[CHAPTER VIII.—The Dashing Dragoon.]
OLONEL DICK IVEY was a bachelor and a man of vast wealth.
He had been an only son, and the idol of his boyhood life had been his sister, two years his junior.
Their parents had been wealthy, and they dated their ancestry back for many generations, and the father of the young Richard had been anxious to have his son become a soldier, and so got for him a cadetship at West Point.
A handsome, dashing youth, generous to a fault, Dick Ivey had won the hearts of professors and comrades alike, and none of the latter had envied him the first honours of his class when he had graduated, while the instructors had said they were well won and deserved.
There were four persons present at the graduating exercises that Dick was most desirous of pleasing, and these were his parents, his sister, and her best friend, the young cadet's lady-love.
But, in spite of his honours won, the fickle young lady-love had flirted with the honoured cadet, refused his proffered love, and became infatuated, as it were, with a brother cadet of her old lover.
It cut Dick Ivey to the heart, but he nursed his sorrow in silence, uttered no complaint, and went to the border with his regiment, to soon win distinction as a daring officer.