But Priscilla was undaunted still. She had written glowingly, enthusiastically, unceasingly, of all her efforts to promote the cause of temperance among the nation's soldiery. She had told much of her converts to total abstinence, and little of their backsliding. She had managed, through Blenke and others, to get a transcript of the daily guard report, and the punishments awarded by the summary and general courts-martial. Minneconjou had now a garrison of some eight hundred men, with a big and bustling frontier town only a few miles away. Thanks to the system of the post Exchange and the careful supervision, both of its customers and its supplies, drunkenness had been reduced almost to a minimum. Not one out of one hundred men was in confinement, either awaiting or serving sentence. Not more than ten in two months had been fined for minor breaches of discipline due to drink. Some old topers, relics of the sutler-shop days of the army, were still to be found, men whose stomachs could not be always appeased by mild measures, and demanded the coarser stimulant--in bottles smuggled from town; but every case, however mild, had been made, it seems, the text for one of Priscilla's vivid letters descriptive of the depravity still rampant in the army, and due entirely to the presence of that blot upon Christian civilization--the Canteen. And well had they served their purpose. In fancied security, knowing that their methods had resulted in the greatest good to the greatest number, the officers on duty with troops had read with smiling tolerance marked copies of Eastern papers detailing the concerted efforts of the crusaders against the post Exchange. Congress had been memorialized. Congress had good naturedly listened to the successive readings of a bill abolishing the system and forbidding the sale of either beer or wine at any military post in the United States. Then, brimful, bustling with excitement, and rejoicing, Priscilla read that her letters had been largely instrumental in winning over certain of the opposition, and that when the question came to a vote the noble leaders of a noble cause would be present in force, and when the House sat, there--there would they sit and watch, and woe betide the advocate of the arch fiend rum that dare vote against their sacred measure. Before the army could realize what was coming, the House sat in judgment on the bill, the Society sat in judgment on the House; its members glanced casually at the subject and fearfully at the galleries and--succumbed. "The Senate will kill it, anyhow, so we might as well make ourselves solid,--it's only the army, anyway," was the expression of one long-headed legislator. Priscilla screamed--squealed rather--in ecstasy over the telegram brought her at breakfast, threw the paper to Sandy and herself into a _pas seul_ that fairly amazed Aunt Marion and scandalized the cat. But, when a week or so later the Senate, too, quailed before the