Every one and everything appeared to provoke his disdain, and it was not long before he turned his attention to the two men sitting apart at the window. “Secrets! Secrets!” he cried with effusive familiarity. “We will have no secrets in a guard-room. Out with the ladies’ names--if you are not ashamed of them.” Leonard looked indifferently out of the window; it was McKenzie’s affair, not his. And McKenzie, laying his hand upon his pistol in an almost mechanical way, merely glanced at the bully and said: “You had better mind your own business, sir.” “I am not speaking to you, McKenzie,” Gilson answered. “I am addressing Captain Murray, the great New York Adonis and lady killer! Come, captain, your latest victories?” “Mr. Gilson,” answered Leonard, “my friend and I are discussing private concerns. When we desire your company, we will let you know. In the meantime, we wish to be alone.” “Now, captain, no more airs from you. You have left the militia, you know--three months used up your patriotism,” answered Gilson scornfully. McKenzie rose in a passion. “Damn your impertinence, Gilson! I’ll give you a----” “Be quiet, Mac,” interrupted Leonard. “The fool is drunk--you can’t even horsewhip a drunken man.” Then he took McKenzie firmly by the arm and both rose to leave the room. “Drunk, eh?” cried Gilson in a rage. “Drunk! It is well for you both to get out of my way, for I’ll pay you all I owe you yet, Murray--you, and your damned dollars! Go and see if you can buy a little common dog-courage with them.” “Let me knock the ranting bully down, Murray.” “He is not worth it.” By this time the men present were on their feet, some urging Murray to leave the room, some trying to talk reason into Gilson, who became more and more defiant as the objects of his abuse passed out of the hearing of it. It was a wretched ending to a disagreeable day, and Leonard sat half through the midsummer night fretting and fuming over the incident. He was not a quarrelsome man, and a quarrel with Horace Gilson was an affair too low and despicable to contemplate. Why had McKenzie come to him with his trouble? He felt the injustice of the visit. If he had been a few minutes later he would have missed the man and the annoyance that had grown out of his sympathy with him. He looked wistfully out of the window towards the Bloommaert house, and remembered Sappha, but speedily exiled her from his thoughts, because he could not keep the scene at the guard-room out of them; and it seemed a sacrilege to have both in his consciousness at the same time. However, after an irritating vigil of some hours he fell asleep with sheer weariness, and when he awakened near noon on the following day Nature had accomplished her renovating work. The Unseen Powers had cradled his soul into peace, cleared away the rack and wreckage of an unfortunate day, and filled his exhausted spirit with the miraculous strength of Faith and Hope. CHAPTER EIGHT _The Rose of Renunciation_