"Harry!" she called to him, "Harry, come hold Black for me; I want to give him a piece of sugar." She opened her hand to let him see the pieces, and he touched his cap and followed us. He loosened the halter and led the horse up to us, but the animal started back when he saw Mrs. Arnold, and would not let her approach him. Harry patted his neck and soothed him, and Mrs. Arnold holding the sugar up to his view, the horse came to take it from her hand; but she quickly clutched his lip with her fingers, and blew into his face till the horse reared and plunged so that Harry could hold him no longer. Laughing like an imp, she called to Harry: "Get on him and hold him, if you cannot manage him in that way: get on him anyhow, and let Mrs. ---- see him dance." The mulatto's flashing black eyes were bent on her with a singularly reproachful look; but the next moment he was on the horse's back, the horse snorting and jumping in a perfectly frantic manner. When Mrs. Arnold had sufficiently recovered from her merriment, she explained that the horse had not been ridden for a month; the last time she had ridden him he had thrown her--she had pricked him with a pin to urge him on faster. About noon the Captain arrived; and I found him, as Mrs. Kline had described, "the most good-natured man in the world," and, to all appearances, loving his wife with the whole of his big heart. He was big in stature, too, with broad shoulders, pleasant face, and cheerful, ringing voice. The shaggy dog, who had slunk away from Mrs. Arnold, came leaping up on his master when he saw him; the horse he had ridden rubbed his nose against his master's shoulder before turning to go into his stable, and Constantia and Fred beamed on him with their white teeth and laughing eyes from the kitchen-door. Later in the afternoon, he asked what I thought of his quarters, and told me how hard his colored soldiers had worked to build the really pretty _adobe_ house in strict accordance with his wishes and directions. But I could not quite decide whether he was more proud of the house or of the affection his men all had for him. Then he told me the story of almost every piece of furniture in the house; and, moving from room to room, we came to where their bed stood. Resting beside it was his carbine, which the orderly had brought in. Taking it in his hand to examine it, he pointed it at his wife's head with the air of a brigand, and uttered, in unearthly tones: "Your money, or your life!" With a quick, cat-like spring, she was by the bed, had thrust her hands under the pillow, and the next instant was holding two Derringers close to his breast. Throwing back her head, like a heroine in velvet trousers on the stage, she returned, in the same strain: "I can play a hand at that game, too, and go you one better!" She laughed as she said it--the laugh that she laughed with her white teeth clenched--but there was a "glint" in her eye that I had never seen in a blue eye before.