CHAPTER VIII.

Notwithstanding his prophecy that Canker and the boys would whip the renegades back into the reservation in two or three days, the general determined to go down to Sandy and take a hand himself. All that day he had fidgeted about the office dissatisfied with the meagre reports that came, and the more that came the more it looked as though Canker’s brief administration of command had not been felicitous. At five o’clock in the afternoon he quietly appeared at the house, and without telling Colonel Pelham of his intention, was making his characteristically brief preparations for the start when the colonel caught him in the act, and very positively announced that he would go too. Mrs. Pelham had protested, of course, but there were some things in which she could not move her lord, and this was one of them. “There, now, Dolly,” he said, “that will do. I’ve only ten minutes in which to get ready and no time for argument. Where’s Grace?” So Grace came with ready hand to her father’s assistance, asking no questions and evidently regarding his decision as eminently proper and incontrovertible.

Her ladyship would fain have button-holed the general himself and importuned him not to let the colonel go, but, once before in her life, such a performance on her part had come to the ears of her ordinarily placid and even-tempered husband, and his remarks anent that piece of petticoat interference had been a revelation. Indeed, nothing but tears, contrition, and a solemn promise on her part never, never to do such a thing again had saved her from consequences more serious than a marital lecture; but this was a long time ago, so long that her resolution never to do so again had been modified by the mental reservation of “when there is a possibility of being found out.”

The general, indeed, had not intended to take Pelham with him, yet was secretly glad to have him return at once to Sandy. “Things worked better when he was there.” And so it resulted that by six o’clock that afternoon Jack Truscott found himself left alone in a household of ladies.

To say that he was downright unhappy over the circumstance would be more than so gallant and courteous a man as Truscott would say himself, but to say that he, on the contrary, was not, would be a wide departure from the truth. He knew nothing of his superior’s plans until the ambulance drove up to the door, and the sight of the general’s favorite aide in his well-worn and well-known scouting costume sent Truscott’s pulse up to one hundred and twenty at a bound.

Stepping into the hall, he met Grace with her father’s cloak and Navajo blanket in her arms. “We are stealing a march on you, Mr. Truscott,” she smilingly remarked, glancing over her shoulder at the colonel himself, who came waddling after her down the stairs. Shall it be recorded? Truscott’s eyes, full of surprise and pain, even of reproach, had not so much as a glance for her; he answered not a word, but mutely stood questioning his chief.

“I couldn’t help it, my dear boy; don’t look as though I had deserted you,” that warm-hearted gentleman had hastened to explain. “I only knew fifteen minutes ago that the general was going, and I decided to slip off and run down with him. I knew just how you’d feel, Truscott, and hadn’t the heart to tell you. Confound it, man, I’m only going to Sandy, not into the field, and if you’ll only keep quiet you will be able to come down yourself in less than a week.”

“Has anything gone wrong?” asked Truscott.

“Nothing at all. Only the general wants to look after things himself, and can do so more readily at Sandy than here. I’ll leave Mrs. Pelham in your charge, and you in Grace’s. Think you can keep him in subjection, daughter? He is tractable enough ordinarily, but just now he wants a steady hand.”

Then the general came forth, followed by his philosophical wife, who was amiably assuring Lady Pelham that this was a thing she wouldn’t mind after six months in Arizona. “I’ve grown so used to it as never to be surprised at his waking up and starting off somewhere in the dead of night.”

Five minutes more and the ambulance had rattled off down the hill, leaving the three ladies and Truscott a silent group on the piazza,—Grace looking sad and anxious, madame melodramatic, Truscott very pale and quiet, and their hostess alone cheery.

“Come, now, I won’t have any moping,” she said. “We’ll get everybody up here this evening and have lots of fun. Jack Truscott, you shall have twenty nurses. Grace, all the infantry boys will be here on your account. Come, let’s go in and order tea. I’m hungry as a dozen bears.”

Early in the evening Truscott managed to slip away from the noisy party assembled in the parlor and sought his own room. He excused himself to his hostess on the plea of fatigue, and she, big-hearted woman that she was, and knowing full well that his heart was anywhere but in the glee and merriment and music and twaddle going on, covered his retreat very successfully.

Later she went to his door with some comforting drink of her own manufacture, found him sitting up and pretending to read, and later still, noting the interest with which Grace had inquired for him, she placed some delicate custard in her hands, saying, “Take it to him; he’ll like it.”

Truscott heard the light footsteps he had already learned to recognize coming along the hall, then a pause at his door, and presently a timid, fluttering little knock. “Come in,” he said.

