"This is something I never heard of," said Rayner, with grave face, "and it will be a good deal of a shock to my wife, for she had arranged to take her East with Clancy and Kate, and they were to invest their money in some little business at her old home." "Yes: it was mainly on the woman's account we wouldn't re-enlist Clancy in the ----th. We could stand him, but she was too much for us,--and for the other sergeant, too. He avoided her before we started on the campaign, I fancy. Odd! I can't think of his name.--Billings, what was the name of that howling swell of a sergeant who was in Hull's troop at Battle Butte,--time Hull was killed? I mean the man that Mrs. Clancy was said to have eloped with." "Sergeant Gower, sir," said the adjutant, without looking up from his work. He did look up, however, when a moment after the captain hurriedly left the office, and he saw that Rayner's face was deathly white: it was ghastly. "What took Rayner off so suddenly?" said the colonel, wheeling around in his chair. "I don't know, sir, unless there was something to startle him in the name." "Why should there be?" "There are those who think that Gower got away with more than his horse and arms, colonel: he was not at Battle Butte, though, and that is what made it a mystery." "Where was he then?" "Back with the wagon-train, sir; and he never got in sight of the Buttes or Rayner's battalion. You know Rayner had four companies there." "I don't see how Gower could have taken the money, if that's what you mean, if he never came up to the Buttes: Rayner swore it was there in Hull's original package. Then, too, how could Gower's name affect him if he had never seen him?" "Possibly he has heard something. Clancy has been talking." "I have looked into that," said the colonel. "Clancy denies knowing anything,--says he was drunk and didn't know what he was talking about." All the same it was queer, thought the adjutant, and he greatly wanted to see the doctor and talk with him; but by the time his office-work was done the doctor had gone to town, and when he came back he was sent for to the laundress's quarters, where Mrs. Clancy was in hysterics and Michael had again been very bad.