sense of fair play told him that it was not among the enemies of the young officer that he should now seek advice, but that if he had a friend among the older and wiser heads in the regiment it was due to him that that older and wiser head be given a chance to think a little for Jerrold’s sake.  And there was not one among the seniors whom he could call upon.  As he ran over their names, Chester for the first time realized that his ex-subaltern had not a friend among the captains and senior officers now on duty at the fort.  His indifference to duties, his airy foppishness, his conceit and self-sufficiency, had all served to create a feeling against him; and this had been intensified by his conduct since coming to Sibley.  The youngsters still kept up jovial relations with and professed to like him, but among the seniors there were many men who had only a nod for him on meeting.  Wilton had epitomized the situation by saying he “had no use for a masher,” and poor old Gray had one day scowlingly referred to him as “the professional beauty.”

In view of all this feeling, Chester would gladly have found some man to counsel further delay; but there was none.  He felt that he must inform the colonel at once of the fact that Mr. Jerrold was absent from his quarters at the time of the firing, of his belief that it was Jerrold who struck him and sped past the sentry in the dark, and of his conviction that the sooner the young officer was called to account for his strange conduct the better.  As to the episodes of the ladder, the lights, and the form at the dormer-window, he meant, for the present at least, to lock them in his heart.

But he forgot that others too must have heard those shots, and that others too would be making inquiries.

VI.

A lovely morning it was that beamed on Sibley and the broad and beautiful valley of the Cloudwater when once the sun got fairly above the moist horizon.  Mist and vapor and heavy cloud all seemed swallowed up in the gathering, glowing warmth, as though the King of Day had risen athirst and drained the welcoming cup of nature.  It must have rained at least a little during the darkness of the night, for dew there could have been none with skies so heavily overcast, and yet the short smooth turf on the parade, the leaves upon the little shade-trees around the quadrangle, and all the beautiful vines here on the trellis-work of the colonel’s veranda, shone and sparkled in the radiant light.  The roses in the little garden, and the old-fashioned morning-glory vines over at the east side, were all a-glitter in the flooding sunshine when the bugler came out from a glance at the clock in the adjutant’s office and sounded “sick-call” to the indifferent ear of the garrison.  Once each day, at 7.30 a.m., the doctor trudged across to the hospital and looked over the half-dozen “hopelessly healthy” but would-be invalids who wanted to get off guard duty or a morning