For a time there was quite a coolness between the friends; but they had too much in common to be able to afford to quarrel, so it was made up. CHAPTER XXIII TWO NEW RESIDENTS COME TO THE COUNTY Other changes than those already recorded had taken place in the years that had passed since the day when Middleton and Thurston, on their way to take command of a part of the conquered land, had found Jacquelin Gray outstretched under a tree at the little country station in the Red Rock County. In this period Middleton had won promotion in the West, and a wound which had necessitated a long leave of absence and a tour abroad; and finally, his retirement from the service. Reely Thurston, who was now a Captain himself, declared that Middleton’s wound was received in the South and not in the West, and that if such wounds were to be recognized, he himself ought to have been sent abroad. The jolly little officer, however, if he wished to boast of wounds of this nature, might have cited a later one; for he had for some time been a devoted admirer of Miss Ruth Welch, who had grown from a romping girl to a lively and very handsome young lady, and had, as Reely said of her, the warmest heart toward all mankind, except a man in love with her, and the coldest toward him, of any girl in the world. However this might be, she had turned a very stony heart toward Thurston in common with a number of others, and after a season or two at fashionable summer-resorts was finding, or thinking she was finding, all men insipid and life very commonplace and hollow. She declared that she liked Thurston better than any other man except her father and a half dozen or more others, all of whom labored under the sole disadvantage of being married, and she finally, as the price of the continuance of this somewhat measurable state of feeling, bound the Captain by the most solemn pledges never to so much as hint at any desire on his part for a higher degree of affection. The little soldier would have sworn by all the gods, higher and lower, to anything that Ruth Welch proposed, for the privilege of being her slave; but he could no more have stopped bringing up the forbidden subject when in her presence, than he could have sealed up the breath in his plump and manly bosom. He was always like a cat that in sight of cream, though knowing he is on his good behavior, yet, with invincible longing, licks his chops. No doubt the game had additional zest for Captain Thurston from the disapproval with which Mrs. Welch always regarded him. He never approached Miss Ruth without that lady fluttering around with the semi-comical distress of an anxious hen that cannot see even the house-dog approach her chick, without ruffling her feathers and showing fight.