The door slowly opened, and there stood Grace upon the threshold smiling and with a suspicion of heightened color in her face. He rose to greet her, but she protested. “Don’t get up; I was asked to bring this to you,” with the slightest emphasis on the “asked.” Nevertheless he stepped to the doorway, took the custard from her hands, and then, leaning against the door-post, stood looking down at her.

“Miss Pelham, are you in a merciful mood?” he asked.

“I! Unquestionably. Why not?” And the earnest eyes looked frankly up in his face.

“Then you will grant me absolution for a sin of omission,” he said, smiling. “The sight of my chief starting for the war-path startled me into a rudeness towards you.”

“In that you did not answer an utterly unimportant remark of mine, I suppose. As you _ought_ to have discovered, Mr. Truscott, I claim to be a soldier’s daughter, and do not expect to be considered at such a time.”

“Then you are a marvellous exception to the rest of your sisterhood,” said Jack, with an emphatic impulsiveness very unusual in him.

“Indeed, Mr. Truscott? Is that your opinion of our sex? How did you ever succeed in winning the name of being so very gallant and courteous, I wonder? I thought you the champion of all the ladies of the regiment. I’m sure they do; and what _would_ they say if your treachery were known?” she added, laughing.

“I am at your mercy,” he replied. “Betray me and I am ruined. Thank you for bringing this to me, and good-night. Don’t let me keep you from the fun.”

A ring at the door-bell, and the servant admitted a tall sergeant of cavalry. “A despatch for Lieutenant Truscott,” they heard him say. Truscott called to him to come thither, and as he opened the envelope Grace, not knowing why, but anxious for any news, remained.

Leaning against the casement he slowly read the message, and Grace patiently stood looking up into the pale, clear-cut face.

“This will be welcome news to Mrs. Tanner,” he said, presently, “and I would like her to know it to-night. Is she here?” he asked Grace.

“Mrs. Tanner? No. She has not been here at all.”

“She never had heart for fun of any kind when he was in the field, Miss Pelham, and this will greatly relieve her anxiety. His company is ordered to remain at the agency on guard for a few days; the others have gone across into the Red Rock country. Take this over to Captain Lee’s quarters and ask that it be shown to Mrs. Tanner at once, sergeant, then come back to me,” he said; then turning again to Grace, “Late as it is I think she will still be awake, and this news may put her to sleep.”

“I am so glad for her sake. She seems so very lovable a woman. They have all been extremely pleasant to me, but there was something especially winning in her manner, and I like her greatly. _You_ know her very well, do you not?” asked she, still looking frankly up in his eyes.

“Better than any of the ladies, I think,” he replied. “May I ask how you so readily divine my friendships?”

“I had heard that you were very warm friends. It was Mr. Glenham who told me—I think.” (You knew, Grace, and it wasn’t like you to hesitate there.)

“Ah, yes,—Glenham,” he repeated, while for the life of him he could not repress a mischievous merriment on noting how at the mention of the name she had faltered, and, under the steady glance of his eyes, colored red an instant after. “Glenham has doubtless been a most efficient means of strengthening your acquaintance with the regiment, but I warn you against his enthusiasm; you will come expecting to find us models of genius and geniality, and will be all the more bitterly disappointed.”

“He certainly glories in his regiment, Mr. Truscott, and, as one of his heroes, you ought not to disparage his opinions.”

“Grace dear, I want you,” at this juncture was heard in solemn and remorseless tones from the other end of the hall. Grace started like the guilty thing she certainly was not, and beheld the matronly form of her ladyship rigidly posed at the parlor-door. There was something indefinably, gratingly disagreeable about her voice and manner, that intangible something that a woman can throw into her tones as expressive of the extreme of displeasure, and yet be able to subsequently and triumphantly establish that you have no grounds whatever for saying so.

“Good-night, Mr. Truscott,” said Grace. “Please let me know when you send any despatch to the valley.” Then seeing her mother still stonily, severely awaiting her, she did just what she would not have done had she felt herself unwatched,—turned, held out her slender hand, and said, warmly, “I _do_ hope you will have a good night’s rest and feel ever so much better to-morrow. Good-night,” and then walked briskly off down the hall, looking calmly into her mother’s face. That lady contented herself for the time being with ushering her erring daughter into the parlor. It must be admitted that the latter had delayed much longer at Truscott’s door than the delivery of a plate of custard could possibly warrant, and that her present attitude towards her mother was not as dutiful and loving as it might be.

Half an hour afterwards, when the guests of the evening had gone home and the ladies were preparing to abandon the parlor, Truscott himself appeared at the doorway. Her ladyship was at the moment indulging in some slight refreshment in the dining-room. He held a large despatch envelope in his hand. “Miss Pelham, you desired me to let you know when I had opportunity of sending word to the valley. It seems that the sergeant is to start at daybreak to ride in search of Captain Canker’s command, and I am sending a few lines by him. He will be glad to take anything you have.”

