brought down a reply from the oracular lips of the commander that became immortal on the frontier and made the petitioners nearly frantic.  For a week the trio was the butt of all the wits at Fort Warrener.  And yet the entire commissioned force felt that they were being kept at the grindstone because of the frivolity of these few youngsters, and they did not like it.  All the same the cavalrymen stuck up for their colonel, and the infantrymen respected him, and the matinees were business-like and profitable.  They were rarely unpleasant in any feature; but this particular morning—­two days after the arrival of Mrs. Rayner and her sister—­there had been a scene of somewhat dramatic interest, and the groups of officers in breaking up and going away could discuss nothing else.  The colonel had requested one of their number to remain, as he wished to speak to him further; and that man was Lieutenant Hayne.

Seven years had that young gentleman been a second lieutenant of the regiment of infantry a detachment of which was now stationed at Warrener.  Only this very winter had promotion come to him; and, of all companies in the regiment, he was gazetted to the first-lieutenancy of Captain Rayner’s.  For a while the regiment when by itself could talk of little else.  Mr. Hayne had spent three or four years in the exile of a little “two-company post” far up in the mountains.  Except the officers there stationed, none of his comrades had seen him during that time.  No one of them would like to admit that he would care to see him.  And yet, when once in a while they got to talking among themselves about him, and the question was sometimes confidentially asked of comrades who came down on leave from that isolated station, “How is Hayne doing?” or, “What is Hayne doing?” the language in which he was referred to grew by degrees far less truculent and confident than it had been when he first went thither.  Officers of other regiments rarely spoke to the “Riflers” of Mr. Hayne.  Unlike one or two others of their arm of the service, this particular regiment of foot held the affairs of its officers as regimental property in which outsiders had no concern.  If they had disagreements, they were kept to themselves; and even in a case which in its day had attracted wide-spread attention the Riflers had long since learned to shun all talk outside.  It was evident to other commands that the Hayne affair was a sore point and one on which they preferred silence.  And yet it was getting to be whispered around that the Riflers were by no means so unanimous as they had been in their opinion of this very officer.  They were becoming divided among themselves; and what complicated matters was the fact that those who felt their views undergoing a reconstruction were compelled to admit that just in proportion as the case of Mr. Hayne rose in their estimation the reputation of another officer was bound to suffer; and that officer was Captain Rayner.