He had leaped to popularity from the start.  He was full of courtesy and gentleness to women, and became a pet in social circles.  He was frank, free, off-handed with his associates, spending lavishly, “treating” with boyish ostentation on all occasions, living quite en grand seigneur, for he seemed to have a little money outside his pay,—­“a windfall from a good old duffer of an uncle,” as he had explained it.  His father, a scholarly man who had been summoned to an important under-office in the State Department during the War of the Rebellion, had lived out his honored life in Washington and died poor, as such men must ever die.  It was his wish that his handsome, spirited, brave-hearted boy should enter the army, and long after the sod had hardened over the father’s peaceful grave the young fellow donned his first uniform and went out to join “The Riflers.”  High-spirited, joyous, full of laughing fun, he was “Pet” Hayne before he had been among them six months.  But within the year he had made one or two enemies.  It could not be said of him that he showed that deference to rank and station which was expected of a junior officer; and among the seniors were several whom he speedily designated “unconscionable old duffers” and treated with as little semblance of respect as a second lieutenant could exhibit and be permitted to live.  Rayner prophesied of him that, as he had no balance and was burning his candle at both ends, he would come to grief in short order.  Hayne retorted that the only balance that Rayner had any respect for was one at the banker’s, and that it was notorious in Washington that the captain’s father had made most of his money in government contracts, and that the captain’s original commission in the regulars was secured through well-paid Congressional influence.  The fact that Rayner had developed into a good officer did not wipe out the recollection of these facts; and he could have throttled Hayne for reviving them.  It was “a game of give and take,” said the youngster; and he “behaved himself” to those who were at all decent in their manner to him.

It was a thorn in Rayner’s flesh, therefore, when Hayne joined from leave of absence, after experiences not every officer would care to encounter in getting back to his regiment, that Captain Hull should have induced the general to detail him in place of the invalided field quartermaster when the command was divided.  Hayne would have been a junior subaltern in Rayner’s little battalion but for that detail, and it annoyed the captain more seriously than he would confess.

“It is all an outrage and a blunder to pick out a boy like that,” he growls between his set teeth as Hayne canters blithely away.  “Here he’s been away from the regiment all summer long, having a big time and getting head over ears in debt, I hear, and the moment he rejoins they put him in charge of the wagon-train as field quartermaster.  It’s putting a premium on being young and cheeky,—­besides absenteeism,” he continues, growing blacker every minute.