“To Captain Canker’s command? Thank you, Mr. Truscott. I do not know of any one with him. It was to father I wanted to write.”

“Oh, pardon me,” said Jack. “I’m sorry, but the sergeant will cross the valley way to the north of the post, and won’t be apt to see any one from there. I thought it possible you might wish to send a message after some friends in the field column.”

“I believe not,” she answered. “Who is there with him to whom I owe a message?” she asked, laughingly.

“I can simply answer for it that there are six or eight who would be most happy to receive one,” said he, with an odd relapse into his regimental manner of somewhat stately courtesy. “May I be the transmitter?”

“Evidently he is thinking of Mr. Glenham,” said Grace to herself, and a strange shade of annoyance swept over her. His change of manner too struck her at once.

“Is it the customary thing in Arizona for us non-combatants to send sustaining and encouraging messages to the front?” she coolly inquired. “If so, put me down for anything that may occur to you as at once brilliant and to the point. Mr. Truscott, that smile is satirical, and you plainly mean to indicate that _then_ it would be recognised at once as not my message.”

“Miss Pelham, I am no match for such acuteness. Are you repenting having shown mercy half an hour ago?”

“Not quite, but that very superior smile is an aggravation, I confess. Now, who is there to whom you supposed I wanted to send a message? Answer that.”

“Let me answer by saying that Messrs. Glenham, Hunter, and Dana are by this time with Captain Canker, and that Mr. Ray with his company will have joined him to-morrow. I name them as young gentlemen any one of whom would be charmed by a message from you, and two of them I have heard absolutely raving about you.”

“Now you expect me to ask which two, do you not? But I decline. Mr. Ray I never met until three days ago, though I have heard of him, and have wanted to know him ever since father joined the —th. The others I knew when they were cadets. Mr. Hunter has already distinguished himself. Has Mr. Glenham been engaged?”

“Is not that a matter on which your own sex would be better informed than I?” he asked, wilfully and mischievously.

She replied almost coldly.

“The question is utterly unworthy of you, Mr. Truscott. I mean, and you know I mean, to ask has Mr. Glenham been in action?”

“She must know perfectly well whether he has or not,” thought Jack, but gravely replied, “No. Glenham says that it is his ill luck. He has had a few scouts, but the Indians have kept out of his way as yet. My note is to him. You might inspire him.”

“And Mr. Ray?” she queried.

“Mr. Ray is a hero of many engagements, martial and matrimonial, and I am bound to say that it isn’t his fault that he has escaped with so little danger. He has received more recommendations for brevets for the one and more ‘mittens’ for the other than any man in the regiment. I testify to the first as custodian of the records, to the second on his own frank statements. Ray says that he has been refused at least once a year ever since he graduated.”

“Mr. Ray is unusually candid. Is it to him you suggest my sending a message?”

“I do not presume to suggest anybody. You desired to be informed when I had a chance of sending a messenger to ‘the valley,’ and I was so much in error as to fancy that you might want to send a message to some one in the command. Then my sympathies being with the possible recipient made me obtrusive. I really beg pardon, Miss Pelham.”

Stepping to the door he quickly summoned the sergeant, handed him the package, “Give it to Lieutenant Glenham,” he said, and then returning to her with a quiet smile on his face, “So it goes without a pleasant word for him after all, Miss Pelham.”

“Certainly,” said Grace. “Mr. Glenham would be surprised, to say the least, at receiving any message from me.”

For an instant, only an instant, an expression of pain, even incredulity, shot across his face. Brief as it was, looking steadfastly into his eyes, she saw it and it stung her. But he recovered himself and promptly, pleasantly spoke.

“Then it seems that I have twice to ask pardon. I’m glad my first offence did _not_ offend, and shall strive to make amends for my second.”

What Grace would have said cannot be told. Once again there suddenly appeared before them her ladyship, re-entering from the dining-room with her hostess. Once again the measured tones of her voice broke in upon their interview. “Well, Mr. Truscott, I thought you left us two hours ago to seek repose?”

“I did, Mrs. Pelham,” replied the adjutant, with calm civility, “and found it.” And then, apparently inviting further remark, he stood looking seriously down into her flushed features. She began to hate him from that minute, but then it was the most natural thing in the world that she should do so.

At that instant there came a knock at the front door, and a servant handed in a note. “For Lieutenant Truscott,” he said, “and there is no answer.”

“Why, Jack,” said the general’s wife in her straightforward innocence of all possible harm, “that’s Mrs. Tanner’s writing. What is she sending for at this time of night? I hope Rosalie isn’t sick. She can’t have bad news either. What is it?”

