And indeed Burleigh's face when he came forth to start for the Platte was a gruesome sight. "He looked," said the unfeeling linesman, after he'd gone, "as though he'd seen more Indians." An hour later a soldier servant handed the major an envelope. "Picked it up under the table, sir. There's still something in it." The major glanced curiously at the superscription. "That's the envelope, at least," said he, handing it to Loring, "of the letter that stampeded the old man." And Loring looked at it first with but scant interest. Then took and held and studied the writing with eyes that kindled wonderfully. "Why, do you think you know that hand?" asked the major curiously. Loring handed it back, hesitated a moment, nodded, but said no word. CHAPTER XIX. A pleasant welcome awaited Mr. Walter Loring, of the Engineers, when he opened his office and got settled down to work at his new station. Here was a commanding general who knew something of his past, whose nephew was with him at the Point, and one at least of whose aides had found reason to respect him highly, even though they had differed as to the site for the new post, and the Engineer had seemed to take far more kindly to the companionship of an unheard-of sub in the cavalry than he did to the society of two men so distinguished in the department as Major Burleigh, depot quartermaster at Gate City, and Brevet-Captain "Omaha" Stone, the aide in question. Burleigh had surprised the aide by a display of great interest in and an impatience to meet the newcomer, who had hurried out from Omaha with not a day's delay, and who overtook them at Fort Frayne, after riding by night through the mountainous region of the Medicine Bow, with only a single trooper as attendant and escort. Burleigh had been oddly inquisitive, thought Stone, and had plied the taciturn Engineer with question after question about officers whom he knew and matters he seemed to know along the Pacific slope. Mr. Loring was evidently a bit surprised, yet replied courteously, though very briefly. Burleigh did all the talking the first day's drive in the big ambulance over the rolling open prairies north of the Platte, giving Stone no chance at all. He enlivened the occasion and relieved the tedium of the journey with anecdotes of the General whose command Loring had recently left, and Strain, his chief-of-staff, and Petty--"that damned fool Petty," he called him, and Burleigh had nothing good to tell of any of them, and much that was derisive, if not detrimental, of all. Loring listened with neither assent nor dissent, as a rule, though when appealed to he said he had no opportunity to study the characteristics as described by Burleigh, as he had spent most of his short service there surveying in Arizona and saw little and knew less of the officials in San Francisco. One man of whom Burleigh spoke with regard and regret was stanch old Turnbull, whose sad death by drowning in the surf off