devil's way always, she had been taught--imperceptible, inviting, insidious. Priscilla prayed long that night and pondered. She had almost decided on a campaign of conquest and overthrow, when the new commander came, and in Colonel Stone she found an obstacle quite as firm as Uncle Will--and far less tolerant. Meantime, however, Priscilla had organized her "Soldiers' Advancement Association"; had started in a vacant set of quarters a rival to the Canteen, where even better coffee and sandwiches could be had and much more improving conversation, but no beer, and Priscilla was presently in the seventh heaven; so many soldiers came she had to send for more seats and more supplies. Every evening after dinner, putting behind her the unworthy, if worldly, impulse to go and join in the music or the dance, Priscilla met her martial friends and pupils, learned their soldier names, something of their history and much of their needs. The chaplain at first was quite assiduous in his attendance, but the chaplain, she speedily decided, was slow, prosy, unconvincing. He did not seem to _stir_ them as they should be stirred, and when one night the kindly old gentleman failed to come, and his goodwife sent word she feared her husband had caught a heavy cold, Priscilla took the Word, as the French would say; read the chapter of her choice; expounded vehemently after the manner of her favorite exhorters, and came home radiant. No less than six of the men had come to her to thank her for her soul-stirring words, and to say that if they had had such teaching as that in their past they would never have brought sorrow to a mother's heart, as some of them feared they had. Uncle Will's eyebrows went up significantly when Priscilla named her converts, and once or twice, as he sat writing to Blake that night in his little den, sounds as of irrepressible chuckling came from that sanctum, and Marion slipped in to say a word of caution. Priscilla, however, at last had found her opportunity and could not be laughed out of it. The chaplain was warned, he said, that exposure to the wintry night air was hazardous, and he was reluctantly compelled to withdraw, and Priscilla, by no means reluctantly, to part with him. She was in desperate earnest and in the full tide of apparent success, with all Minneconjou watching with absorbed if mischievous interest. Priscilla's mourners' bench, it must be owned, was graced by the presence of one or two veteran troopers, the mention of whose names was enough to start the risibilities of that godless array, "the Mess." There was Shaughnessy, who had served six enlistments and never kept the chevrons six months at a time. There was Kelly, the "champeen thrumpether," who could blow "Taps" that would bring tears to your eyes one day and maledictions on his head the next. There was Costigan, who had been "bobtailed" out of two of the best regiments of infantry of the service, and only "taken on" in Ray's old troop by special permission,