“With your permission, then, I’ll open it,” said he; and with Mrs. Pelham’s eyes glaring upon him he calmly glanced over the lines. “Nothing wrong,” he continued. “She merely writes to thank me for sending word of Tanner’s detention at the agency.” And yet madame could have sworn that where the strong light from the hall-lamp fell upon the page in his hand the distinctly saw the words, “God bless you, dear Jack.” And so she did.

For three days after this event the confinement and monotony of his life would have told on a man stronger than Truscott. No news came from Canker’s command, no especial tidings from Sandy. He had much fever, and was confined to his room many hours each day. When he did appear Grace was not visible. His hostess brought kind inquiries from her each day, and he frequently heard her blithe voice in the hall or mingling in the hum of conversation in the parlor. On the third day, while the doctor was dressing his shoulder and congratulating him upon a release from confinement that morning, his hostess, who had been unremitting in her care of and attentions to her favorite subaltern, came to the door to ask the doctor if she could not take Mr. Truscott in town for a drive. Receiving his permission, she was off in a moment, and presently came back delighted. “Jack,” she whispered, “I am going to take Grace, too. Her ladyship is out of the way, and Grace has just got back from band practice. Ain’t we in luck?”

Truscott expressed due enthusiasm, and in a few minutes the trio were bowling along the smooth road to Prescott. The bracing air, the bright sunshine, the rapid motion, perhaps too the very sweet face and dainty form of Grace Pelham seated so near him, all tended to bring brightness to his eye and color to his wan cheek. Looking critically at him as he sat opposite her, conversing with her _chaperon_, Grace decided that he was an undeniably handsome man. But he spoke very little to or with her, and this seemed odd to the general’s lady. Match-makers as her sex are by every instinct of their being, she had already determined that here was the very girl she wanted to see married to her friend. Rumors of Glenham’s devotion had of course reached her, but she had virtually scouted all ideas of the kind. Her ladyship, Mrs. Pelham, had twice or thrice waxed confidential and shown an inclination to speak of him and of Grace in conjunction, so had other women, but the lady would not listen. “Don’t mention him in the same breath,” she exclaimed to Mrs. Wickham and to Mrs. Wilkins, to the latter’s huge delight. “She has more brains in her little finger than he in his whole good-natured head.”

Somebody went so far as to say that she had pitched into her husband, the general himself, for inviting Glenham to dine with them _en famille_ before the ball. “It’s as good as giving her dead away, and I don’t believe she likes it at all,” was what she did say, and the chief had absolved himself by explaining that Mrs. Pelham herself had requested it. This had mollified madame to a certain extent, but increased the dislike she had already begun to feel for that lady.

She was determined to bring them together, and so, on arriving in town, had bounced out of the Concord wagon (which answered all her purposes as well as a landau) and saying she merely wanted to look in at two or three shops, had precipitated upon her unprepared companions a _tête-à-tête_ which neither had expected and yet to which each was by no means disinclined.

From all that he had heard, Truscott had been led to suppose that, if not actually engaged, it was more than probable that Miss Pelham and his friend very soon would be. Consequently, when he confronted her the morning after the ball, her face bathed in tears, just having parted from her lover as he set forth on his hurried, probably dangerous duty, Truscott had many reasons for supposing that the rumors were true, and that it was not altogether a loveless match, as the ladies would have made it, on her part. Else why should she have been so distressed at parting? He had been unfeignedly glad to believe she did care so much for him. He knew well how Glenham loved her, though the subject had never been mentioned between them. Glenham, indeed, had more than once given shy indication that he would not mind confiding the whole story of his hopes and fears to his friend, but Truscott never invited confidences and preferred not to be made a recipient in this case. Everything Grace said or did attracted him from the first moment of their meeting up to the time of his sending that letter to Glenham. He liked, admired, and was beginning to feel a warm interest in her, when she calmly looked him in the face and said, “Mr. Glenham would be surprised at receiving any message from me.” “It was all very well in her to decline sending a message,” thought Jack, “but why should she attempt to—why should she desire to deceive me? It’s none of my business, of course; but it isn’t what I had hoped for Glenham.”

As for Grace. We have seen that she did not care for Glenham, and was distressed by his avowal. No woman wants to be considered attached to a man for whom she feels nothing more than a friendly interest. She saw in Jack Truscott a knightly soldier. She had heard of him for two years as the model officer of the regiment, her father’s stand-by and stanchest friend, and when she met him he was bleeding from a recent fray in which all knew he had borne himself most gallantly. She saw him, even in his fatigue and suffering, gentle, patient, courteous. She heard of his bitter grief in the loss of his favorite horse, and, thorough horsewoman herself, she had warmly sympathized with him in that sorrow. She had been able to serve him in his anxiety and loneliness the very day of their first meeting—then—then she had been made to suffer on his account, to bear her mother’s injustice because of her interest in him, and then—and now—he believed her engaged to or in love with Arthur Glenham.

