"Oh, it isn't that," said Gray hastily, "only he's--he's got--other matters on his mind! Bring me his overcoat. He said it was in his tent,"

and the young officer jerked his head at the patch of little "A" tents lined up in the rear of those of the officers.

"Get Morton's overcoat and take it to him at the guardhouse," snapped the staff sergeant to the clerk. "Be spry now, and no stopping on the way back," he added--well aware how much in need his a.s.sistant stood of creature comfort of some surrept.i.tious and forbidden kind. The man was back in a moment, the coat rolled on his arm.

"I'll take it," said Gray simply. "You needn't come."

"Go on with it!" ordered the sergeant as the soldier hesitated. "D'ye think the service has gone to the devil and officers are runnin' errands for enlisted men? An' get back inside two minutes, too," he added with portent in his tone. The subaltern of hardly two months' service felt the implied rebuke of the soldier of over twenty years' and meekly accepted the amendment, but--a thought occurred to him: He had promised Morton paper, envelopes and stamps and the day's newspapers--the lad seemed strangely eager to get all the latter, and vaguely Billy remembered having heard that Canker considered giving papers to prisoners as equivalent to aid and comfort to the enemy.

"Take it by way of my tent," said he as they started, and, once there it took time to find things. "Go back to the sergeant-major and tell him I sent you," said Gray, after another search. "He needs you on those papers."

And when the officer of the guard returned to the guardhouse and went in to the prisoner, the sergeant saw--and others saw--that, rolled in the soldier's overcoat he carried on his arm, was a bundle done up in newspaper. Moreover, a sc.r.a.p of conversation was overheard.

"There's no one at the General's," said the officer. "I see no way of--fixing it before morning."

"My G.o.d, lieutenant! There--must be some way out of it! The morning will be too late."

"Then I'll do what I can for you to-night," said Mr. Gray as he turned and hurriedly left the guardroom--a dozen men standing stiffly about the walls and doorway and staring with impa.s.sive faces straight to the front.

Again, the young officer had left the post of the guard and gone up into camp, while far and near through the dim, fog-swept aisles of a score of camps the bugles and trumpets were wailing the signal for "lights out,"

and shadowy forms with coat collars turned up about the ears or capes m.u.f.fled around the neck, scurried about the company streets ordering laughter and talk to cease. A covered carriage was standing at the curb outside the officers' gate--as a certain hole in the fence was designated--and the sentry there posted remembered that the officer of the guard came hurrying out and asked the driver if he was engaged. "I'm waiting for the major," was the answer.

"Well, where can one order a carriage to-night without going clear to town?" inquired Gray. "I want one--that is--I wish to order one at once."

And the driver who knew very well there were several places where carriages could be had, preferred loyalty to his own particular stable away in town, and so declared there was none.

"You can telephone there, if you wish, sir," he added.

"And wait till morning for it to get here? No! I'll get it--somehow."

And that he did get it somehow was current rumor on the following day, for the sentries on the guardhouse side of camp swore that a closed carriage drove down from McAllister Street for all the world as though it had just come out of the park, and rolled on past the back of the guardhouse, the driver loudly whistling "Killarney," so that it could be heard above the crunching of the wheels through the rough, loose rock that covered the road, and that carriage drew up not a hundred yards away, while the lieutenant was out visiting sentries, and presently they saw him coming back along the walk, stopping to question each sentry as to his orders. Then he returned and inquired if all was quiet among the prisoners, and then went and put out his light in the tent reserved for the officer of the guard, and once more left his post, briefly informing the sergeant of the guard he was going to the officer of the day. Then it was ascertained that he had visited half a dozen places in search of that veteran captain, and appeared much disturbed because he could not find him. In half an hour he was back, asking excitedly of the sentry in rear of the guardhouse if a carriage had come that way. It had, said the sentry, and was waiting down the street. Gray hurried in the direction indicated, was gone perhaps three minutes, and returned, saying that the sentry must be mistaken, that no carriage was there. But the sentry reiterated his statement that it had been there and had been waiting for some time, and must have disappeared while he was temporarily around at the opposite side of the building. This was about 11 P.M.

Then when Gray appeared at reveille Morton had disappeared.

