tious,
dutiful, and therefore none too popular veteran, whose sister's children
much more than supplied the lack of his own.

Farquhar of the cavalry, scion of a Philadelphia family well known to
the Stuyvesants of Gotham and "trotting in the same class," had come
over from department head-quarters, where he had a billet as engineer
officer, to call on Stuyvesant and to cheer him up and contribute to his
convalescence, and did so after the manner of men, by talking on all
manner of topics for nearly an hour and winding up by a dissertation on
Billy Ray's pretty daughter and "Wally" Foster's infatuation. Farquhar
said it was the general belief that Maidie liked Wally mighty well and
would marry him were he only in the army. And Stuyvesant wondered how it
was, in all the years he had known Farquhar and envied him his being a
West Pointer and in the cavalry, he had never really discovered what a
bore, what a wearisome ass, Farquhar could be.

Then just as Miss Ray was reported sitting up and soon to be able to
"see her friends,"--with what smiling significance did Mrs. Brent so
assure him!--what should Stuyvesant's general do but select Stuyvesant
himself to go on a voyage of discovery to Iloilo and beyond. The
commanding general wanted a competent officer who spoke Spanish to make
a certain line of investigation. He consulted Vinton. Vinton thought
another voyage the very thing for Stuyvesant, and so suggested his name.

It sent the luckless Gothamite away just at the time of all others he
most wished to remain. When he returned, within a dozen days, the first
thing was to submit his written report, already prepared aboard ship.
The next was to report himself in person at Colonel Brent's, to be asked
into the presence of the girl he loved and longed to see, and, as has
been told, ushered out almost immediately, self-detailed, in search of
Sandy.

He had found the lad easily enough, but not so the man with the fit,
whom, for reasons of his own and from what he had seen and heard,
Stuyvesant was most anxious to overtake. His carriage whirled him
rapidly past the parade-ground and over to the First Reserve Hospital,
whither he thought the victim had been borne, but no civilian, with or
without fits, had recently been admitted.

Inquiry among convalescent patients and soldiers along the road without
resulted at last in his finding one of the party that carried the
stricken man from the field. He had come to, said the vol