"Now there's just where you wrong Abbot, captain," answers Mr. Hunnewell, very promptly, "and I want to hit that nail on the head right here. I thought just as you did, for a while; but got an inkling as to the real state of the case some time ago. It wasn't Abbot who endorsed him at all, except by silence and sufferance, you may say. Hollins was at his tent day and night--always following him up and actually forcing himself upon him; and one night, after Hollins had that first scrape, and came back under a cloud and went to Abbot first thing to intercede with the colonel, I happened to overhear a piece of conversation between them. Abbot was just as cold and distant as man could possibly be. He told him plainly that he considered his course discreditable to the whole regiment, and especially annoying to him, because, said Abbot, 'You have virtually made me your sponsor with every man who showed a disposition to repel you.' Then Hollins made some reply which I did not fully catch, but Abbot was angry, and anybody could have heard his answer. He told Hollins that if it had not been for the relationship to which he alluded he could not have tolerated him at all, but that he must not draw on it too often. Then Hollins came out, and I heard him muttering to himself. He fawned on Abbot while he was in the tent, but he was scowling and gritting his teeth when he left; and I heard him cursing _sotto voce_, until he suddenly caught sight of me. Then he was all joviality, and took me by the arms to tell me how 'Paul, old boy, has been raking me over the coals. We were chums, you know, and he thinks a heap of me, and don't want the home people to know of my getting on a spree,' was the way he explained it. Now, if you remember, it was Hollins who was perpetually alluding to his intimacy with the Abbots. Paul himself never spoke of it. What Palfrey once told me in Washington may explain it; he said that Hollins was distantly related to the Winthrops, and that there was a time when he and Miss Winthrop were quite inseparable--you know what a handsome fellow he was when he first joined us?" "Well," answers the captain, with the half-way and reluctant withdrawal of the average man who has made an unjust statement, "it may be as you say, but all the same it was Abbot's tacit endorsement or tolerance that enabled Hollins to hold a place among us as long as he has. If he has been sheltered under the shadow of Abbot's wing, and turns out to be a vagabond, so much the worse for the wing. All the same, I'm glad of Abbot's promotion. Wonder whose staff he goes on?" "Lieutenant," says a corporal, saluting the group and addressing his company commander, "Rix says he would like to speak with the major before breakfast. He was for going to headquarters alone just now, but I told him he must wait until I had seen you."