meddle with the Teniente Loring's party when it came along--there were no valuables with them; they had been sent with the cavalry hours before the dawn. Yes, even the sealed record of the court must have been sent at that time, too, for at ten o'clock in the morning, when Colonel Turnbull and Mr. Loring mounted and gravely saluted the cap-raising group of officers as they rode away from the major's quarters, it was observed that Loring had not even saddle-bags, and the major's striker admitted that he had hoisted the lieutenant's valise to the pommel of a trooper's saddle at two o'clock in the morning. Various were the theories and conjectures at the sutler's all the rest of the day as to the information possessed by Lieutenant Loring which led to such extreme precaution. The major was close-mouthed, and, for him, rather stern. He held aloof from his juniors all day long and seemed to be keeping an eye and an ear attent on Nevins. That officer's conduct was a puzzle. Six months before he was the personification of all that was lavish, hospitable, good-natured, extravagant. Everybody was apparently welcome to the best he had. Then came the collapse, his arrest, his flight, his capture and confinement, his laughing defiance of his accusers until he found how much more they knew than he supposed, his metaphorical prostration at the feet of his judges, his humility, repentance, suffering and sacrifice, his pledge of future atonement, his protestations of love for his long-suffering wife, his surrender of his valuables for her benefit, his meekness of mien until the court had concluded his case and gone. Then, his sudden resumption of bold, truculent, defiant manner, his midnight breach of arrest, which had leaked out through the guard that was promptly sent forth to fetch him in; then his demand for the return of his property, and his furious outburst on learning that Loring had taken him at his word and sent it without delay by the safest possible hands.