her went Loring to find his _fiancee_ at the
piano, with a middle-aged, somewhat portly civilian bending eagerly over
her and so engrossed that he never saw or heard the intruder. This was
November fourth. The engagement was barely six weeks old, but Loring's
ring was not on her finger as she rose in confusion to greet him. More
than that, she wrote a piteous letter to him, begging for her release.
She "really had not known her own mind." Loring gave it without a word
to or without other sight of her, packed his trunk, and left New York on
the morning train. There was a sensation at the Point when it was
announced that Miss Allyn was to marry Mr. Forbes Crosby, a wealthy
"board-of-trade man" of forty. Loring reappeared no more. He got his
orders for San Francisco and sailed late in the fall, and barely had he
gone than the story spread from lip to lip that Mr. Crosby had broken
the engagement, that Miss Haight had decided to go abroad and would not
require a companion what was more, that Forbes Crosby had been making
very judicious investments for Miss Haight herself, and people really
wouldn't be surprised if--and then Geraldine Allyn, too, disappeared
from New York and was next heard of living very quietly with a married
sister, herself an invalid, a Mrs. Nevins, whose husband was said to be
somewhere in the army.

And so that girl whom Loring had so deeply loved was sister to the wife
of this military castaway, this unprincipled gambler, swindler and
thief, and he, Loring, had charged himself with a commission that might
bring him once more face to face with her who had duped him.

Circling the camp at wide distance, he had crossed the _acequia_ and
reached the Gila road. To the north now lay the camp, and the twinkling
lights of the sutler's bar, and between him and these twinkling lights
two dark objects bobbed into view some thirty yards distant, and, as
plain as he could hear his own heart beat, Loring heard a voice say:
"Then I'll count on you not to let him out of your sight," and the
voice was that of Nevins--Nevins who was supposed to confine himself,
day and night in arrest, to the limits of the garrison.

CHAPTER VI.

The members of the court had scattered to their posts, all save the
veteran president and Colonel Turnbull, the department inspector.
Lieutenant Blake, to his disgust, had been sent scouting up the
Hassayampa where the Apaches had been seen some days before, but
couldn't be found n