For a moment she stood there, menacing, at his bedside, looking down in almost malignant triumph on his amazed and incredulous face; and then, with an awful fear checking the beat of her heart and turning her veins to ice, she grasped at the flimsy framework that supported the netting over the cot, and stood swaying and staggering, her eyes fixed in terror on the man in the uniform of a colonel, who, quietly entering, stood between her and the door, two papers in his half-extended hand--a man whose voice, long and too well known, cut her to the very quick as she heard, in calm and measured tone the words: "Mrs. Garrison, here are two reasons why you will do nothing of the kind. Shall I hand these to General Drayton--or to your husband?" CHAPTER XVIII. The long wait for the coming of the big transports with the regulars was over. For the first time in history America was sending her soldiery past the pyramids and through the Indian sea, landing them, after forty days and nights of voyaging, upon the low, flat shores that hem Manila Bay, and shoving them out to the hostile front before their sea-legs could reach the swing and stride of the marching step; yet, to all appearance, as unconcernedly at home as though they had been campaigning in the Philippines since the date of their enlistment. This, to be sure, in the case of more than half their number, would have given them scant time in which to look about them, since raw recruits were more numerous than seasoned men. But no matter what may be his lack of drill or preparation the average Anglo-Saxon never seems to know the time when he doesn't know how to fight. So, with all the easy assurance of a veteran, our Yankee "Tommies" wriggled into their blanket rolls and trudged away to the posts assigned them; and once more the army assumed the aggressive. There were changes in the composition of the forces even before the move began. The Dudes and the "Toughs" parted company; and the former, with Stanley Armstrong once more riding silent at their head, joined forces with Stewart's riddled regiment up the railway toward Malolos. Colonel Frost had succeeded in convincing the surgeons that he would be as out of place as his name itself in such a clime and climate, and was in daily expectation of an order home. Billy Gray, mending only slowly, had been sent to Corregidor, where the bracing breezes of the China Sea drove their tonic forces through his lungs and veins, and the faintly rising hue of coming health back into his hollow cheeks. The boy had been harder hit than seemed the case at first, said the fellows of the --teenth; but the wise young surgeon of the "Second Reserve" and a grave-faced colonel of infantry could have told of causes little dreamed of in the regiment--were either given to telling the half of what he knew.