straightened up the
endangered weapon and braced it with his foot. "A dreary landscape
this," he added, glancing out at the barren stretches of rolling prairie
extending to the horizon.

"Very. All like this till you get over towards the mountains, then it's
fine. But, isn't it really believed out there that Nevins is dead? What
became of his wife?"

"She went back to New Orleans, I