"I shall manage it somehow," said Ross, struggling. He was very fond of Aunt Callie, but a boy doesn't like to be hugged so before his military acquaintances, and in Ross's opinion there had been a great deal too much kissing and hugging, not to speak of crying, already. He did not see why there should be all this fuss just because Aunt Callie was going up to the barracks to live, in the jolliest little whitewashed cabin, with a hop-vine hanging, like the veil on an old woman's bonnet, over the front gable. He only wished that the corporal had asked him to go too! A slight misgiving about his last speech was making Ross uncomfortable. If there was a person whose feelings he would not have wished to hurt for anything in the world, it was Corporal Niles. "Corporal," he amended affectionately, "if I should be a West Pointer, and should be over you, I shouldn't put on any airs, you know. We should be better friends than ever." "I expect we should, captain. I'm looking forward to the day." * * * * * A mild species of corvée had been put in force down on the Snake River while the stockade prison was building. The prisoners as a body rebelled against it, and were not constrained to work; but a few were willing, and these were promptly stigmatized as "scabs," and ill treated by the lordly idlers. Hence they were given a separate camp and treated as trusties. When the work was done the trusties were rewarded with their freedom, either to go independently, or to stay and eat government rations till the sixty days of their sentence had expired. Henniker, in spite of his infirmity, had been one of the hardest volunteer workers. But now the work was done, and the question returned, What next? What comes after Coxeyism when Coxeyism fails? He sat one evening by the river, and again he was a free man. A dry embankment, warm as an oven to the touch, sloped up to the railroad track above his head; tufts of young sage and broken stone strewed the face of it; there was not a tree in sight. He heard the river boiling down over the rapids and thundering under the bridge. He heard the trumpets calling the men to quarters. "Lights out" had sounded some time before. He had been lying motionless, prone on his face, his head resting on his crossed arms. The sound of the trumpets made him choke up like a homesick boy. He lay there till, faintly in the distance, "Taps" breathed its slow and sweet good-night. "Last call," he said. "Time to turn in." He rolled over and began to pull off the rags in which his child had spurned him. "The next time I'm inspected," he muttered, "I shall be a clean man." So, naked, he slipped into the black water under the bank. The river bore him up and gave him one more chance, but he refused it: with two strokes he was in the midst of the death current, and it seized him and took him down. _BOOKS OF FICTION._ Books by Mary Hallock Foote.