nant's pardon, but--he is not in the regular army, I see," with a
glance at the collar of the young officer's blouse. "We sometimes get
hard cases to deal with, and this is one of them. This kind of a cur
wouldn't hesitate to shoot an officer in the back or stab him in the
dark if he didn't like him. I hope the lieutenant may never be bothered
with him again. No, damn you!" he added between his set teeth, as he
looked down at the sullen, scowling prisoner, "what you ought to have is
a good hiding, and what you'll get, if you give any more trouble, is a
roping, hand and foot. We ought to have irons on a trip like this,
lieutenant," he continued, glancing up into the calm, refined face of
the young soldier. "But I can get a rope, if you say so, and tie him in
his berth."

"I have no authority in the matter," said Stuyvesant reflectively. "No
one has but you, that I know of. Perhaps he'll be quiet when he cools
down," and the lieutenant looked doubtfully at the semi-savage in the
section nearest the door.

"He'll give no more trouble this night, anyhow," said Connelly, as the
officer turned to go. "And thank you, sir, for this," and he held up the
bandaged hand. "But I'll keep my eyes peeled whenever he's about
hereafter, and you'll be wise to do the same, sir."

For one instant, as the lieutenant paused at the door-way and looked
back, the eyes of the two men met, his so brave and blue and clear; the
other's--Murray's--furtive, blood-shot, and full of hate. Then the door
slammed and Stuyvesant was gone.

Twice again that night he visited the recruit car. At ten o'clock, after
enjoying for an hour or more the sight of Miss Ray in animated chat with
two of the six women passengers of the sleeper, and the sound of her
pleasant voice, Stuyvesant wandered into the diner for a glass of cool
Budweiser.

"That's an ugly brute of a fellow that bit your corporal, sir," said the
steward. "I was in there just now, and he's as surly as a cur dog yet."

Stuyvesant nodded without a word. He was in a petulant frame of mind. He
wanted "worst kind," as he would have expressed it, to know that girl,
but not a glance would she give him. She owed him one, thought he, for
letting that rabbit go. Moreover, being an army girl, as he had learned,
she should not be so offish with an officer.

Then the readiness with which the corporal had "spotted" him as a
volunteer, as not a regular, occurred to him, and added to his faintly
irritable mo