“You don’t say so!  Oh, isn’t there something we can do?  Can’t we go that way and be of some help?” was the eager petition of more than one of the ladies.

“Not now.  They will have the doctor in a minute.  He has not inhaled flame; it is all external; but he was partly blinded and could not find his way.  He called to Billings when he heard him coming.  I will get you all home and then go back to him.  Come!” And, offering his arm to Mrs. Rayner, who was foremost in the direction he wanted to go,—­the pathway across the parade,—­Mr. Foster led them on.  Of course there was eager talk and voluble sympathy; but Mrs. Rayner spoke not a word.  The others crowded around him with questions, and her silence passed unnoted except by one.

The moment they were inside the door and alone, Miss Travers turned to her sister:  “Kate, what was this man’s crime?”

VI.

An unusual state of affairs existed at the big hospital for several days:  Mrs. Clancy had refused to leave the bedside of her beloved Mike, and was permitted to remain.  For a woman who was notorious as a virago and bully, who had beaten little Kate from her babyhood and abused and hammered her Michael until, between her and drink, he was but the wreck of a stalwart manhood, Mrs. Clancy had developed a degree of devotion that was utterly unexpected.  In all the dozen years of their marital relations no such trait could be recalled; and yet there had been many an occasion within the past few years when Clancy’s condition demanded gentle nursing and close attention,—­and never would have got it but for faithful little Kate.  The child idolized the broken-down man, and loved him with a tenderness that his weakness seemed but to augment a thousandfold, while it but served to infuriate her mother.  In former years, when he was Sergeant Clancy and a fine soldier, many was the time he had intervened to save her from an undeserved thrashing; many a time had he seized her in his strong arms and confronted the furious woman with stern reproof.  Between him and the child there had been the tenderest love, for she was all that was left to him of four.  In the old days Mrs. Clancy had been the belle of the soldiers’ balls, a fine-looking woman, with indomitable powers as a dancer and conversationalist and an envied reputation for outshining all her rivals in dress and adornment.  “She would ruin Clancy, that she would,” was the unanimous opinion of the soldiers’ wives; but he seemed to minister to her extravagance with unfailing good nature for two or three years.  He had been prudent, careful of his money, was a war-soldier with big arrears of bounty and, tradition had it, a consummate skill in poker.  He was the moneyed man among the sergeants when the dashing relict of a brother non-commissioned officer set her widow’s cap for him and won.  It did not take many years for her to wheedle most of his money away; but there was no cessation to the