Given these conditions and a heart absolutely free before, a somewhat romantic streak somewhere in her composition, and an enthusiastic love for all that was soldierly and knightly in man, it must be admitted that it only needed the strenuous opposition of parents or circumstances to render any woman liable to fall in love. And now Grace Pelham was being opposed in what she deemed a perfectly proper and justifiable interest in Mr. Truscott. She was being reminded in every look from the maternal eye that she was expected to concentrate her thoughts on Mr. Arthur Glenham. She——Oh, well, why dissect the situation further? She probably would have indignantly repudiated the idea that already she was falling in love. Far be it from the writer to assert anything of the kind, but one thing is certain: she did not want him to think her engaged to or in love with his friend, Mr. Glenham, and was worried and perturbed in spirit that he evidently did think so. More than that, she had begun to read him well enough to realize that he considered her virtual denial of Glenham as disingenuous, and this stung her to the quick. Now she had an opportunity of talking uninterruptedly with him, but how was she to introduce such a subject? Time was short. It was he who broke the silence.

“You have not been riding since I came, Miss Pelham. When am I to have the pleasure of seeing you in the saddle?”

“Indeed I don’t know. Everything was broken up by the regiment’s rush to the field. We have been so anxious I have hardly cared to ride, and—shall I be humble and confess it?—nobody has asked me since the ball. Don’t the staff or infantry officers ride?”

“Some of the youngsters do, very well,” said Truscott. “Possibly ‘mounts’ are not to be had.”

“But Mr. Glenham rode a very nice horse, and we were to have gone again day before yesterday,” she said, “and he told me that both the horses we used were regimental horses.”

“They are off in the Mogollon range somewhere by this time, but when you get down to Sandy you shall ride all you can desire. We have just the very nicest kind of a ‘mount’ for you there, a quick, nimble little bay full of style and action, plenty of fire, too, and I do not believe a horse at Sandy can catch him. Glenham wants to buy him provided the company commander will part with him.”

“To whose company does he belong?”

“Captain Tanner’s,” answered Truscott. “You will easily win him over to your cause, for he worships a woman who rides well.”

“Then Mrs. Tanner must want to keep the horse: she rides, of course?”

“No, Mrs. Tanner never rides. It is one of the sorrows of her life, I think; she gave up all attempts some years ago.”

“What a pity! An army woman who cannot ride loses half the joy of being in the cavalry; but, does no one besides Mr. Glenham ride the horse you speak of?”

“A trumpeter boy of Tanner’s troop ordinarily, and Tanner won’t let the ladies at Sandy ride him at all; their hands are too uncertain, he says. As for Glenham or any of our heavy weights, he would not permit it.”

“Then how did you and Mr. Glenham decide he would be just the mount for me?”

“Ray did that, I believe; he doesn’t ride over a hundred and forty, and has a very light hand, light as any girl’s on the bit, and Tanner would let him have his whole stable. When your coming was first announced, and the young officers commenced telling of your riding at the Point, they decided on having a suitable horse for you. Ray came up from Cameron on a scout, and he picked out ‘Ranger,’ and last week Glenham was in despair because there was no suitable side-saddle, and the colonel said it would be some time before yours could arrive.”

(“Always ‘Glenham’ or ‘they, the young officers,’” thought Grace. “Am I so far beneath him that he could not afford to take any part in these preparations?”)

“You have never ridden ‘Ranger’ yourself, then, Mr. Truscott?”

“Three or four times, possibly, just to try him and teach him a little better manners than he would be apt to learn from his ordinary rider, the trumpeter.”

“Will he stand the skirt, do you think? That seems to be the great objection at first to a spirited horse.”

“Very well; he has been practised with a trailing blanket and then with Mrs. Tanner’s old skirt.”

“And Captain Tanner—or was it the young officers, as you say, who took all these precautions in my behalf? Pray whom am I to thank?”

“Nobody, Miss Pelham. They all look upon a young lady who would resign the sweets of civilization to come out to us as a being for whom no degree of devotion can be too great.”

“Now, Mr. Truscott, that is all very gratifying, too good to be true, perhaps, and I mean to cross-examine you a moment. You say ‘they all,’ referring, I suppose, to the ‘young officers’ aforementioned. Now tell me to whom you refer; I had been led to suppose that of the four companies at Sandy, Mr. Glenham, Mr. Crane, and Mr. Carroll were the only young officers, the other lieutenants being on leave or staff duty, or detached in some way, or like Mr. Wilkins, married and settled down; and Mr. Crane being neither young in years nor exhibiting anything like the faintest desire to make my acquaintance, the number seems limited. _Who_ were _they_?”