"It's not the sergeant let them fellers out," said the regimental oracles. "This is no ten-dollar subscription business." And so until late in the afternoon the question that agitated the entire range of regimental camps was: "How did those fellows break away from the prison of the --teenth?" Then came a clue, and then--discovery.

By order of Lieutenant-Colonel Canker a board of officers had been convened to investigate the matter, and after questioning everybody whom "Squeers" had already badgered with his a.s.sertions, threats and queries, they went to the guardhouse and began a thorough inspection of the premises. The wooden building stood in the midst of a waste of sand blown in from the sh.o.r.e line by the strong sea wind. It was perched on something like a dozen stout posts driven into the soft soil and then the s.p.a.ce between the floor level and the sand was heavily and stoutly boarded in--thick planks being used. Between the floor and the sand was a s.p.a.ce of about eighteen inches vertical, and a dozen men could have sprawled therein--lying at full length--but to escape would have required the connivance of one or more of the sentries surrounding the building and the ripping off of one or more of the planks. In his keen anxiety Canker accompanied the Board on its tour of investigation--a thing the Board did not at all like--and presently, as was his wont, began running things his own way. It had been found useless to question the soldiers of the guard. Not a man could be found to admit he knew the faintest thing about the escape. As for the prisoners, most of them reckless, devil-may-care rascals, they grinned or leered suggestively, but had nothing to tell.

"We'll have this boarding ripped off," said Canker decisively, "and see what they've got secreted under there. I shouldn't be surprised to find a whisky still in full blast, or a complete gambling outfit--dash, dash 'em to dash and dashnation! Send for a carpenter, sergeant."

The carpenter came, and he and two or three of the guard laid hold of one end of the plank after its nails were drawn, and with little exertion ripped it off the other posts. Then everybody held his breath a minute, stared, and a small majority swore. So far from its being open to cats, cans and rubbish, the s.p.a.ce on that side was filled solid with damp, heavy sea sand--a vertical wall extending from floor to ground. Canker almost ran around to the opposite side and had a big plank torn off there. Within was a wall as damp, solid and straight as that first discovered, and so, when examined, were the other two sides provided.

Canker's face was a study, and the Board gazed and was profoundly happy.

At last the colonel exploded:

"By Jupiter! They haven't got away at all, then! There isn't a flaw in the sand wall anywhere. They must be hiding about the middle now. Come on, gentlemen," and around he trotted to the front door. "Sergeant," he cried, "get out all the prisoners--all their bedding--every blessed thing they've got. I want to examine that floor."

Most of the guardhouse "birds" were out chopping wood, and Canker danced in among the few remaining, loading them with bedding belonging to their fellows until every item of clothing and furniture was shoved out of the room. One member of the Board and one only failed to enter with his a.s.sociates--a veteran captain who read much war literature and abhorred Canker. To the surprise of the sentry he walked deliberately over to the fence, climbed it and presently began poking about the wooden curb that ran along the road, making a low revetment or retaining wall for the earth, cinders and gravel that, distributed over the sand, had been hopefully designated a sidewalk by the owners of the tract. Presently he came sauntering back, and both sentries within easy range would have sworn he was chuckling. Canker greeted him with customary asperity.

"What do you mean, sir, by absenting yourself from this investigation, when you must have known I was with the Board and giving it the benefit of the information I had gathered?"

"I was merely expediting matters, colonel. While you were looking for where they went in I was finding where they got out."

"Went in _what_? Got out of what?" snapped Canker.

"Their tunnel, sir. It's Libby on a small scale over again. They must have been at work at it at least ten days." And as he spoke, calmly ignoring Canker and letting his eyes wander over the floor, the veteran battalion commander sauntered across the room, stirred up a slightly projecting bit of flooring with the toe of his boot and placidly continued. "If you'll be good enough to let the men pry this up you _may_ understand."

And when pried up and lifted away--a snugly fitting trapdoor about two feet square--there yawned beneath it, leading slantwise downward in the direction of the street, a tunnel through the soft yielding sand, braced and strengthened here and there with lids and sides of cracker-boxes.

