"Oh! One minute, major, and I'll be with you," called the inmate, as though overcome with sudden access of joy, and presently he appeared, half dressed.
"See here, Gleason, Captain Truscott and I have come to inquire what you know of the charges against Mr. Ray. You are to go back at once, I'm told, as witness against him. There won't be a soul there of his regiment or his friends, for we know well you're not one, to speak for him. By thunder! what have you against him?"
"I do not think this a matter on which I should speak at all, Major Stannard, except to proper authority. The court will hear the evidence in due season."
"Well, I mean to hear something now, Mr. Gleason, or, by the eternal! I'll wake up the whole command to put the question. What you make one believe is, that you are seeking to ruin Ray by getting him at a disadvantage with all his friends away. Captain Truscott, what do you say?"
And then Truscott spoke. As usual, he was master of himself and showed no vestige of temper.
"The matter is very simple, Mr. Gleason. You are believed to be the accuser of Mr. Ray at a moment when it is certain the regiment is going to be so far away that its officers cannot be present at the court,—may not even be able to communicate with it. If you decline to indicate what you know to Major Stannard and me, who are his friends, the immediate protest of the regiment against your conduct must go to headquarters with the request that the court be held until we can appear before it. More than that, in two days we will reach the general commanding the department. Do you fancy he will permit Mr. Ray, of all others, to be brought to trial without a friend to appear for him?"
Gleason saw he was cornered. What he hoped, what he expected, was to make his escape and get back before any one learned of the charges. That hope was frustrated. In his wrath and perplexity he resorted to the invariable device of the cowardly and the low. He must divert their sympathy for Ray into distrust of him, and before he had fully considered his words they were spoken,—crafty, insidious, and calumniatory.
"Captain Truscott, you have spoken without threatening me, and I'll answer you. All this time I've been striving not to see, not to know Mr. Ray's offences; but I was on the horse board. You were not. Ask Captain Buxton to-morrow who and what Ray's associates were; but let me say to you right here that I can no longer submit to seeing you deceived. You call Ray your friend. No man can be a worse friend than he who sets a whole garrison talking about an absent comrade's wife and the notes she writes him, and who is discovered alone with her,—she in tears, he burning a letter. Webb witnessed it. Ask him."
The last words were spoken with utmost haste, with upraised hand, with trembling lips, for both Truscott and Stannard almost savagely sprang towards him as though to cram the words down his throat. For an instant Truscott stood glaring at him, not daring to speak until he could resume his self-command; but in that instant poor, perturbed Webb broke into speech.
"Oh, come now, Gleason, that's all an outrageous way of putting it, you know. Of course I saw there was some little trouble. Mrs. Truscott had written to Ray because she was all upset about something; she was crying, you know, and Ray might have just happened in——"