“No one, sir.  It is being used as a tailors’ shop; half a dozen of the company tailors work there; but I can send them back to their own barracks.  The house is in good repair, and, as Mr. Hayne says, exactly like those built for officers’ use.”

“And you mean you want to live there, alone, Mr. Hayne?”

“I do, sir,—­exactly.”

The colonel turned sharply to his desk once more.  The strained silence continued a moment.  Then he faced his officers: 

“Mr. Hayne, will you remain a few moments?  I wish to speak with you.—­Gentlemen, that is all this morning.”  And so the meeting adjourned.

While many of the cavalry officers strolled into the neighboring club-and reading-room, it was noticed that their comrades of the infantry lost no time at intermediate points, but took the shortest road to the row of brown cottages known as the officers’ quarters.  The feeling of constraint that had settled upon all was still apparent in the group that entered the club-room, and for a moment no one spoke.  There was a general settling into easy-chairs and picking up of newspapers without reference to age or date.  No one seemed to want to say anything, and yet every one felt it necessary to have some apparent excuse for becoming absorbed in other matters.  This was so evident to Lieutenant Blake that he speedily burst into a laugh,—­the first that had been heard,—­and when two or three heads popped out from behind their printed screens to inquire into the cause of his mirth, that light-hearted gentleman was seen sprawling his long legs apart and gazing out of the window after the groups of infantrymen.

“What do you see that’s so intensely funny?” growled one of the elders among the dragoons.

“Nothing, old mole,—­nothing,” said Blake, turning suddenly about.  “It looks too much like a funeral procession for fun.  What I’m chuckling at is the absurdity of our coming in here like so many mutes in weepers.  It’s none of our funeral.”

“Strikes me the situation is damned awkward,” growled “the mole” again.  “Here’s a fellow comes in who’s cut by his regiment and has placed ours under lasting obligation before he gets inside the post.”

“Well, does any man here know the rights and wrongs of the case, anyhow?” said a tall, bearded captain as he threw aside the paper which he had not been reading, and rose impatiently to his feet.  “It seems to me, from the little I’ve heard of Mr. Hayne and the little I’ve seen, that there is a broad variation between facts and appearances.  He looks like a gentleman.”

“No one does know anything more of the matter than was known at the time of the court-martial five years ago,” answered “the mole.”  “Of course you have heard all about that; and my experience is that when a body of officers and gentlemen find, after due deliberation on the evidence, that another has been guilty of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, the chances are a hundred to one he has been doing something disreputable, to say the least.”