"That sash is probably somewhere down in the back yard, sergeant," Sumter quietly remarked to faithful Kennedy. "It's under fifteen feet of snow, but when it comes to tunnelling, look after it, see that it isn't injured, and call me as soon as you find it."
Mrs. Sumter looked quickly at her lord. She well knew the reason of his instructions.
"Did you show that scrap of lining?" she asked, a moment later, as they stood alone before the parlor fire.
"They have it," was the answer. "I expect two of them out any moment."
And then had come the sudden summons to turn out, and with only brief greeting to his daughter, and a hurried kiss and caress, Captain Sumter had mounted and spurred away.
It must have been after twelve, for orderly call and mess had sounded in front of the adjutant's office, when one of the hospital attendants came floundering up the row from Lanier's, and made his way to Sumter's door, a little note in his hand. He would wait, he said, for an answer, and the maid bade him step inside while she ran up-stairs. Mrs. Sumter answered her knock at the door of Miss Kate's room, into which the damsels were now doubled. To the disappointment of that somewhat volatile domestic, Mrs. Sumter closed the portal before proceeding to open the missive, but her announcement, "From Mr. Lanier," caused Miriam Arnold to sit bolt upright.
Dear Mrs. Sumter [it read]:
I've been living since Saturday mainly on your kindness and that delicious fruit. It was more than good of you to take such care of your incarcerated sub, and I'm ashamed to have sent no earlier thanks, but we've been banked in until this morning, and that rascal striker of ours is missing. He hasn't been about the house since Friday night. Like Barker's cow, he may have blown away. I reckon they'll find him, her, and the paymaster's outfit snowed under somewhere down toward Nebraska, safe, but possibly starving. Schuchardt has gone with the command, so has Ennis, and I'm all alone with nothing to read. If you have anything moral, instructive, and guaranteed to soften the unrepentant sinner's heart—something I could read with profit as well as pleasure—don't send it, but tell me how you all stood the storm and how you are. It is so hard to get anything but admonition out of "Shoe," and "Dad" is now more unreliable than ever.
I hope Miss Arnold is entirely recovered.
Yours most sincerely,
R. R. Lanier.
"The last thing a man mentions in a note is the first thing he wants answered," said Mrs. Sumter sagely. "What shall I tell him for you, Miriam?"
"Tell me what is to be done to him," was the sole reply, as the girl settled back dejectedly upon the pillows.
"I've tried to, child," answered her hostess kindly, patiently. "There isn't a court in the army that would sentence him to more than a brief confinement to limits, and reprimand." Yet Mrs. Sumter spoke with much less confidence than on Saturday. Had not her husband had to tell her his application for leave was withdrawn, and why? Had not Doctor Larrabee admitted to her that the colonel spoke of misdeeds far more serious for which Lanier must suffer? Was there not, indeed, a story in circulation, mainly in the Snaffle set, of a two-days escapade when the regiment camped near Frayne, and then a financial transaction in which Lanier had been involved—something growing out of an affair up on the Yellowstone—something including that young civilian friend of his, the collegian turned cowboy—Mr. Watson Lowndes?