Truscott laughed merrily, and looked frankly down into the bright face before him. “You are too analytical,” he said. “I shall have to stop and consider the weight of every word when talking with you. You see I included Ray, Hunter, and Dana in the list with Glenham, because they all took a hand when at the post.”

“Which must have been very seldom, if at all, for Mr. Hunter and Mr. Dana both told me they never got a chance to come to headquarters, and were so eager to do so.”

“Undoubtedly they are now,” said Truscott; “but they looked upon it as purgatorial before.”

“Still you don’t answer my question, and you compel me to riddle your statements. It finally must be reduced to the melancholy fact that Mr. Glenham was the only one at Sandy who took an interest in my coming. I am not exacting. I had looked for nothing of the kind, but when you say ‘all the young officers,’ and allude to such numbers being engrossed in preparation, you must admit my right to disappointment either in them or my informant when I find there is only one. Furthermore, you have not once had the grace to confess yourself one of the interested.”

“That would simply have been presumption. I alluded to the young officers.”

“And Mr. Ray, who graduated but one year behind you, and is said to be one year older, why include him and exclude yourself, unless truth compelled you to the admission that you had no earthly interest in the matter? Mr. Truscott, you have taught me a lesson, but you leave me in no further doubt. It is evident that I am to thank Mr. Glenham for all the training of my horse (O Grace, what a subterfuge!), and that the others were merely accidentally interested.”

“Miss Pelham, you overwhelm me with the consciousness of my neglect. Glenham has so devoted himself to the matter that no efforts of mine could have competed with his, and yet, I assure you, he will require no thanks other than your pleasure in the general result.”

Grace Pelham was ready to stamp her pretty foot at this juncture. Anything or anybody so utterly imperturbable as her new acquaintance she had never met. She shrewdly suspected that poor Glenham had never so much as attempted to mount the new horse, and that it being Mrs. Tanner’s skirt that was employed, Jack Truscott himself had taken charge of that part of the lessons. Womanlike, she longed to extract the admission from his lips, but he would admit nothing. Then came their jolly hostess, bundle-laden, and then, to her dismay, Mrs. Wilkins with a party of friends from the post, in a vehicle similar to their own.

Truscott removed his forage-cap in salutation, and Mrs. Wilkins’s unmodulated tones straightway filled the plaza. “Is it you, Mr. Truscott, and you, Miss Gracie?” (“Confound the woman!” thought Jack, savagely biting his moustache, “how dare she call her that?”) “Faith, I thought it was time you were getting him out in the air. You look like a ghost; have you any news from the boys, pray? It’s time we were hearing from them, I’m sure. How is your mother, Miss Pelham? I’d call to see her, but I never feel like talking when the regiment is out scouting” (here Grace’s eyes sought Truscott’s, and found them brimming over with merriment. They had some thoughts in common, then), “but I’ll be over to-night or to-morrow; you and he won’t miss me, I’ll be bound. Go on, driver. Good-by all!” And off she rattled, triumphant.

“Jack Truscott,” said their matron, impressively, “do you know what I would do with that woman if she were in my regiment, if I had one? I’d appoint a day for prayer and humiliation, and——What are you laughing at? You know you detest the ground she walks on.”

“Being Arizona soil, there is no harm in that, madame; but were harm to come to Mrs. Wilkins the spice of life at Sandy would be snatched away. To me she is invaluable.”

Bowling briskly along the smooth, hard road, they were soon again within the limits of the military settlement and in sight of headquarters. Grace Pelham, baffled in her effort to extract from Mr. Truscott some admission that he had been instrumental in the training of her horse, and feeling vaguely that she had not succeeded in penetrating the armor of reserve with which he was surrounded, determined on a final sally.

Turning to the general’s wife, she broke forth,—

“Mr. Truscott has mystified me completely. He tells me of a capital horse awaiting me at Sandy, and endeavors to make me believe that a number of young officers, as he calls them, have had him in training for some time.”

“Young officers, indeed!” burst in her friend. “When I was there with the general, three weeks ago, the _young_ officers were watching Mr. Jack Truscott himself. He was cavorting round on that very bay, with somebody’s old skirt, or a blanket, almost every day.”

Grace had won her point, but had no time for remarks on the subject. The ambulance whirled up to the general’s quarters, and there on the piazza stood Mrs. Pelham with her hands full of letters.

