They were an odd contrast, these two young graduates of the nation's soldier school, as they looked to Captain Stannard that November night. He spoke of it to his wife and thought of it long after, for he, too, had come toward the little group a bit impatient, it must be owned, of the general's mellow monologue, and wearying of a conversation in which _he_ had no part. But here again Stannard found scant opportunity. Miss Archer, bending slightly forward, was, with much animation describing to Mr. Harris the brilliant ball given by the artillery at the Presidio just before they were hurried off to that fatal Modoc war. Harris, caring little for the affair, and possibly hearing little of what she was saying, sat as though drinking in every word, and gazing enthralled upon the beauty of her sweet young face. He, too, was bending forward, his lithe, slender, supple frame clad in the trim undress uniform of the day, his clear-cut face, with its thin, almost hollow cheeks, tanned brown by the blazing suns of the southern desert, his hair cropped close to his shapely head, his gray-blue eyes, large, full and steady, fixed unswerving upon her. Leaning on his elbow, one lean brown hand was toying with the sun-bleached ends of his mustache, the other, with the class ring gleaming in the moonlight, lay idly on his knee. Lacking stature, size or weight, the physical attributes that make a man impressive, he looked the picture of the young athlete, firm and fit and trained for speed and staying power, yet cold in his steel-like strength and quality.