ll the perils and glories of that gallant corps. He is still
a private--it may be because no commission has offered on such terms as
a true man could accept; and it may be because he believes the true
romance and glory of war to lie with the _soldier_, and not the
_officer_--the danger of the lonely picket-guard and the song and story
of camp and bivouac, supplying a fresh and glorious excitement to which
the superior must always remain a stranger.

* * * * *

From the moment when Colonel Egbert Crawford left West Falls so
suddenly, and took his way Southward by the cars of the New York Central
road on that Sunday evening of July, he seems to have passed away
entirely from the course of this narration. Let it not be supposed that
he has passed away from memory or that these closing words can be
complete without a knowledge of his subsequent movements.

It has been seen how calmly, to all outward appearance, the baffled and
detected man bore the knowledge of his ruin. _Ruin_, because nothing
less was involved in the failure of his plans. He had long been
embarrassed in money affairs, and for months before his business as a
Tombs lawyer had been falling away under that worst of all
cankers--neglect. The hand of Mary Crawford would have satisfied his
heart, and her fortune would have repaired the weakness of his own.
Failing both, he was hopelessly bankrupt. The Two Hundredth Regiment was
a failure, and he had known the fact for weeks. Perhaps he had never
believed that it would be otherwise. At all events, as may have been
suspected from his forced submission to the unpardonable insolence of
the Adjutant, he had been deceiving the authorities as to the number and
condition of the regiment, and applying to his own use sums that might
need to be some day strictly accounted for. The previous word will bear
repetition--this event in his life was absolute ruin.

Some men commit suicide under such circumstances. Others make one more
and a still greater departure from the path of honesty, and victimizing
all whom they can influence by the holiest of pleas and the most sacred
claims of friendship, flee away to bury their shame among strangers. A
few find such positions the turning-points in their lives, and
thenceforward develope some startling virtues which almost redeem the
lamentable past.

Egbert Crawford had proved himself a villain, even as the world goes. He
had trampled upon the dearest