sily printed note that had
accompanied the return of Private William Green's money, and also the
envelope addressed to Green, which latter Hal had admitted as his
writing--all, just before the start of the hunting trip, had been
forwarded by Lieutenant Prescott to a famous writing expert in the east.

Word had finally come from the expert to the effect that the envelope
had really been addressed by Sergeant Hal, as that young soldier
admitted. The printed note to Green, however, had been fashioned, the
expert stated positively, by the same man who had turned in the written
name and address of the "nearest friend" of ex-Private Hinkey.

With this report the expert had sent a curiously drawn chart showing
resemblances between Hinkey's admitted handwriting and the printed note
to Green. There were also photographs, made with the aid of the
microscope, showing pronounced similarities of little strokes and
flourishes that were alike, both in Hinkey's admitted handwriting and in
the turns given to some of the letters of the printed note.

Summing up all the evidence, the expert's report stated positively that
Hinkey was the one who had fashioned the note to Green.

Finding that he could no longer deny his guilt, Hinkey was finally
driven to confession before the court.

He had hated Sergeant (then Corporal) Overton with such an intensity,
Hinkey confessed, that he had found himself willing to stop at nothing
that would damage the young soldier in any way.

The envelope that Hal had addressed in his own handwriting, it now
turned out, was one that he had so addressed at the request of Sergeant
Gray to enclose an official communication that Gray had delivered to
Private Green some weeks before.

On finding this envelope, and realizing how it would implicate Hal
Overton, Hinkey had even gone to the extreme of returning Green's
money, when he might safely have kept and spent it.

The reason why the money had not been found during the search that had
immediately followed the discovery of the robbery in the squad room was
equally simple. Hinkey, the afternoon before the robbery, had made the
discovery of a secret hiding place under the floor beside his cot. That
hiding place had been made, at great trouble, by some soldier formerly
living in the squad room, and Hinkey's discovery of it had been
accidental.

Now that he was in the mood for confessing, Hinkey also described how he
had slipped the revolver lightly under Serg