Something followed on the programme at which everybody laughed, but it meant nothing at all to Meta. She thought the supreme moment had come and gone, when a big Zouave in his barbaric reds and blues marched out and took his stand, back from the footlights, between the wings, and began that amazing performance with a rifle which is known as the "Zouave drill." The dress was less of a disguise than the minstrel's had been, and it was a sterner, manlier transformation. It brought out the fighting look in Henniker. The footlights were lowered, a smoke arose behind the wings, strange lurid colors were cast upon the figure of the soldier magician. "The stage is burning!" gasped Meta, clutching Collie's arm. "It's nothing but red fire. You mustn't give yourself away so, Meta; folks will take us for a lot of sagebrushers." Meta settled back in her place with a fluttering sigh, and poured her soul into this new wonder. But Henniker was not doing himself justice to-night, his comrades thought. No one present was so critical of him or so proud of him as they. A hundred times he had put himself through this drill before a barrack audience, and it had seemed as if he could not make a break. But to-night his nerve was not good. Once he actually dropped his piece, and a groan escaped the row of uniforms in the gallery. This made him angry; he pulled himself up and did some good work for a moment, and then--"Great Scott! he's lost it again! No, he hasn't. Brace up, man!" The rifle swerves, but Henniker's knee flies up to catch it; the sound of the blow on the bone makes the women shiver; but he has his piece, and sends it savagely whirling, and that miss was his last. His head was like the centre of a spinning top or the hub of a flying wheel. He felt ugly from the pain of his knee, but he made a dogged finish, and only those who had seen him at his best would have said that his drill was a failure. Henniker knew, if no one else did, what had lost him his grip in the rifle act. His eyes, which should have been glued to his work, had been straying for another and yet one more look at Meta. Where she sat so still was the storm centre of emotion in the house, and when his eyes approached her they caught the nerve shock that shook his whole system and spoiled his fine work. He cared nothing for the success of his piping when he thought of the failure of his drill. The failure had come last, and, with other things, it left its sting. On the way home to barracks, the boys were all talking, in their free way, about Meta Meadows,--the little broncho, they called her, in allusion to her great mane of hair,--which made Henniker very hot. He would not own that his knee pained him; he would not have it referred to, and was ready, next day, to join the riders in squad drill, a new feature of which was the hurdles and ditch-jumping and the mounted exercises, in which as usual, Henniker had distinguished himself.