Few people slept that night along officers’ row.  Never had Warrener heard of such excitement.  Buxton knew not what to do.  He paced the floor in agony of mind, for he well understood that there was no shirking the responsibility.  From beginning to end he was the cause of the whole catastrophe.  He had gone so far as to order his corporal to fire, and he knew it could be proved against him.  Thank God, the perplexed corporal had shot high, and the other men, barring the one who had saved Rayner from a furious lunge of the lieutenant’s sword, had used their weapons as gingerly and reluctantly as possible.  At the very least, he knew, an investigation and fearful scandal must come of it.  Night though it was, he sent for the acting adjutant and several of his brother captains, and, setting refreshments before them, besought their advice.  He was still commanding officer de jure, but he had lost all stomach for its functions.  He would have been glad to send for Blake and beg his pardon for submitting to his insubordinate and abusive language, if that course could have stopped inquiry; but he well knew that the whole thing would be noised abroad in less than no time.  At first he thought to give orders against the telegraph-operator’s sending any messages concerning the matter; but that would have been only a temporary hinderance:  he could not control the instruments and operators in town, only three miles away.  He almost wished he had been knocked down, shot, or stabbed in the melee; but he had kept in the rear when the skirmish began, and Rayner and the corporal were the sufferers.  They had been knocked “endwise” by Mr. Hurley’s practised fists after Hayne was struck down by the corporal’s musket.  It was the universal sentiment among the officers of the ——­th as they scattered to their homes that Buxton had “wound himself up this time, anyhow;” and no one had any sympathy for him,—­not one.  The very best light in which he could tell the story only showed the affair as a flagrant and inexcusable outrage.

Captain Rayner, too, was in fearful plight.  He had simply obeyed orders; but all the old story of his persecution of Hayne would now be revived; all men would see in his participation in the affair only additional reason to adjudge him cruelly persistent in his hatred of the young officer, and, in view of the utter ruthlessness and wrong of this assault, would be more than ever confident of the falsity of his position in the original case.  As he was slowly led up-stairs to his room and his tearful wife and silent sister-in-law bathed and cleansed his wound, he saw with frightful clearness how the crush of circumstances was now upon him and his good name.  Great heaven! how those words of Hayne’s five years before rang, throbbed, burned, beat like trip-hammers through his whirling brain!  It seemed as though they followed him and his fortunes like a curse.  He sat silent, stunned, awe-stricken at the force of the calamity that had befallen him.  How could