“Mail for everybody but me,” she remarked, as the ladies, scoffing at the idea of accepting assistance from a one-armed man, sprang out, and then jocularly offered to assist Mr. Truscott. “Grace, you will want to run and read yours at once, I know.” And she ostentatiously handed a little note to her. “These, madame, are yours.” And their hostess turned away to peer into the envelopes of her letters and wonder who could have written them. Then Mrs. Pelham turned to Truscott with a small packet of letters, “And these for you. I know _that_ handwriting to be Ralph’s; would you mind opening it at once and letting me know how he is?”

The topmost letter in Truscott’s package was post-marked San Francisco, and addressed, in a dashing, bold hand. He recognized it at once as coming from Ralph Pelham, his colonel’s second son; and, with Mrs. Pelham’s eyes eagerly searching his face, he slowly opened and commenced to read. He had never received a line from young Pelham before in his life, and, though knowing him well, was surprised at the mere sight of a letter from him. Even as he opened the envelope he noted the keen anxiety in Mrs. Pelham’s face, and it put him on his guard. The first line was enough to test his nerve, but he glanced down the page, coolly turned the leaf and read the next, then very gently and courteously addressed her ladyship: “He seems in capital health, madame. You were not anxious about it, I hope?”

“Who, mother?” asked Grace, rejoining them at this moment and fearing that her father was spoken of.

“Merely a—not your father, Grace, so you need not worry. He is perfectly well, as this letter will show you,” replied madame, hurriedly.

Grace took the letter her mother handed her, and with one glance in Truscott’s face, a look in which inquiry was blended with surprise, turned and left them.

“Mr. Truscott,” said Mrs. Pelham the instant they were again alone, “I did not know Ralph wrote to you. He—he has been somewhat wild at times, and I fully expected a letter from him to-day, but the letter is to you. His father is very anxious about him, and only yesterday wrote me that he wished Ralph were here again instead of in San Francisco. The colonel says you had so good an influence over him. Mr. Truscott, tell me if anything has gone wrong with my boy.”

And Jack Truscott, looking steadily down in the anxious face before him, replied,—

“Nothing that I know of, and nothing shall that I can avert. This letter is about a matter of business in which I am interested. You should see the letter, but it concerns others besides myself.” And Lady Pelham, relieved in mind yet vaguely feeling that something might be extracted by dexterous cross-questioning, was compelled to drop the subject. She thanked him somewhat hesitatingly, looked as though she longed to ask still more, but drew aside and watched him as, with a grave bow, he entered the hall and went to his own room.

There Truscott seated himself by the window, and this time slowly read the following letter:

“SAN FRANCISCO, November 15.

“TRUSCOTT,—Just what you warned me against has come to pass. You made me promise that if I got into the scrape I would write at once and let you know. God knows I don’t know another soul to whom to turn. It is for five hundred dollars this time, and I’ve given my note at thirty days. You see, they know my people, feel sure of their money, and would rather have the interest on it than the cash. But they don’t know what I know,—that father is drained dry; that Grace’s outfit the mother insisted on her having and this tremendous pull of a journey have strapped him completely. Four months ago he wrote me sadly enough not to draw for a cent, and things were booming then. I had been doing first-rate. Consolidated Virginia brought me in eight hundred dollars in a week. To be sure, Best and Belcher knocked most of it out of me, but the other fellows in the office were wild over the New Nevada, and, Jack, I raised the money for the margins, and it’s gone—utterly gone.

“What am I to do? Why do you wish me to write you? I cannot meet this. I see nothing for it but a bullet or a bolt to the mines, where I can change my name with my shirt and hire out as a day laborer. The brokers will show me up to the firm and the situation be swept from under me instanter.

“If you mean that you can get Glenham to let me have five hundred dollars at once to meet my note I will give you my word to stick to my desk, to live _en retraite_, and not to speculate or gamble a cent until it is paid. Glenham has two or three thousand idle in the bank here I know; but, my God, I can’t ask _him_ for money, and hardly know him at all. But father must not know, and above all Grace. She would scorn me if she knew I had accepted a cent from him, and she is right. Yet it is that or ruin, Truscott, and—you helped me when I was in Arizona last year—for God’s sake, for father’s sake, who trusts you so, keep my secret, and if you see a way to help me, believe in my resolution. Wire or write at once.

“Yours, RALPH PELHAM.”

