"Did you ever get a little card I left in your drawer one night while I was here with Mr. Hatton?" he asked. McLean looked up in eager interest. "A card?--yes, but never dreamed it was from you. Indeed I thought--I was told--it came from an entirely different source, and it has puzzled me more than words can tell you." "It was perhaps a piece of officiousness on my part, but we were in a peculiar state just then with all these thefts going on. I stowed it in one of your handkerchiefs while Hatton was out. What did you do with it!" "Burned it--long ago. I couldn't understand at all. It said that one who had been as hard pressed as I was--pecuniarily, I supposed--wanted to be my friend, and----" "Yes, that's about it! I suppose you couldn't see your way clear to accepting help from me----" "I didn't know it was your card or your writing. No initials appeared. The card was otherwise blank, and Hatton and I--well--there's no sense in telling the absurdity of our beliefs at that time. We were all at sea." "Let all that pass," said Holmes, with a grave smile on his face. "The man that hasn't been a fool in one way or another in this garrison during the last month or so is not on my list of acquaintances, and I think I know myself. What I want now is a description of Sergeant Marsland. One of my Denver friends thinks he has spotted him as a swell gambler down at El Paso." And so, that night, a full pen-picture of the lamented commissary-sergeant was wired to Denver. Two days later a special detective was speeding southward; and though Roswell Holmes had left Fort Laramie and gone about his other affairs long before the result was known, and long before the slow-moving wheels of Wyoming and military justice had rolled the two later culprits before the courts, it was his name that came up for renewed applause and enthusiastic praise when the telegraph brought to the commanding officer the news that a "rich haul!" had been made on the far-away Texan frontier. Marsland and over one thousand dollars had been gathered in at "one fell swoop."