was told. If Nevins isn't dead, he at
least hadn't been heard of up to the time I left."

And several times again that long afternoon did Burleigh return to the
charge and speak of Nevins, and more than once during the busy days that
followed, but by the time they started on their return he had probably
concluded that Loring really knew no more about him, and once or twice
when Blake and his love affairs were mentioned Loring seemed unwilling
to hear. Stone pondered over it not a little before they got to Reno on
the back track, and there it was that Burleigh had demanded to be sent
right on to Frayne, despite fatigue, for something had come to him in
this mail that filled him with dismay, as the major commanding told them
a dozen times over. Moreover, Mr. Omaha Stone became gradually convinced
that Loring was in partial possession of the secret of Burleigh's
stampede. Unless Stone was utterly in error, Loring had seen somewhere
before the handwriting of the superscription of the envelope Burleigh
had dropped in his nerveless collapse. But Stone might as well have
cross-questioned the sphinx. Loring would admit nothing.

Yet it was of this very matter the Engineer was thinking one soft still
evening soon after his return to department headquarters. His boxes had
just arrived. He had found a fairly comfortable room away from the
turbulent section of the new and bustling town, and equally distant from
the domicile of Stone and his particular set. Loring never gambled and
took little interest in cards. He was still "taking his rations" at the
hotel, but much disliked it, and was seriously thinking of seeking board
in some private family. The barracks were too far out, and the roads
deep in mud, or he would have lived and "messed" out there. The few
boarding houses were crowded, and with an uncongenial lot as a rule.
Private families that took two or three table boarders were very few,
but some one suggested his going to see the rector of the new parish,
himself a recent arrival.

The sun had gone down behind the high bluffs at the back of the
straggling frontier town. The plank sidewalks were thronged in the
neighborhood of the hotel with picturesque loungers as the young officer
made his way westward, and soon reached the outlying, unpaved,
deep-rutted cross streets. He readily found the rector, a kindly,
gentle-mannered widower he proved to be, whose sister had come to keep
house for him, and never before had either o