hold!" I said, "and I'll challenge you after you're ashore." For I had no knowledge how deep the water was.

He got hold by the stock, and clambered up; and it was Lieutenant Macle

hose.

"You recognize me; no use challenging," he said, quietly; and "Captain Roth!" he called. The officer of the day stopped and answered, and Lieutenant Maclehose ran after him. I heard my twisty old captain turning over on his creaky camp-bed, and muttering; and I took my beat again, wide awake; for the Lieutenant's cold bath had been as effective on me as though I had taken it myself; and I marched up and down, considering that now I knew two good officers men who thought sooner of the private than of themselves; and I wished that sort of thing would happen oftener. You understand, now-not because I'm a private and hope to stay one that I want petting and pampering; the worst thing about the army now is its mess of book-rules for the protection of the men. No. I'm single and a soldier, and hard knocks is the lot I've chosen. But thoughtful officers, now-I want them because, beneath the uniform, we're all built to the same scale; because it wasn't God who put a sword on them, and a bayonet on me; and because, as I'm a man like them whatever else I mayn't be, they ought to admit it as freely as I do. I knew Captain Roth was the right kind-as strict as the Book of Regulations; but he knew where to draw the line, and he drew it. And Lieutenant Maclehose showed his interest in the most worthless private of his command when he jumped into the creek in the darkness, and made his way across to get in touch with the case. I thought more of him then than I ever had before; and I've never thought less of him since. You once get one of these officers on his true rating, and you'll find him right there, ever after.

As soon as I saw Lieutenant Maclehose, I knew there had been no philandering across the creek. The sword doesn't do that kind of thing; the bayonet may, because it has to take whatever chance offers. And I understood

that it was his friends who had taken him up town, and had walked back to camp with him because it was dark and he was unacquainted with the road. It was still over there now, only for a fitful murmuring that might have been the creek, or the rising breeze in the mesquite; and I concluded that the good-nights were over, and they had gone home.

Then Captain Roth came on my post with Lieutenant Maclehose and a patrol of the guard; and after I had challenged and advanced them, I had to tell them there wasn't a good crossing, though I thought the Lieutenant might have saved me the trouble. But he had stepped to the creek side, and called out, clear:

"Madam!"

"Yes, sir," said that good voice from the other side, directly The night noises hushed to hear her tone. And then the gloom seemed to lighten a little, and I saw her standing opposite, dim and slender and tall, as somehow suited the voice.

"Remain easy, please; we will be with you in a moment," said the Lieutenant. Then they all tramped off my post round to the other side where the crossing was. My bunky, Corcoran, was one of the patrol; and as he passed he stuck his elbow out at me and grunted, to let me know he thought it a queer proceeding. Presently I heard them moving up opposite me; there was a short halt, some murmured words, and then they went off toward the town.

My post was quiet after that, but I had sufficient entertainment in what had been. So Lieutenant Maclehose had been walking over there in the dark with that sweet voiced woman alone, and there had been philandering. Well, the voice was his excuse, to me; and there would have been no need of an excuse at all if he had not taken so lively an interest in that poor stick of a Wyliff; and he would have been safe. I never would have mentioned the matter in barracks, had it rested with

me.

But he had even taken Captain Roth a married man with a family -over there, to say nothing of the patrol. It was like Lieutenant Macle

hose, as we understood him, to do a thing if he pleased and d- the consequences; but this was d-ing them with a vengeance. And they had gone off together, with the woman for pilot, to town. For I understood well enough that the patrol was out to pick up poor Wyliff. And he was a poor stick, surely; never went to town on pass without getting his eyes blackened; peaceable when sober, but a fighting drunkard; a nice-looking young fellow, too, clean and trim and well set up. If it had not been for his lip and eye, he would have been a man to trust. But his lip trembled when it shouldn't; and it seemed as though the natural color had been bloodshot out of his eyes. It was the liquor that did that. He was weak as a man. By his military figure and bearing one would have thought him a man of family, which I am told is something an officer is proud to be; and then his shaky lip and red eye gave that the lie; and one didn't know where to place him. That, I suppose, is a reason why we disliked him. He was pliable enough. You could drag him after you anywhere, but you couldn't follow him and expect to gain your point. He was soft metal.

So, what with wonder over Lieutenant Maclehose's queer conduct, and the nature of the row up town, and indignation at the frontier beast who would shoot a man for being a soldier, and guessing if he was dead, and if Wyliff did for the brute before he died, and betting he didn't, the time flew. The patrol came back and was challenged in. And then Corcoran came down to relieve me, and told me the town end of the affair.