"Now, if you don't mind straddling a fence, sir, I'll show you the other end," said the captain, imperturbably leading the way, and Canker, half-dazed yet wholly in command of his stock of blasphemy, followed. At the curb, right in the midst of a lot of loose hay from the bales dumped there three days before, the leader dislodged with his sword the top of a clothing box that had been thickly covered with sand and hay--and there was the outlet. "Easy as rolling off a log, colonel," said old Cobb, with a sarcastic grin. "This could all be done without a man you've blamed and arrested being a whit the wiser. They sawed a panel out of the floor, scooped the sand out of this tunnel, banked it solid against the weather boarding inside, filled up the whole s.p.a.ce, pretty near, but ran their tunnel under fence and sidewalk, crawled down the gutter to the next block out of sight of the sentries, then walked away free men. Those three thieves who got away were old hands. The other men in the guardhouse were only mild offenders, except Morton. 'Course he was glad of the chance to go with 'em. I s'pose you'll release my sergeant and those sentries now."

"I'll do nothing of the kind," answered Canker, red with wrath, "and your suggestion is disrespectful to your commanding officer. When I want your advice I'll ask for it."

"Well, Mr. Gray will be relieved to learn of this anyhow. I suppose I may tell _him_," hazarded the junior member, mischievously.

"Mr. Gray be ----. Mr. Gray has everything to answer for!" shouted the angered colonel. "It was he who telephoned for a carriage to meet and run those rascals off. Mr. Gray's fate is sealed. He can thank G.o.d I don't slap him into the guardhouse with his chosen a.s.sociates, but _he_ shan't escape. Sergeant of the guard, post a sentry over Lieutenant Gray's tent, with orders to allow no one to enter or leave it without my written authority. Mr. Gray shall pay for this behind the prison bars of Alcatraz."

CHAPTER VIII.

Social circles at West Point at long, rare intervals are shocked by a scandal, and at short ones, say every other summer--are stirred by some kind of a sensation, and the "Fairy Sisters" were the sensation of the year '97. They came in July; they went in September, and meanwhile they were "on the go," as they expressed it, from morn till late at night.

Physically they were the lightest weights known to the hop room.

Mentally, as their admirers in the corps expressed it, "either of them can take a fall out of any woman at the Point," and this was especially true of the elder--Mrs. Frank Garrison--whose husband was on staff duty in the far West. Both were slight, fragile, tiny blondes with light blue eyes, with lighter, fluffy hair, with exquisite little hands and feet, with oval, prettily shaped faces, and the younger--the maiden sister, had a bewitching mouth and regular, snowy dots of teeth of which she was justly proud. Yet, as has been previously said of Mrs. Frank, while the general effect was in the case of each that of an extremely pretty young girl, the elder had no really good features, the younger only that one.

They generally dressed very much alike in light, flimsy gowns, and hats, gloves and summer shoes all of dazzling white--sometimes verging for a change to a creamy hue--but colors, except for sashes or summer shawls, seemed banished from their wardrobes. They danced divinely, said the corps, and preferred cadet partners, to the joy of the battalion. They rode fearlessly and well, and had stunning hats and habits, but few opportunities for display thereof. They came tripping down the path from the hotel every morning, fresh and fair as daisies, in time for guard mounting, and at any hour after that could be found chatting with cadet friends at the visitors' tent, strolling arm in arm about the shaded walks with some of their many admirers until time to dress for the evening hop, where they never missed a dance, and on rainy days, or on those evenings when there was neither hop nor band practice, they could be found, each in some dimly lighted, secluded nook about the north or west piazza or on the steps leading down to the "Chain Battery Walk,"

sometimes surrounded by a squad of cadet friends, but more frequently in murmured _tete-a-tete_ with only one cavalier. In the case of Mrs.

Frank no member of the corps seemed especially favored. She was just the same to every one. In the case of her younger sister--Miss Terriss--there presently developed a dashing young cadet captain who so scientifically conducted his campaign that he headed off almost all compet.i.tors and was presently accorded the lead under the universally accepted theory that he had won the little lady's heart. Observant women--and what women are not observant--of each other?--declared both sisters to be desperate flirts.

Society at the Point frowned upon them and, after the first formal call or two, dropped them entirely--a thing they never seemed to resent in the least, or even to notice. They were never invited out to tea or dinner on the post--solemn functions nowhere near so palatable as the whispered homage of stalwart young manhood. "Nita is yet such a child she infinitely prefers cadet society, and I always did like boys," explained Mrs. Garrison. Some rather gay old boys used to run up Sat.u.r.day afternoons on the Mary Powell and spend Sunday at the Point--Wall Street men of fifty years and much lucre. "Dear old friends of father's," Mrs.

