reciative ears their
unusual and rejoiceful experience.

"Well, ain't he the dandy lieutenant, though?" queried Casey, of "F"
Troop. "And did he give you yer new cap, too, Quinlan? Sure the wan you
marched on wid had the mange!"

Cassidy snatched it from his comrade's head. "Mother av Moses! If he
hasn't lifted the lieutenant's----" But he broke off short. One glance
he had given the band within. A sudden cloud swept over his face. There
was an instant of indecision, then he whipped his own cap from his head
and thrust it on Quinlan.

"I'm a liar," said he; "it's me own he's had."

"Then you wear two sizes, Jim Cassidy, an' both different." Quinlan had
pulled the headpiece down, and was staring in at the soft lining.
"What's this?" he began, when the corporal's fingers closed like a vise
on his arm.

"Shut up, Quinlan. The whiskey's gone to yer noddle. Come here!" And
Cassidy led him, wondering, to the barred corridor without and slammed
the door behind them. "Not a word do you whisper of this to any man, Pat
Quinlan," said he, never relaxing his grasp. "You heard what that
Cockney Fitzroy was swearin' to this morning? Sure--you'd never say the
word to back that whelp--an' harm the lieutenant!"

VI

"God helps those who help themselves," quoth Lieutenant Blake, on
hearing of the incident at Lanier's quarters, "but God help those who
help other fellows, unless 'the Old Man' likes it." Blake was but a
"casual" at Fort Cushing at the moment, summoned thither as a witness
before a general court-martial then in session, but there was nothing
casual in his friendship for Bob Lanier. Two years' campaigning in
Arizona and one in Wyoming had made these subalterns fast friends,
despite the difference of ten years in their ages and nearly twenty
"files" in rank, Blake being one of the senior and Lanier one of the
junior lieutenants of the regiment. Blake was no pet of the post
commander. Blake had a way of saying satirical things of seniors whom
he did not fancy, and Button was one of these. Blake should have
returned to his proper station the day after the dance, but, like
everybody else, so far as heard from, he had been held by the storm, and
therefore happened to be in the club-room at the store along toward
eleven o'clock on Tuesday, watching the distant deployment over the
southeastward slopes of the barren upland. Fully half the mounted force
of the garrison was on search for the paymaster's "outfit," and w