“She didn’t say.”

Mrs. Rayner paused one moment, irresolute:  “Didn’t she tell you anything more about it?”

“Nothing, sister mine.  Why should you feel such an interest in what Mrs. Waldron says, if she’s such a gossip?” And Miss Travers was evidently having hard work to keep from laughing outright.

“You had better write your letter,” said her big sister, and flounced suddenly out of the room and up the stairs.

A moment later she was at the parlor door with a wrap thrown over her shoulders:  “If Captain Rayner comes in, tell him I want particularly to see him before he goes out again.”

“Where are you going, Kate?”

“Oh, just over to Mrs. Waldron’s a moment.”

IV.

Facing the broad, bleak prairie, separated from it only by a rough, unpainted picket fence, and flanked by uncouth structures of pine, one of which was used as a storehouse for quartermaster’s property, the other as the post-trader’s depository for skins and furs, there stood the frame cottage which Mr. Hayne had chosen as his home.  As has been said, it was precisely like those built for the subaltern officers, so far as material, plan, and dimensions were concerned.  The locality made the vast difference which really existed.  Theirs stood all in a row, fronting the grassy level of the parade, surrounded by verandas, bordering on a well-kept gravel path and an equally well graded drive.  Clear, sparkling water rippled in tiny acequias through the front yards of each, and so furnished the moisture needed for the life of various little shrubs and flowering plants.  The surroundings were at least “sociable,” and there was companionship and jollity, with an occasional tiff to keep things lively.  The married officers, as a rule, had chosen their quarters farthest from the entrance-gate and nearest those of the colonel commanding.  The bachelors, except the two or three who were old in the service and had “rank” in lieu of encumbrances, were all herded together along the eastern end, a situation that had disadvantages as connected with duties which required the frequent presence of the occupants at the court-martial rooms or at head-quarters, and that was correspondingly far distant from the barracks of the soldiers.  It had its recommendations in being convenient to the card-room and billiard-tables at “the store,” and in embracing within its limits one house which possessed mysterious interest in the eyes of every woman and most of the men in the garrison:  it was said to be haunted.