“I am quoting, you know.” The doctor smiled indulgently. “They declare that they offered—even begged—to stay behind with him, one of them, at least, but he rejected their company in a manner so unpleasant that they saw it would only be courting a quarrel to remain. And so, treating him perforce like a child or a lunatic pro tem., and having but little time to decide in, they cut loose and hurried back for help. This is the tale, composed on reflection. They said nothing of this to Winslow—to save publicity, of course! Mrs. Bogardus's lips are doubly sealed, for her son's sake and for the sake of the young scamp who is to be her son, by and by! I saw she winced at my opinion, which I gave her plainly—brutally, perhaps. And she asked me particularly to say nothing, which I am particularly not doing.
“This, I think, you will find is the bitter drop in the cup of rejoicing upstairs. And they are swallowing it in silence, those two, for the sake of the little girl and the old friends in New York. Of course she has kept from Paul that last shot in the back from those sweet boys! The packer had some unruly testimony he was bursting with, which he had sense enough to keep for her alone, and she doesn't want the case to spread. It is singular how a man in his condition could get out of the way as suddenly as he did. You might think he'd been taken up in a cloud.”
“Doctor, what do you mean by such an insinuation as that?”
“Colonel, have I insinuated anything? Did I say she had oiled the wheels of his departure?”
“Come, come! You go too far!”
“Not at all. That's your own construction. I merely say that I am not concerned about that man's disappearance. I think he'll be looked after, as a valuable witness should be.”
“Well,” the colonel grumbled uneasily, “I don't like mysteries myself, and I don't like family quarrels nor skeletons at the feasts of old friends. But I suppose there must be a drop in every cup. What were your altitude cases, Doctor?”
“The same old ones; poor Addison, you know. All those stories they tell an Easterner. As I pointed out to Mrs. Bogardus, in every case there was some predisposing cause. Addison had been too long in the mountains, and he was frightfully overworked; short of company officers. He came to me about an insect he said had got into his ear; buzzed, and bothered him day and night. The story got to the men's quarters. They joked about the colonel's 'bug.' I knew it was no joke. I condemned him for duty, but the Sioux were out. They thought at Washington no one but Addison could handle an Indian campaign. He was on the ground, too. So they sent him up higher where it was dry, with a thousand men in his hands. I knew he'd be a madman or a dead man in a month! There were a good many of the dead! By Jove! The boys who took his orders and loved the old fellow and knew he was sending them to their death! Well for him that he'll never know.”
“The 'altitude of heartbreak,'” sighed Mrs. Creve. The phrase was her own, for many a reason deeply known unto herself, but she gave it the effect of a quotation before the men.
“Then you think there is no 'altitude' in ours?”