of a dance evening, would casually drop in by one door and out by
another, taking a turn or two on the floor, perhaps--"just waltzing in
and waltzing out," as they said--and no one the worse for it, even when
the colonel happened to be present. Nor could men now see what it was
that so angered the commander against Lanier.

"Disobeyed his orders flatly," suggested Captain Snaffle, who stood by
the colonel on every occasion when not himself the object of that
officer's satire or censure.

"Disobeyed no order," said Sumter, as stoutly. "Simply did what many
another has done, and nobody hurt. Nor would Lanier have been noted,
perhaps, if he had not first asked to turn over his sword to Trotter."

But even that could not fully account for the colonel's rancor, and,
though the music and dance went on, men and women both, with clouded
faces, found themselves asking the question: "What could have angered
him so at Lanier?" And in a corner of the ladies' dressing-room two
pretty girls, with difficulty soothed by Mrs. Sumter, were vainly
striving not to cry their eyes out--Kate Sumter dismayed at the almost
uncontrollable grief of her friend, who, strange to military measures,
imagined that Bob's arrest was but the prelude to his being shot at
sunrise, or something well nigh as terrible.

Not ten minutes after Lanier went out, and went silent but in
unspeakable wrath, Paymaster Scott came dawdling in, and though but a
casual visitor at the post, just back that day from a tour of the
northward camps and forts along the Indian border, he saw at a glance
that something had gone amiss. The colonel was laboriously waltzing;
three or four couples were mechanically following suit, but most of the
men were gathered about the buffet, and most of the women huddled at the
dressing-room door, and Scott, marching over to pay his respects to the
colonel's wife, and explain his coming at so late an hour, noted
instantly the trouble in her serious face. He had known her long and
liked her well, as, despite occasional differences at whist, he did her
husband. Captain Snaffle was speaking with her at the moment. Mrs.
Snaffle was at her side. "Why did they tell her at all?" Mrs. Snaffle
was asking, with much spirit and obvious effort to control a racial
tendency to double the final monosyllables. "Sure they might have known
't would sc--frighten the life out of her."

"Sc--frighten _who_?" asked Scott, who was friends with everybody and,
for