Nor does Mr. Van Antwerp appear at breakfast on the following morning, nor again to any person known to this story.  An officer of the ——­th Cavalry, spending a portion of the following winter in Paris, writes that he met him face to face one day in the galleries of the Louvre.  Being in civilian costume, of course, and much changed in appearance since he was a youth in the straps of a second lieutenant, it was possible for him to take a good long look at the man he had not seen since he wore the chevrons of a dashing sergeant in the Battle Butte campaign.  “He has grown almost white,” wrote the lieutenant, “and I’m told he has abandoned his business in New York and never will return to the United States.”

Rayner, too, has grown gray.  A telegram from his wife summoned him to the sea-side from Washington the day after this strange adventure of hers.  He found her somewhat prostrate, his sister-in-law very pale and quiet, and the clerks of the hotel unable to account for the disappearance of Mr. Van Antwerp.  Lieutenant Hayne, they said, had told them he received news which compelled him to go back to New York at once; but the gentleman’s traps were all in his room.  Mr. Hayne, too, had gone to New York; and thither the captain followed.  A letter came to him at the Westminster which he read and handed in silence to Hayne.  It was as follows: 

“By the time this reaches you I shall be beyond reach of the law and on my way to Europe to spend what may be left of my days.  I hope they may be few; for the punishment that has fallen upon me is more than I can bear, though no more than I deserve.  You have heard that my college days were wild, and that after repeated warnings my father drove me from home, sending me to Wyoming to embark in the cattle-business.  I preferred gambling, and lost what he gave me.  There was nothing then left but to enlist; and I joined the ——­th.  Mother still believed me in or near Denver, and wrote regularly there.  The life was horrible to me after the luxury and lack of restraint I had enjoyed, and I meant to desert.  Chance threw in my way that temptation.  I robbed poor Hull the night before he was killed, repacked the paper so that even the torn edges would show the greenbacks, resealed it,—­all just as I have had to hear through her pure and sacred lips it was finally told and her lover saved.

“God knows I was shocked when I heard in Denver he was to be tried for the crime.  I hastened to Cheyenne, not daring to show myself to him or any one, and restored every cent of the money, placing it in Mrs. Clancy’s hands, as I dared not stay; but I had hoped to give it to Clancy, who had not arrived.  The police knew me, and I had to go.  I gave every cent I had, and walked back to Denver, then got word to mother of my fearful danger; and, though she never knew I was a deserter, she sent me money, and I came East and went abroad.  Then my whole life changed.  I was appalled to think how low I had fallen.  I shunned companionship, studied, did well at Heidelberg; father forgave me, and died; but God has not forgiven, and at the moment when I thought my life redeemed this retribution overtakes me.