The sun went down red and angry far across the tawny flood of the rushing river. The night lights were set at the distant bend below. The stars came peeping through a shifting filmy veil. The big trees on the levee and about the flanking towers began to whisper and complain and creak, and the rising wind sent long wisps of straggly cloud racing across the sky. The moon rose pallid and wan, hung for a while over the dense black mass of moss-grown cypress in the eastward swamp, then hid her face behind a heavy bank of clouds, as though reluctant to look upon the wrath to come, for a storm was rising fast and furious to break upon and deluge old Jackson Barracks. CHAPTER IV. When Jeffers came driving into barracks on his return from town, his first care, as became the trained groom, was for his horses, and he was rubbing them down and bedding their stalls for the night when the sergeant of the battery guard, lantern in hand, appeared at the door. It was not yet tattoo, but by this time the darkness was intense, the heavens were hid, and the wind was moaning about the stables and gun-shed and whistling away over the dismal expanse of flat, wet, ditch-tangled fields towards the swamp. But the cockney's spirits were blithe as the clouds were black. As was usual when he or any other servitor was in attendance on Waring, the reward had been munificent. He had lunched at Cassidy's at the lieutenant's expense while that officer and his friends were similarly occupied at the more exclusive Moreau's. He had stabled the team at the quartermaster's while he had personally attended the _matinee_ at the St. Charles, which was more to his taste than Booth and high tragedy. He had sauntered about the Tattersalls and smoked Waring's cigars and patronized the jockeys gathered there for the spring meeting on the Metairie, but promptly on time was awaiting the return of the party from their drive and lolling about the ladies' entrance to the St. Charles Hotel, when he became aware, as the lamps were being lighted and the dusk of the evening gave place to lively illumination, that two men had passed and repassed the open portals several times, and that they were eying him curiously, and chattering to each other in French. One of them he presently recognized as the little "frog-eater" who occupied the old house on the levee, Lascelles, the husband of the pretty Frenchwoman he and the lieutenant had dragged out of the mud that very morning and had driven up to the old D'Hervilly place on Rampart Street. Even as he was wondering how cabby got out of his scrape and chuckling with satisfaction over the scientific manner in which Mr. Waring had floored that worthy, Mr. Jeffers was surprised to find himself most civilly accosted by old Lascelles, who had been informed, he said, by Madame his wife, of the heroic services rendered her that morning by Monsieur Jeffers and Monsieur le Capitaine. He begged of the former the acceptance of the small _douceur_ which he