"The findings were considered in closed court. And now you must take this one bit of comfort to yourself, Peggy, in your trouble about your friend Captain March: things might have gone a lot harder for him than they did in such a serious case. Vandyke's accusation against him was mighty bad, and there was some evidence to support it. March didn't seem to use such weapons as he had to hit back with, quite as smartly as he might have done, though that was, no doubt, in his determination to keep your sister's name from coming into the affair. He did defend himself to the extent of saying he'd tried to save the situation by firing blank instead of shell; but that didn't help him much, for the whole point of the accusation against him was that he had had no right to fire at all. None of his witnesses could help him any more than I could, whereas Vandyke had several who took their oath to seeing him in the auto with his orderly, leaving old Fort Bliss at much about the time when March said Johnson came to him with the second verbal order. March could have been sentenced to imprisonment or chucked out of the army if the court had believed in his giving the order to fire the guns on his own responsibility out of sheer madness, or spite against Vandyke. As it was, they accepted the theory that he had been hoaxed by some one unknown, purporting to be the orderly of Major Vandyke, then acting as colonel. Owing to the comparative darkness of the night (luckily there wasn't a moon, only stars) it would have been possible for a nervous, jumpy man to mistake the identity of a person masquerading as another person. Now _you_ know, and _I_ know, and everybody who knows him knows March is the last fellow in the world to get nerves or jumps in any circumstances whatever. All the same, giving him credit for them on a night when a Mexican raid on the town had been predicted offered the court an excuse to let the accused down lightly. He was sentenced merely to 'severe censure for rashness and carelessness,' etc., etc. In sequence to this our Old Man--the colonel, I mean--has had to advise March to resign. That's part of the programme. And equally it is part of the programme that March should take the advice. "Now, dear, I've told you the story as well or as badly as I can. Anyhow, you know as much as I do, and that is a good deal more than you ought to know, or others are likely to know. If you hear anything further, it will be from March himself. "When the Mexican bees have settled down in their hive again, and we're back at Fort Alvarado, I'm going to have a good try for a month's leave or longer, so as to cross the blue with the mater and sis. Of course, entirely with the object of looking after them, and perhaps getting an invitation to Lady Di's wedding, and not a bit for the sake of seeing you or jogging your memory about a certain decision! Yours till the end of beyond, Billiken."