They marched off to town, he said, and it was a procession to surprise: the patrol in military order with the Lieutenant and the lady as a rear rank. As they went Lieutenant Maclehose and the lady were explaining to Captain Roth how it happened that Wyliff had telegraphed her he would be there about that date, and she had taken train at once; then she had missed him at the depot (while he was busy getting shot), and when she was feeling utterly lost in the strange town, had seen a man in uniform, who was Lieutenant Maclehose. He was

just returning to camp; and when she told him her story, he would have sent Wyliff to her at the hotel; but she was so anxious to see him that she preferred to walk with Lieutenant Macle hose to camp.

"What!" said I;" any woman so anxious to see that whelp?"

And

"So she said," Cork replied. near camp they heard the officer of the day saying Wyliff was shot; and when they mentioned that she began to sob and sob, so they both assured her the chances were against its being anything serious. Then she forced herself calm, and they went on to the corner of the square, on the far side of which is the depot, with the hotel opposite. A lighted lamp was at the corner, and directly beneath it they met him carrying a handkerchief at his neck.

"Patrol, halt!" Captain Roth sang out. And:

"Oh, Henry!" exclaimed the lady, hurrying front.

Wyliff stood still facing the patrol, and his lips quivered into a weak smile. "Well, mother," he said.

"Mother!" I repeated.

"Right," said Cork. "She had gray hair."

"Oh, Lieutenant Maclehose gave Wy liff leave till 8 A.M. to-morrow, to report to him then at the depot. And we came back to camp."

But how about the shooting?” "That was nothing to speak of; anyway, I noticed Wyliff didn't speak of it. Saloon row, of course. It was only a scratch, and he'd dried it with his handkerchief."

I had to stand and think for a minute about what seemed to me the strangest part of the whole thing.

"But tell me, Cork, how is it any woman would come way from wherever it may be to see him a few hours?"

"Why, she's his mother, I tell you," said Cork.

"Well, he don't seem to think so mighty much of her."

'Mother, mother, mother," said Cork, sticking his face into mine. "That's the way with them when they're any good. The only woman that ever stands by you through good and bad is your mother; and you can go back on her as much as you will, but she'll never falter; and if you so much as whisper 'mother' with your dying breath, she is satisfied with it all and smiles as she closes your eyes. She'll believe in you and put up a prayer for you. And that old lady up there was all of a tremble with happiness at seeing that worthless devil again, and if she hadn't hung round his neck she'd have fallen to the

ground. It's because she's his mother; never another woman will care for him so. I'm ashamed of your ignorance and lack of feeling. It's his mother, his mother. Man alive, where's your own?"

"Here!" said I, swallowing something at the same minute, and holding up my rifle. "Here! I'm a son of a gun, and the army's a whole family to me."

Then Cork began to laugh, and said, "Go, turn in." And going off through the darkness, I felt suddenly lonesome. I was empty, and it was emptiness through which I moved. What was it I'd missed? Something I could never describe, never name, because I'd never had it; but Wyliff had it-Wyliff, who could take that hour of all others to tumble in a row! ..Wyliff, who cared no more for it than that! What good did it do him? And what good wouldn't it have done me? Oh, I was jealous of Wyliff-the man I had spent my leisure in hating. If I could only have killed him and taken it from him!

But I was dead tired when I got to my blankets, and I rolled myself in and slept like a log till reveille.

LXX

THE ENEMY IN THE REAR

NEW week came in with animating spring weather. On Monday Fannie sat up, and on Tuesday, when John called, her own smile surprised him at the door, while Johanna's reflected it in the background. He felt himself taken at a disadvantage. His unready replies to her lively promptings turned aimlessly here and there; his thoughts could neither lead nor follow them. The wine of her pretty

dissembling went to his head; while the signs of chastening in her fair face joined strangely with her sprightliness to make an obscure pathetic harmony that moved his heartstrings in a way in which he had felt youthfully sure they were never to be moved again. His late anger against Ravenel came back, and with it, to his surprise, the old tenderness for her, warmed by the new anger and without the bitterness of its old chagrin. He found himself reminded of his letters to Johanna's distant mistress, but instantly decided that the two matters had nothing to do with each other, and gave himself rich comfort in this visible and only half specious fulfilment of his youth's long dream. The daily protection and care