He had with him Sergeant Weber of his own company, just returned from recruiting service at St. Louis, and three recruits for the company, Kelly, Shubert, and Sweeny. Weber, a sunburnt German, with sandy eyelashes, blue eyes, and a scar on his cheek, had been a soldier from his eighteenth to his thirtieth year, and wore the serious, patient, much-enduring air peculiar to veterans. Kelly, an Irishman, also about thirty, slender in form and somewhat haggard in face, with the same quiet, contained, seasoned look to him, the same reminiscence of unavoidable sufferings silently borne, was also an old infantry man, having served in both the British and American armies. Shubert was an American lad, who had got tired of clerking it in an apothecary's shop, and had enlisted from a desire for adventure, as you might guess from his larkish countenance. Sweeny was a diminutive Paddy, hardly regulation height for the army, as light and lively as a monkey, and with much the air of one. Thurstane had obtained orders from the post commandant to lead his party by the northern route, on condition that he would investigate and report as to its practicability for military and other transit. He had also been allowed to draw by requisition fifty days' rations, a box of ammunition, and four mules. Starting thirty-six hours after Coronado, he made in two days and a half the distance which the train had accomplished in four. Now he had overtaken his quarry, and in the obscurity had passed it. But Sergeant Weber was an old hand on the Plains, and notwithstanding the darkness and the generally stony nature of the ground, he presently discovered that the fresh trail of the wagons was missing. Thurstane tried to retrace his steps, but starless night had already fallen thick around him, and before long he had to come to a halt. He was opposite the mouth of the ravine; he was within five hundred yards of Clara, and raging because he could not find her. Suddenly Coronado's cooking fires flickered through the gloom; in five minutes the two parties were together. It was a joyous meeting to Thurstane and a disgusting one to Coronado. Nevertheless the latter rushed at the officer, grasped him by both hands, and shouted, "All hail, Lieutenant! So, there you are at last! My dear fellow, what a pleasure!" "Yes, indeed, by Jove!" returned the young fellow, unusually boisterous in his joy, and shaking hands with everybody, not rejecting even muleteers. And then what throbbing, what adoration, what supernal delight, in the moment when he faced Clara.