Truscott sat with pale, stern features, his eyes fixed on vacancy, the letter resting on his knee. He heard the voices of the ladies in the hall, the rustle of feminine skirts past his door, the tinkle of the luncheon-bell, but he did not stir. A year previous Ralph Pelham had spent a month in Arizona with his father, had been thrown frequently into Truscott’s society, and had soon learned to look up to him in every way. Pelham was only twenty-two, full of spirit and buoyant with hope, a handsome, cheery, reckless fellow, who had all the attributes of a mother’s darling and a father’s torment. The colonel loved his boy, but shrank from exercising much control over his movements. He knew the youngster had his full share of youthful frivolity, had cheerfully paid his boyish debts, and had shaken his head at some college extravagances; but Ralph was the “brightest” of his sons, every one said, and beyond doubt the most indulged. A very good position had been secured for him in a business house in San Francisco, his salary was fair, his prospects fairer, and all had promised well. Truscott, however, had heard from the boy’s own lips in the confidence resulting from an escapade of the previous year that he had, in common with other young men in his station in life, a mania for getting rich in a hurry and without the equivalent of labor. The fever of speculation was raging all over the Pacific coast. Fortunes were being made every week and lost every day. During a brief stay there Ralph Pelham had fallen in with some acquaintances whose haunt was Montgomery Street, had tried his luck on “margins,” and with ease and astonishment had realized a few hundred dollars,—just enough to inspire him with wild visions of wealth and grandeur, and to send him on his way to visit his father with an unaccustomed plethora of funds, and a concomitant inflation of conceit and business airs that vastly entertained the officers of the —th. The money was soon spent and lost; more was needed, for Truscott found his young friend deep in the toils of “draw-poker” on returning to Sandy from court-martial duty. The colonel had just advanced the boy a quarter’s allowance, and he dared ask for no more, and Truscott insisted on becoming his banker. “I make no conditions whatever, Pelham,” he said, “but, don’t play with those fellows, unless you really want to throw money away.” And Pelham had played no more at Sandy, where the scouts, the quartermaster’s employés, the traders, and occasionally one or two of the officers were to be found in the nightly game down at the store. But this strengthened his trust in Jack, and steadied him a great deal, and before he left he manfully told his father of the circumstance, begging him not to show Truscott that he knew it, and the old soldier had forgiven his young prodigal, provided him with money for his return to San Francisco, and Truscott suspected that the truth was known, because of the fatherly way his colonel had of speaking to him for some time after, but they never alluded to the matter.

And now young Pelham was in a far more serious difficulty. Truscott read those lines again.

“And above all Grace. She would scorn me if she knew I had accepted a cent from him, and she is right.”

“Then Ralph, too, was certain there was an understanding or something like it between his sister and Glenham,” mused Truscott, and again the worn, tired look settled on his brow, and as he mused there came along the hall the quick, light step he was growing to know so well, the rustle of skirts that sent already a thrill to his heart, a light tap on his door; he sprang up, dashed his hand across his forehead, thrust the letter in the breast-pocket of his blouse, and strode to the doorway. There stood Grace with a tiny tray in her hands, a light luncheon and a cup of fragrant tea thereon.

“We thought you too tired perhaps, or too busy, to come to the dining-room, so I was sent with this,” she said, smiling brightly. He bent and took the tray from her hands and placed it on the table in the room, thanking her as he did so, and stepping quickly back to her side.

“I brought it myself,” she continued, smiling archly and mischievously, “in partial payment of a kindness and attention you would not confess. It was you who trained my horse, sir, and you strove to conceal the fact. Mr. Truscott, I don’t know how to thank you.”

The frank, glorious eyes were gazing up into his; the sweet, mobile features, all smiles and sunshine, were turned towards him, her soft white hand toying with the fringe of the Indian tobacco-pouch that hung on the door-post. It was long since Truscott had looked upon a vision half so fair, and, despite himself, look he did earnestly, seeing which her eyes fell, a quick flush rose to her white forehead, she turned to go, but he recovered himself.

“Don’t attempt to thank me,” he said. “Ride with me once or twice when we get to Sandy, and I will be more than repaid.”

“Ride with you! Indeed I will—gladly.” And with that she was gone.

Truscott stood gazing after her as she disappeared through the parlor doorway. There she had glanced quickly back: their eyes had met, she smiled brightly, but never stopped. For a full minute he stood there, then with a half-stifled sigh rising to his lips he turned to re-enter the room, when a white object on the floor at his feet caught his eye. He bent, picked it up, and bore it to the light. It was a dainty handkerchief, and in one corner was embroidered the simple name “Grace.”

With bowed head he stood a few moments holding it in his hand, thinking intently, his eyes fixed upon the name. Then he took Ralph’s later from his pocket, read it once again, and softly repeated to himself the closing words, “For God’s sake, for father’s sake, who trusts you so, keep my secret, and if you see a way to help me, believe in my resolution.”

“For God’s sake, for father’s sake. Yes,” he whispered, “for Grace’s sake I’ll help you, and then—and then—may God help me.”

And when Ralph Pelham’s letter was replaced in the breast-pocket of Truscott’s uniform his sister’s handkerchief lay between it and the wearer’s heart.