the prisoners before him.

Down along the line he went, until at the fourth man from the left in
the front rank he stopped short. A bulky, thick-set soldier stood there,
a sullen, semi-defiant look about his eyes, a grim set to the jaws
bristling with a week-old beard of dirty black. Then came the snapping
colloquy.

"Your name Murray?"

"That's what they call me."

"What was your name before that?"

"Jim."

Whereat there was a titter in the ranks of prisoners. Some of the guard
even allowed their mouths to expand, and the groups of volunteers,
chuckling in keen enjoyment, came edging in closer.

Instantly the voice of the officer of the guard was heard ordering
silence, and faces straightened out in the twinkling of an eye.

The elder officer, the captain, grew a trifle redder, but he was master
of himself and the situation. It is with school-boys as with soldiers,
their master is the man whom pranks or impudence cannot annoy. The
officer of the day let no tone of temper into his next question. Looking
straight into the shifting eyes, he waited for perfect silence, and then
spoke:

"Jim what? I wish the name under which you served in your previous
enlistment."

"Never said I'd served before."

"No. You declared you had not. But I know better. You're a deserter from
the Seventh Cavalry."

The face under the shrouding campaign hat went gray white with sudden
twitch of the muscles, then set again, rigid and defiant. The eyes
snapped angrily. The answer was sharp, yet seemed, as soldiers say, to
"hang fire" a second.

"Never seen the Seventh Cavalry in my life."

The officer of the day turned and beckoned to a figure hitherto kept
well in the background, screened by the groups of surrounding
volunteers. A man of middle age, smooth shaven and stout, dressed in
business sack-suit, came sturdily forward and took position by the
captain's side.

At sight of the new-comer Murray's face, that had regained a bit of its
ruddy hue, again turned dirty white, and the boy lieutenant, eying him
closely, saw the twitch of his thin, half-hidden lips.

"Point out your man," said the captain to the new arrival.

The civilian stepped forward, and without a word twice tapped with his
forefinger the broad breast of Prisoner Murray and, never looking at
him, turned again to the officer of the day.

"What was his name in the Seventh?" asked the latter.

"Sackett."

The captain turned to the officer of the guard. "Mr.