Over the day or two that followed this affair the veil of silence may best be drawn, in order to give time for the sediment of truth to settle through the whirlpool of stories in violent circulation.  The colonel came back on the first train after the adjournment of the court, and could hardly wait for that formality.  Contrary to his custom of “sleeping on” a question, he was in his office within half an hour after his return to the post, and from that time until near tattoo was busily occupied taking the statements of the active participants in the affair.  This was three days after its occurrence; and Captain Rayner, though up and able to be about, had not left his quarters.  Mrs. Rayner had abandoned her trip to the East, for the present at least.  Mr. Hayne still lay weak and prostrate in his darkened room, attended hourly by Dr. Pease, who feared brain-fever, and nursed assiduously by Mrs. Hurley, for whom Mrs. Waldron, Mrs. Stannard, and many other ladies in the garrison could not do enough to content themselves.  Mr. Hurley’s wrist was badly sprained and in a sling; but the colonel went purposely to call upon him and to shake his other hand, and he begged to be permitted to see Mrs. Hurley, who came in pale and soft-eyed and with a gentle demeanor that touched the colonel more than he could tell.  Her cheek flushed for a moment as he bent low over her hand and told her how bitterly he regretted that his absence from the post had resulted in so grievous an experience:  it was not the welcome he and his regiment would have given her had they known of her intended visit.  To Mr. Hurley he briefly said that he need not fear but that full justice would be meted out to the instigator or instigators of the assault; but, as a something to make partial amends for their suffering, he said that nothing now could check the turn of the tide in their brother’s favor.  All the cavalry officers except Buxton, all the infantry officers except Rayner, had already been to call upon him since the night of the occurrence, and had striven to show how distressed they were over the outrageous blunders of their temporary commander.  Buxton had written a note expressive of a desire to see him and “explain,” but was informed that explanations from him simply aggravated the injury; and Rayner, crushed and humiliated, was fairly in hiding in his room, too sick at heart to want to see anybody, and waiting for the action of the authorities in the confident expectation that nothing less than court-martial and disgrace would be his share of the outcome.  He would gladly have resigned and gone at once, but that would have been resigning under virtual charges:  he had to stay, and his wife had to stay with him, and Nellie with her.  By this time Nellie Travers did not want to go.  She had but one thought now,—­to make amends to Mr. Hayne for the wrong her thoughts had done him.  It was time for Mr. Van Antwerp to come to the wide West and look after his interests; but Mrs. Rayner had ceased to urge, while he continued to implore her to bring Nellie East at once.  Almost any man as rich and independent as Steven Van Antwerp would have gone to the scene and settled matters for himself.  Singularly enough, this one solution of the problem seemed never to occur to him as feasible.