“No, sir,” answered Rayner, with hesitation and embarrassment.  “We wanted to keep him straight, as I told you we would, and he would probably get on a big tear if he knew his service-days were numbered.  I didn’t look for its being granted for forty-eight hours yet.”

“Well, he will know it before night; and no doubt he will be badly cut up.  Clancy was a fine soldier before he married that harridan of a woman.”

“She has made him a good wife since they came into the Riflers, colonel, and has taken mighty good care of the old fellow.”

“It is more than she did in the ——­th, sir.  She was a handsome, showy woman when I first saw her,—­before my promotion to the regiment,—­and Clancy was one of the finest soldiers in the brigade the last year of the war.  She ran through all his money, though, and in the ——­th we looked upon her as the real cause of his break-down,—­especially after her affair with that sergeant who deserted.  You’ve heard of him, probably.  He disappeared after the Battle Butte campaign, and we hoped he’d run off with Mrs. Clancy; but he hadn’t.  She was there when we got back, big as ever, and growing ugly.”

“Do you mean that Mrs. Clancy had a lover when she was in the ——­th?”

“Certainly, Captain Rayner.  We supposed it was commonly known.  He was a fine-looking, black-eyed, dark-haired, dashing fellow, of good education, a great swell among the men the short time he was with us, and Mrs. Clancy made a dead set at him from the start.  He never seemed to care for her very much.”

“This is something I never heard of,” said Rayner, with grave face, “and it will be a good deal of a shock to my wife, for she had arranged to take her East with Clancy and Kate, and they were to invest their money in some little business at her old home.”

“Yes:  it was mainly on the woman’s account we wouldn’t re-enlist Clancy in the ——­th.  We could stand him, but she was too much for us,—­and for the other sergeant, too.  He avoided her before we started on the campaign, I fancy.  Odd!  I can’t think of his name.—­Billings, what was the name of that howling swell of a sergeant who was in Hull’s troop at Battle Butte,—­time Hull was killed?  I mean the man that Mrs. Clancy was said to have eloped with.”

“Sergeant Gower, sir,” said the adjutant, without looking up from his work.  He did look up, however, when a moment after the captain hurriedly left the office, and he saw that Rayner’s face was deathly white:  it was ghastly.

“What took Rayner off so suddenly?” said the colonel, wheeling around in his chair.

“I don’t know, sir, unless there was something to startle him in the name.”

“Why should there be?”

“There are those who think that Gower got away with more than his horse and arms, colonel:  he was not at Battle Butte, though, and that is what made it a mystery.”

“Where was he then?”