noticed his
hands; what woman doesn't notice such things?--were slim and white. He
had the look of a man who had been long in hospital; was probably a
recently discharged patient, perhaps one of the many men just now
getting their home orders from Washington.

"Somebody who served under your father, perhaps," said Mrs. Brent
soothingly to Marion, "and thought he ought to see you."

"Somebody who had not been a soldier at all," said she to Sandy. "He had
neither the look nor the manner of one." And Sandy marvelled a bit and
decided to be on guard.

"Maidie," he had said that afternoon, before riding away, "when you get
out next week we must take up pistol practice again. You beat me at
Leavenworth, but you can't do it now. Got your gun--anywhere?--the one
Dad gave you?" And Dad or Daddy in the Ray household was the "lovingest"
of titles.

Maidie turned a languid head on her pillow. "In the upper drawer of the
cabinet in my room, I think," said she. "I remember Mrs. Brent's
examining it."

Sandy went in search, and presently returned with the prize, a short,
big-barrelled, powerful little weapon of the bull-dog type, sending a
bullet like that of a Derringer, hot and hard, warranted to shock and
stop an ox at ten yards, but miss a barn at over twenty: a woman's
weapon for defence of her life, not a target pistol, and Sandy twirled
the shining cylinder approvingly. It was a gleaming toy, with its ivory
stock and nickeled steel.

"Every chamber crammed," said Sandy, "and sure to knock spots out of
anything from a mad dog to an elephant, provided it hits. Best keep it
by you at night, Maidie. These natives are marvellous sneak-thieves.
They go all through these ramshackle upper stories like so many ghosts.
No one can hear them."

Then, when he took his leave, the pistol remained there lying on the
table, and Frank, coming in to see his most interesting patient just as
the band was trooping back to its post on the right of the long line,
picked it up and examined it, muzzle uppermost, with professional
approbation.

"Yours I see, Miss Ray;--and from your father. A man hit by one of
these," he continued musingly, and fingering the fat leaden bullets,
"would drop in his tracks. You keep it by you?--always?"

"I? No!" laughed Maidie. "I'm eager to get to my work,--healing--not
giving--gunshot wounds."

"You will have abundant time, my dear young lady," said the doctor
slowly, as he carefully replaced the weapon on