So Loring went to Colonel Strain, a man to whom he was but slightly known, and then it was developed that a young lady wearing mourning, a very lovely girl, so every one described her, had called no less than three times to inquire if Mr. Loring were not returned. Once only had the general seen her, but Strain was three times her listener, and a patient one he proved, and a most assiduous friend and sympathizer for several days, until, as it subsequently transpired, in some way matters reached the ears of Mrs. Strain. The colonel very pointedly told the engineer lieutenant that the lady claimed to have received letters proving that he was still in possession of the Nevins jewels while sojourning at Fort Yuma, had endeavored to compromise the matter by the tender of a check for two hundred dollars, which in her destitute condition her sister had felt compelled to accept until she could have legal advice, "and this," said Colonel Strain, "followed now by the claim of this Mexican agent, has created such a scandal in the general's eyes that you cannot too speedily take steps to assure him of your innocence, which of course you should have no difficulty in doing unless--unless--" and the colonel coughed dubiously. For a moment Loring stood there like one in a daze. Good God! Geraldine Allyn his accuser! The girl who had wronged him so bitterly before! The girl whom he had sought to aid when he found her well-nigh destitute! Gradually the whole force of the situation dawned upon him. With Turnbull dead, the captain daft and Traynor telling the strange story of his (Loring's) eagerness to examine the Escalante packet early on the voyage, and now declaring that he had given it into Loring's keeping! Who in the name of Heaven was left to speak for him? Loring had come a stranger to this distant station. He had chosen to be sent at once to duty in a desert land. He was personally as little known to his superiors here at San Francisco as though they had never met. Even as the men began about the steamship offices and on the streets and in the hotels whither the Idaho's few passengers had told the tale, to speak of Walter Loring as the man who really quelled the panic, if not a mutiny, and saved the lives of a score of helpless men and women, that officer stood accused before his comrades of the army of breach of trust, of mean embezzlement, of low-down theft and trickery, and not a man could he name to help to prove him innocent. Blake, to be sure, was at Yuma, but what could he establish save that the stage had been attacked, Loring left alone, and when the cavalry returned there lay the Engineer apparently unconscious, the empty saddle-bag beside him. Blake had seen no robbers. Blake suspected Sancho of every villainy, but could convict him of none. Traynor, the purser, whether he believed or disbelieved his own story that he had passed that packet down to Loring, could truthfully declare that Loring had displayed most mysterious and