So Ray, who had fought Indians all over the West for many a year--sometimes, it is true, coming in for a Puritanical scorching from press and pulpit in far New England, where, two hundred years ago, with prayerful zest our forefathers burned witches at the stake and put Pequots to the sword--now found himself shrinking from the task of tackling savages with gloves who treated men without mercy. Marion, as has been said, was not to accompany him to the Islands and be near to counsel and to comfort. She was not too well now, and had had many an anxiety. Billy, Junior, when he should have been studying for West Point, had been spooning over a pretty girl not yet in long dresses, and Sandy, their firstborn, the soldier boy, had come home from the Islands wounded in body and soul. The scar of the bullet would not be long healing, but the sting of that other shock and sorrow, who could say what that might yet import? for Sandy would not speak of it. Sandy would not so much as refer to his brief dream of bliss and the girl that inspired it. Sandy had come to them at Minneconjou to recuperate, detached from his own regiment "for such light duty as he might be able to perform" with his father's squadron of the old --th. Sandy was a sad and silent man. "Let him alone to beat it out in time," said the soldier-father. "It is the only way." But Marion's mother heart yearned over her boy and his wordless sorrowing. He must have loved that beautiful but unprincipled creature with all his fervent young heart.