real story he would tell.  This was her devilish plan to keep me on watch against him.  I never dreamed the real truth.  She swore to me that three hundred dollars was all the money they had.  I believed that when he confessed it would be what she declared.  I never dreamed that Clancy and his confederate were the thieves:  I never believed the money was taken until after Hayne received it.  I saw how Hayne’s guilt was believed in even in the face of contradictory evidence before the court.  What would be the tendency if three men together were to swear against me, now that everybody thought him wronged?  I know very well what you will think of my cowardice.  I know you and your officers will say I should have given him every chance,—­should have courted investigation; and I meant to do so, but first I wanted to hear from those discharged men in Nebraska.  The whole scheme would have been exploded two months ago had I not been a coward; but night after night something kept whispering to me, ’You have wrecked and ruined a friendless young soldier’s life.  You shall be brought as low.’”

The colonel was, as he afterwards remarked, hardly equal to the occasion.  He had as much contempt for moral weakness in a soldier as he had for physical cowardice; but Rayner’s almost abject recital of his months of misery really left him nothing to say.  Had the captain sought to defend or justify any detail of his conduct, he would have pounced on him like a panther.  Twice the adjutant, sitting an absorbed and silent listener, thought the chief on the verge of an outbreak; but it never came.  For some minutes after Rayner ceased the colonel sat steadily regarding him.  At last he spoke: 

“You have been so frank in your statement, captain, that I feel you fully appreciate how such deplorable weakness must be regarded in an officer.  It is unnecessary for me to speak of that.  The full particulars of Clancy’s confession are not yet with me.  Major Waldron has it all in writing, and Mr. Billings has merely told me the general features.  Of course you shall have a copy of it in good time.  As you go East to-day and have your wife and household to think for, it may be as well that you do not attempt to see Mr. Hayne before starting.  And this matter will not be discussed.”

And so it happened that when the Rayners drove to the station that bright afternoon, and a throng of ladies and officers gathered to see them off, some of the youngsters going with them into town to await the coming of the train, Nellie Travers had been surrounded by chattering friends of both sexes, constantly occupied, and yet constantly looking for the face of one who came not.  For an hour before their departure every tongue in garrison that wagged at all—­and few there were that wagged not—­was discoursing on the exciting events of the morning,—­Hayne’s emancipation from the last vestige of suspicion, Clancy’s capture, confession, and tragic death, Mrs. Clancy’s