Frank used to say, "and I've simply got to entertain them." Entertained they certainly were, for her wit and vivacity were acknowledged on every side, and entertained not only collectively, but severally, for she always managed to give each his hour's confidential chat, and on the Sundays of their coming had no time to spare for cadet friends. Moreover, she always drove down in the big 'bus with them Monday morning when the Powell was sighted coming along that glorious reach from Polopel's Island, and stood at the edge of the wharf waving her tiny kerchief--even blowing fairy kisses to them as they steamed away. No wonder Nita Terriss was frivolous and flirtatious with such an example, said society, and its frowns grew blacker when the White Sisters, the Fairy Sisters--the "Sylphites," came in view. But frowns and fulminations both fell harmless from the armor of Mrs. Frank's gay _insouciance_. Nita winced at first, but soon rallied and bore the slights of the permanent and semi-permanent residents as laughingly as did her more experienced sister. Nita, it was explained, was only just out of school, and Mrs. Frank was giving her this summer at the Point as a great treat before taking her to the far West, where the elder sister must soon go to join her husband. Everybody knew Frank Garrison. He had long been stationed at the Academy, and was a man universally liked and respected--even very highly regarded. All of a sudden the news came back to the Point a few months after his return to his regiment that he was actually engaged to "Witchie" Terriss. Hot on the heels of the rumor came the wedding cards--Lieutenant-Colonel and Mrs. Terriss requested the honour of your presence at the marriage of their daughter Margaret to Lieutenant Francis Key Garrison, --th U. S.

Cavalry, at the Post Chapel, Fort Riley, Kansas, November --, 1894--all in Tiffany's best style, as were the cards which accompanied the invitation. "What a good thing for old Bill Terriss!" said everybody who knew that his impecuniosity was due to the exactions and extravagancies of his wife and "Witchie."--"And what a bad thing for Frank Garrison!"

was the echo. His intimates knew that he had "put by" through economy and self-denial about two thousand dollars, the extent of his fortune outside of his pay. "She'll make ducks and drakes of it in the six weeks'

honeymoon," was the confident prophecy, and she probably did, for, despite the fact that he had so recently rejoined the regiment, "Witchie"

insisted on a midwinter run to New Orleans, Savannah and Washington, and bore her lord, but not her master, over the course in triumph. To a student of human nature--and frailty--that union of a faded and somewhat shopworn maid of twenty-seven to an ardent and vigorous young soldier many moons her junior was easy to account for. One after another Witchie Terriss had had desperate affairs with half a dozen fellows, older or younger, in the army and was known to have been engaged to five different men at different times, and believed to have been engaged to two different men at one time. Asked as to this by one of her chums she was reported to have replied: "Do you know, I believe it true; I had totally forgotten about Ned Colston before Mr. Forman had been at the post a week. Of course the only thing to do was to break with both and let them start fresh." But this Mr. Colston, whose head had been somewhat cleared by a month of breezy, healthful scouting, accepted only in part--that part which included the break. Forman had the fresh start and a walk over and held the trophy just two months, when it dawned upon him that Margaret loved dancing far more than she did him--a clumsy performer, and that she would dance night after night, the lightest, daintiest creature in the hop room, and never have a word or a look for him who leaned in gloomy admiration against the wall and never took his eyes off her. He became jealous, moody, ugly-tempered and finally had the good luck to get his _conge_ as the result of an attempt to a.s.sert himself and limit her dances. She was blithe and radiant and fancy free when Frank Garrison reached the post, a wee bit hipped, it was whispered, because of the failure of a somewhat half-hearted suit of his in the far East, and the Fairy bounded into the darkness of his life and fairly dazzled him.

Somebody had said Frank Garrison had money.

There is no need to tell of the disillusion that gradually came. Frank found his debts mounting up and his cares increasing. She was all sympathy and regret when he mentioned it, but--there were certain comforts, luxuries and things she had always been accustomed to, and couldn't live without. Surely he would not have her apply to papa. No, but--could she not manage with a little less? He was willing to give up his cigars (indeed, he had long since done so) and to make his uniforms last a year longer--he who was in his day the most carefully dressed man at the Point.

