The colonel bit his lip, and bowed. "I see," said he. "Miss Arnold was very much shaken by what happened—after she got home?"
"Rather by what happened before she got home," was the calm yet suggestive reply, and it stung the commander to the quick.
"Captain Sumter," said he, flushing angrily, for no one of his officers held he in higher esteem, "your attitude is that of opposition, if not of rebuke, to the official acts of the post commander."
"Then let me disclaim at once the faintest disrespect, Colonel Button, but—as Mr. Lanier's troop commander and personal friend, I beg leave to say that so far as I know, his offense is one which his comrades have committed time and again, without rebuke."
"Which simply goes to show, sir," responded the colonel, with glittering eyes, "that you do not know the twentieth part of his offense."
For a moment the silence in the office was painful. Men looked at each other without speaking. Sumter stood before his commander, turning paler with the flitting seconds. At last he spoke:
"If that be true, Colonel Button, of course I cannot think of going. I withdraw my application;" and, turning slowly, left the office.
Between him and the adjutant flashed one quick glance. There was something to come yet. The officers-of-the-day had gone—Curbit to shed furs and sabre at his quarters and say "Thank God!" Snaffle, his junior in rank but senior in years, a veteran of the old dragoons, to plod wearily back towards the guard-house for a conference with Lieutenant Crane, commander-of-the-guard.
In the office of the sergeant-major the clerks were busily at work consolidating the morning reports of the ten companies—six of cavalry, four of infantry—stationed at the post. A note on that of Captain Snaffle had already caught the eye of the sergeant-major, who had bustled in to impart the tidings to his immediate superior, the adjutant, and was disappointed to find them known already.
Instead of carrying three enlisted men present as "casually at post," the "return" of Troop "C" had but two. Trooper Rawdon, whose horse, horse equipments, and field kit were safely stored in the troop-stables since noon the previous day, was himself accounted for nowhere. In view of the fact that he had not been seen, and could not be found, there was nothing remarkable about that. With the morning report book, however, there was handed in a copy of an order duly submitted by Corporal Watts to Snaffle's first sergeant, and by him to his captain, which read as follows: