"Well, no! Not McLean, perhaps. Very possibly he might not know how it would harm him to have his ravings repeated. I was thinking—I could not help thinking—that Mac had been talking about—these recent thefts in garrison."
"And there have been more than this one at our house?" asked the doctor, with concern and surprise mingled in his handsome face.
"Yes, two or three more, I regret to say, but I have not full particulars yet and cannot speak of them."
Bayard clasped his hands with one of the melodramatic gestures so peculiar to him.
"My God!" he muttered. "It was bad enough as I supposed it, but I had no idea it had come to such a pass as this."
"Bayard," said the major, after a moment of earnest thought, "this is a matter that must be handled with the utmost care and circumspection. Not a vestige of suspicion must be permitted to circulate if we can prevent it. I have strictly enjoined secrecy upon my—my informant, and I desire you to regard this talk as confidential. Tell Weeks I appreciate and sustain him in this caution and thank him for his efforts to stifle any possible scandal. Poor Mac! The youngster would be horror-stricken if he knew what secrets he had been blabbing."
"His troubles must have been weighing on his mind a long time," said the doctor, "and yet I never suspected it. I don't know that I ever saw a blither young fellow until about the time the finding of that board of survey was announced. He didn't seem to expect that at all."
"Well,—neither did I. Of course, technically it had to go against him, but we never dreamed it would result in stoppage of his pay."
"And yet his funds were all right, I'm told," said the doctor, musingly. "One would suppose that if he had any tendencies that way they would have cropped out when he had so much public money passing through his hands."
"Tendencies what way, doctor? I don't follow you."