Well--she thought perhaps he ought to do that--besides--men's fashions changed but slowly, whereas women's--"Well, I'd rather be dead than out of style, Frank!"

And so it went.

But if she did not love her husband there was one being in whom her frivolous heart was really bound up--Nita--her "baby sister," as she called her, and when Terriss, the colonel, went the way of all flesh, preceded only a few months by the wife of his bosom, the few thousands in life insurance he had managed to maintain went to the two daughters. Not one penny was ever laid out in payment of the debts of either the father or husband. Nita was sent to an extravagant finishing school in Gotham, and along in May of the young girl's graduating year, blithe little Mrs.

Garrison arrived, fresh from the far West, and after a few weeks of sightseeing and shopping the sisters appeared at the Point, even half-mourning by this time discarded. Thirteen years' difference was there in the ages of the Fairy Sisters, and not a soul save those who knew them in former days on the frontier would have suspected it. Mrs.

Frank in evening dress didn't look over twenty.

One lovely evening early in August, just about the time that Cadet Captain Latrobe began to show well to the front in the run for the prize, the two sisters had gone to their room at the hotel to dress for the hop.

It was their custom to disappear from public gaze about six o'clock and when they came floating down the stairs in filmy, diaphanous clouds of white, the halls were well filled with impatient cavaliers in the natty cadet uniform, and with women "waiting to see." Then the sisters would go into the dining room and have some light refreshment, with a gla.s.s of iced tea--and no matter how torrid the heat or how flushed and dragged other women might look, they were inviting pictures of all that was ever fresh, cool and fragrant. The two fluffy blonde heads would be huddled close together a minute as they studied the bill of fare, and virtuous matrons at other tables, fanning vigorously, would sniff and say: "All for effect. They know that supper bill by heart. It never changes." All the same, at the bottom of this public display of sisterly devotion and harmony and in spite of occasional tiffs and differences, there was genuine affection on both sides, for as a child Nita had adored Margaret, and there could be no doubting the elder's love for the child. Some regimental observers said that every bit of heart that eldest Terriss girl had was wrapped up in the little one. Neither girl, even after Margaret's marriage, would listen to a word in disparagement of the other, but in the sanct.i.ty of the sisterly retreat on the third floor of the old hotel there occurred sometimes spirited verbal tilts that were quite distinctly audible to pa.s.sers-by in the corridor, provided they cared to listen, which some of them did. On this especial August evening Mrs. Frank was in an admonitory frame of mind. They had known Mr. Latrobe barely three weeks, and yet as Mrs. Frank was sauntering around a turn in Flirtation Walk, leaning on the arm of the cadet adjutant, there in the pathway right ahead stood Nita, a lovely little picture with downcast eyes, and "Pat" Latrobe bending over her with love and pa.s.sion glowing in his handsome face, pleading eagerly, clinging fervently to both her tiny, white-gloved hands. Mrs. Garrison saw it all in the flash of a second, the adjutant not at all, for with merry laughter she repeated some words he had just spoken as though they were about the wittiest, funniest things in the world, and looked frankly up into his eyes as though he were the best and brightest man she had met in years--so his eyes were riveted, and the tableau had time to dissolve. All the same that sight gave Mrs. Garrison rather more than a bad quarter of an hour. She was infinitely worried. Not because Pat Latrobe had fallen desperately in love with her charming little sister--that was his lookout--but what--oh, what might not happen if the charming little sister were to fall in love with that handsome soldier boy. At all hazards, even if she had to whisk her away to-morrow, that had to be stopped, and this very evening when they went to their room Margaret spoke.

"Nita, if it were only for Mr. Latrobe I should not care a snap of my finger, but it's you--_you_! I thought you had more sense. I thought you _fully_ understood that you couldn't afford to lose yourself a moment, and yet if ever a girl _looked_ like yielding you did this very afternoon. For my sake, for your own sake, Nita, don't let it go any further--_don't_ fall in love--here--whatever you do."

The younger sister stood at the dressing table at the moment, her face averted. The Mary Powell was just rounding the Point, and the mellow, melodious notes of her bell were still echoing through the Highlands.