"claw-hammer" in the room, and therefore conspicuous, and cadets--who know a good thing when they see it--and many a pretty girl partner, would draw aside to watch the perfection of their step and the exquisite ease with which they seemed to float through space, circling and reversing and winding among the other dancers, he ever alert, watchful, quick as a cat and lithe and strong as a panther--she all yielding lissome airy grace. That dance was "Gov" Prime's reward, and almost only reward for hours of impatient waiting. Other women, charming and pretty and better women, would gladly have been his partners. Some two or three whom he met at the hotel even intimated as much. But not until Lady Garrison told him he must--to protect her from scandal--did he ask another to dance. At last came the end of the summer's encampment, the return of the corps to barracks and studies, one blissful week in which he was enabled to spend several uninterrupted hours each day at her side, and then a cataclysm. A letter intended only for Nita's hands fell into those of her sister. It was bulky. It was from Latrobe. She hesitated only a moment, then, with determination in her eyes, opened and read--all. Two days after Nita was whisked away to New York, and within another week, leaving two most disconsolate swains on the Hudson, the sisters, one of them bathed in tears, went spinning away to the West, where Frank Garrison was on duty at department headquarters. Prime was permitted to write once a fortnight (he sent a volume), and Latrobe forbidden, but already the poor boy owned a thick packet of precious missives, all breathing fond love and promising utter constancy though she had to wait for him for years. For a month Nita would hardly speak to her sister, but in October there were lovely drives, picnics and gayeties of all kinds. There were attractive young officers and assiduous old ones, and among these latter was Frost, with his handsome gray mustache and distinguished bearing, and that air of conscious success and possession which some men know so well how to assume even when their chances are slimmer than my lady's hand. The sisterly breach was healed before that beautiful month was over. Frost dined at the Garrison's four times a week and drove Miss Nita behind his handsome bays every day or two. In November he asked a question. In December there was an announcement that called forth a score of congratulations around headquarters, and in January the wedding cards went all over the Union--some to West Point--but to Latrobe, who had been looking ill and anxious for six weeks, said his classmates, and falling off fearfully in his studies, said his professors, only a brief note inclosing his letters and begging for hers. At reveille next morning there was no captain to receive the report of roll call from the first sergeant of Company "B." "Where's Latrobe?" sleepily asked the officer of the day of the cadet first lieutenant. "I don' know," was the answer, and